Now that we have been in Florida for a week, my wife and I have thoroughly thawed out and started to brown up. In driving from the Northern portion of the state to the Florida Keys, the changes in vegetation were much more subtle than what we experienced on the earlier parts of our drive (unless you want to consider a bleak snowy Connecticut equivalent to a bleak snowy North Carolina.)
The early portion of our drive took us through central Florida and miles of citrus groves where trees were lined up like good soldiers in rows as far as the eye could see. There were, however, a few errant trees spread like weeds along the highway that had planted themselves. The soil had the consistency of beach sand and a dirty grey color.
When you grow your little garden, it is easy to forget the scale and organization of commercial agriculture. Halfway through our drive we passed the factory for Florida’s Natural orange juice. The air was heavy with the sweet scent of oranges, a much nicer smell than what you get when passing though the more northern sections of New Jersey.
The citrus groves eventually gave way to fields of sugar cane south of Lake Okeechobee, where vast areas of the Everglades had been drained revealing a thick, dark nitrogen-rich soil. Open air trucks with sides of steel lattice filled with oranges and grapefruits gave way to the same filled with green stalks of sugar cane. It appears to be harvest season in central Florida for this sweet grass and fruit with countless trucks filled to the brim making turns onto side roads leading to a distant processing plant. Like its orange counterpart, the air in sugar cane country is sweet like cotton candy.
Getting closer to our destination, we pass through Homestead to see this spring’s pepper and tomato plants starting their growth as well as older ones the were killed by the recent cold. Like the North, Florida has seen more than its fare share of extreme weather, which has killed off both plants and animals. My friend Brian needed to bury four iguanas that were stricken by the cold.
But the concept of cold is relative. In the Keys anything below 60 degrees is cold; we Northerners rejoice in such weather donning shorts that display our pasty legs. There are coconut trees, palms, bougainvillea in bloom and lots of plants that I am at a loss to identify. Pelicans fly overhead and perch nearby. My friend Brian has bromeliads that measure four feet high by six feet across. I have a little one at home that fits into a four inch pot that struggles to grow. It’s time to learn about these beauties.
