While in town for my artist brother’s DC finale, we made sure to visit one of his local haunts, Kenilworth Aquatic Park and Gardens. It was a brilliantly blue, late July afternoon and, armed with cameras, we took to the grassy trails that bordered a series of ponds overflowing with lush lotus flowers, their pink and white heads in all stages of blossom. Plenty of nature-loving folk wandered the paths, some still in their Sunday best, taking in the aquatic flowery expanses.

From Sarasota, I took the bridge to Lido Key, one of multiple barrier islands that line the west coast of the state of Florida. Following the sounds of the seabirds I walked out onto the grainy, off-white sands of Lido Beach, which overlooks the gleaming blue-green waters of the Gulf of Mexico.