With the approach of winter, my thoughts turn to travel-especially to sunny islands where I can snorkel, swim and enjoy walks through lush tropical vegetation.
I have a special fascination for islands, probably because I live a good two hours drive from the nearest beach, and because Bucks County is part of such a large continental land mass.
On a recent visit to St.
John, in the U.
S.
Virgin Islands, I stayed at the former Rockresort-Caneel Bay.
During a tour of this spacious property I was surprised to discover that more than 100 employees work on the maintenance of the lush tropical gardens that hide the resort's beachfront cottages.
It shows! Not only does the resort maintain its own private nursery for propagating plants, it has a resident horticulturist who seeks out exotic new plants from different parts of the world.
I wandered leisurely through groves of fruiting banana trees, swaying coconut palms, and thick strands of richly-hued heliconias, with flower clusters up to three feet long, each floret resembling a lobster claw, from its oval, pointed shape and bright red coloration.
I liked St.
John for its wild atmosphere.
It's not nearly as congested as neighboring St.
Thomas, and it's a lot more interesting to explore in a rented jeep.
The place is full of history, and the scene of perhaps one of the greatest little-known tragedies in the colonization of the Americas, for it was on St.
John that 1,900 slaves revolted against the 100 resident whites.
They held control of the island for nearly six months, until overwhelming forces crushed their spirit to resist and they fled into the wilderness.
There were mass suicides among the slaves, and those who were captured suffered cruel punishment, including burning, impalement and dismemberment.
Ruins of the sugar mills that formed the island's economy still survive, many of them maintained by the U.
S.
Park Service, which owns much of the island.
At Caneel Bay beautiful old ruins have been made into gardens, the stone walls garlanded with lush vines.
During a stay on St.
Thomas I checked into the new Grand Palazza Hotel, which resembles an Italian Villa, around a horseshoe-shaped bay.
A Brazilian landscape architect has laid out beautiful lawns and terraces filled with tropical plants, and a crew of nine gardeners works full-time keeping the plantings healthy.
A 15-minute flight from St.
Thomas is St.
Croix, which is easier to get around than congested St.
Thomas, and which has pleasant rolling hills where it is still possible to find a beach all to yourself.
Here I found the Buccaneer Hotel full of so many interesting plants it resembles a richly planted botanical garden.
One of the owners, Elizabeth Armstrong, works diligently to keep everything correctly labeled and conducts nature walks almost every day.
She showed me a beautiful mature baobab tree in full flower.
One of the largest and longest-lived trees in the world, the baobab has a bottle-like shape and looks like it is made from stone.
I have never seen a baobab outside of Africa, where I once had to climb into the branches of a 3,000-year-old specimen to avoid a prowling lion! The baobab is known as "The Tree where Man was Born" because African tribes believe that under the baobab man first learned the process of germination in seeds (the seeds of the baobab are large, chocolate colored, and pollinated by bats).
The Buccaneer has a boat dock where it's easy to catch a ride out to Buck Island for snorkeling along a beautiful underwater trail that leads through the most impressive coral canyons I have ever seen.
In fact, the entire trail is a veritable underwater garden, with an impressive concentration of fish species gliding among the vast forests of elkhorn and staghorn corals.
For a totally different kind of island experience, consider Tresco, off the coast of Land's End, England.
Twenty-five miles from the mainland, it is easily reached by helicopter from the mainland town of Penzanze.
With a mild climate influenced by the Gulf Stream, Tresco rarely experiences frost and has one of the most richly planted gardens in the world.
It contains large plant collections from Mexico, South Africa and New Zealand.
The Tresco Island Hotel is unobtrusive and almost blends in with the rocky scenery.
Every room has spectacular views of the Atlantic Ocean, and there are cliff walks that lead through sand dunes, along cliff-tops, through moorland and woodland.
Cars are banned from the island, and bicycles are the most common mode of transportation-or walking.
The island is owned by Prince Charles, who goes there frequently to paint, but the Dorrian-Smith family has a 99-year lease, allowing it to farm the fertile fields and control tourism.
The owners live in Abby House, a castle-like structure built from locally quarried stone and the salvage of shipwrecks.
The gardens took shape almost a hundred years ago in an abandoned stone quarry adjacent to the house, and around the ruins of an old Benedictine monastery.
During a leisurely stroll through the spectacular terraced gardens I have seen South African proteas in full bloom, South American amaryllis naturalized in huge colonies, and groves of Australian tree ferns.
I have visited Tresco several times-in June and October-experiencing good weather at both times, and the gardens were filled with color.