Welcome to My Frogpatch

Thanks for visiting! I am really lucky to have you as a guest. You have arrived at a place that is designed to be a gathering place for eclectic minds. I believe that buying and using vintage items is a good way to contribute to a healthy environment by saving resources and reducing landfills. I will try to make friends by telling you who I am and why I am here. My name is Gary and I live in Florida. I enjoy writing, fishing, cooking, growing things and scouring yard sales, flea markets, rummage sales and thrift stores with my wife and best friend Laura. We do not live in Frogpatch. That is a place that exists in the mind of this writer and comes to life in between the real world right here on these pages. Frogpatch has a mayor named Goggles who by coincidence is a frog. There are many other characters who we will meet along the way. In Frogpatch there are no threatened or endangered species. There is no pollution or humans except for myself who visits occasionally. I believe that using vintage items is a good way to help the environment by lessening the potential waste in landfills and preserving natural resources both here and in places like China. Vintage things also have beauty and character. In the section below called Look What We Found, I will show unique items that were discovered on our search. A couple days ago it was a driftwood board that will become a coat rack or a holder for something else. We came to Florida from New Jersey and as I said in my first post that I accidentally deleted. I had visions of palm trees, blue water, tiki bars and a low cost of living. Reality became increasingly evident a a couple months and 4 hurricanes later. Everything costs more here than the suburbs of NY except housing which is a little less. Home prices soared the second I stepped on Floridian soil. Insurance made homes out of reach due to the hurricanes. We did however find a nice apartment right on upper Tampa Bay in Clearwater. The photo of the sunrise and the Bayside Bridge was taken from there as were the two photos below. Wildlife from eagles to egrets and spoonbills to dolphins are common sights from our Lanai. I can wade in the bay and fish for snook and redfish and even catch one once in a while. I will post the photo when I find it. It is on a CD somewhere.