Florida Spring 2019

Spring in Florida isn't like anywhere else that I've lived. There are very little showers, and rarely do we have gentle breezes and seventy-degree temperatures. For us, spring means raking leaves, pollen, jacaranda trees, and a spike in traffic. It's also the end of the strawberry season, an increase in the citrus rat population, and the beginning of the gator mating season.

Spring kind of sucks in Florida.

I don't have allergies. Thus far, I'm immune to the pollen that falls daily from my large oak tree and covers everything that is in its vicinity; my porch, the roof of my van, the mailbox, the driveway, etc. You can stand on my porch and hear the pollen as it falls. It sounds like it is raining. I have written multiple times about our pollen clean up. About how I can't air out the house by opening windows because the pollen will blow inside and cover my furniture in a sheen of green dust. If we go outside, we track in the stuff on our shoes, our clothes, our hair, and with the pollen comes silkworms. Dangling from the oak branches, these little guys lie in wait to drop on us. We are forever swatting them off each other.

Spring means several weeks of sweeping inside and out. Sometimes twice or more a day.

Darcy is my kid bothered by the pollen. She pops a daily allergy tablet from February through April. When she lived at home, we'd have her strip at the door and shower immediately every time she came home from school or from outdoors. Otherwise, the kid was miserable. Now it seems my husband has decided that his recent cold is an allergic reaction to the pollen.

We slept with the windows up one night, and the next morning he had a runny nose. By that evening, he was in a walk-in clinic, sure that he had a sinus infection. I about fell over. The man NEVER goes to the doctor. He never admits that he is sick. EVER. Yet, now at the first sign of a sniffle, he is at the clinic?

I thought for sure he had to be delusional with fever or something. Uh, no. No fever. Of course, the clinic workers rolled their eyes, patted him on the shoulder, and told him to drink plenty of fluids and rest. Nothing they could do for him on day one of what looked to be a cold. They must have mentioned pollen too because now he showers at night and tiptoes over the pollen in the driveway.

Pollen hangs from the trees, drops, and spreads its seeds all over the ground. It's a mess. You can sweep in the morning and have to do it again in the evening. We pray for April showers just to wash it away. 

Already our temperatures are in the late 80's here in my area. My A/C kicked in a long time ago. The only good thing happening in Spring for me is my pineapple plantation. I usually have at least one flowering plant. I lamented the fact that I didn't have any signs of fruit a week ago, but when I returned from my Spring Break travels, the plant from one of my homegrown fruits had sprouted.

My mother would be so thrilled. This plant started out in a pot, and Tom replanted it in August when we planted the top of our 2018 crop. He planted this one by the mailbox, so I'll need to keep an eye on it. People like to steal pineapples. As do the animals. I'm going to point my camera in this direction just in case.

Happy Spring!