Finally

The rain finally came: almost an inch last evening. Plus lots of wind. We lost a big screen panel, so time to call Terry from Integrity Screens. He’d just been out to replace 3 lowers panels that were getting rather loose, and I worried Gracie would figure out how to escape. Little by little, I’m having him replace all the screens. I probably should just have him do it all at once, but the piece by piece approach seems less painful. I know, crazy thinking. (We were lucky. On the east side of town, a tornado knocked over a tree onto a car, killing a 14-year-old.)

Before this rain, the yard was dry and crispy, no matter how much I watered. When the wild coffee and hamalia, both natives, start wilting, it’s dry. I’m having Cooper run a line down the south side, using city water, so we will have total coverage when needed, which I hope won’t be until next dry season. Crossing my fingers that the rainy season has finally started. He’s already extended the canal intake out another foot, and we’ve decided to run it an additional 12-18”. I wanted a Canada goose float to hold the line up off the bottom, but at $100, I’m going with a foam buoy instead.

Sunday I rode BrightLine to Fort Lauderdale and had Patten pick me up at the station so we could go to the beach. He and Ryann were able to swim, but the waves were too much for me. Still, just sitting in the sand with the sea breeze blowing was a tonic. I need my saltwater humidity.

I was in town for the Florida chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture’s annual convention, a perk of my serving on the Town of Windermere’s Tree Board. After Patten and Ryann hosted dinner for some of my friends and me, my TB colleague, Vickie, drove us over to the Marriott Harbor Beach Hotel for our 3 days of immersion into caring for trees on the professional level.

My takeaway was that professional arborists should be included at the beginning of every construction project, from a private home to interstate roadways. Trees suffer when they are planted piecemeal after the project is designed. A cheap investment to have their locations plotted at the start rather than waste money planting trees that really won’t survive well. Now if I can convey this to the Tree Board and have our town council get on board. There are two big water and sewer projects coming up. The mantra has been that we can’t plan or plant anything where these are going until they are done. Now I know better. Will others agree?

I rode home with Vickie, but not without stopping by Jesse Durko’s nursery. I was just going to look while Vickie chose more natives for her yard, plus a couple exotics. I ended up with a ground covering salvia (S. misella), Naples lavender which is a near-native from Mexico (S. coccinea ‘Naples Lavender’), a Juan’s goldenrod (Solidago sp), and a wild onion (Allium canadese) as a gift from Jesse to Grant. I may go back for the dwarf white mulberry he said he has.