As our home in Connecticut is threatened with a potentially nasty winter storm later this week, Juana and I are relaxing in the relative warmth of Gainesville, Florida. Late in life snowbirds, we have taken to spending much of the winter months in the tropical Florida Keys. We visit the homes of family members on the way down to make the long 1,500 mile drive easier.
But with the temperatures now in the 50s, I have shed my pants baring my legs to the elements. Down here that is an easy way to separate the Northern invaders from locals.
It has been warmer than usual in northern Florida as my niece’s son was swimming in their unheated pool only a few weeks ago. Making our way down, it was not until we reached Georgia that we spotted consistent swaths of green growth along the roadsides. Clover, chickweed and other familiar weeds greeted us as we drove by.
Yesterday I took to my bike for the first time in months as a cool cloudy January day in Gainesville is much warmer than any day after Thanksgiving in Connecticut. Though brisk by the standards of the Florida Keys where our trip will terminate, the air was fresh with new growth and a scent of flowers seeking pollinators. A strong eruption of life surrounded me.
I found myself on a backroad peddling through farms and stables. Moss dripped from the leafless oak trees hanging over the road. Fields had just been plowed revealing little soil but rather a beach-like white sand. Some thistles were making early attempts to grow on the side but were finding progress difficult. There was more road kill than I would have expected but the local turkey vultures were not complaining as they had their choice of crushed racoon, possum, fox and an unlucky cat along my route.
Winded after a while from my excursions, I stopped for a water break next to a blueberry field stretching further than I could see. There was a quartet of bee hives adjacent to the bushes. The hives seemed quiet, with no bees going in or out.
The bushes were devoid of leaves but upon close inspection I could see that the tips of the bushes had already started to green out and in a few cases flower. The timing seemed poor and early: in this section of Florida the peak time for blueberry bush flowering is mid-February and even then is threatened by frosts through March. With the bees huddled in their hives to stay warm, these flowers were unlikely to become pollinated and bear fruit or would become knocked off by a likely frost in the next few nights.
Early Spring is often when Florida blueberries arrive at the supermarkets in the North. But we will see if that will be the case this year.
