Swampset

Does all of Florida celebrate New Year the same?


Actually not:

Down here on the peninsula we go by Eastern Standard Time,

That puts us an hour ahead of everyone on the Florida panhandle west of the Apalachicola. They set their clocks to Central Standard Time, just the same as most of Texas (including Dallas).


That explains why – as the wrist watch turns – the sun sets the better part of an hour later in the Big Cypress Swamp (at 5:45 pm EST) than 300 miles to the west on the panhandle in Pensacola (4:58 pm CST ).



Greenwich Mean Time corrects the score:

Sunset in Pensacola – in terms of true time – comes 13 minutes after the sun touches down on the swamps.


At some point it’s all splitting sawgrass:

Tomorrow – wherever you are when you wake up – it’ll be 2010.


Happy New Year!

Decade approaches the end of the line

Forty is the new sixty!

Ends of course are rarely “the end,”

More usually they are a new beginning – or the chance at one anyhow – whether out of happenstance or intricately well planned.


And so ends another decade.

There was a time when I’d notice how it was that the “years” flew by, but now – a couple ten years later – I’m scratching my head about where the “decades” went instead.


Not that I’m old – I’m not (I just turned 40).

That’s “old” if you’re a kid, but by adult standards – “young,”


But who says you grow "old" anyhow?

A friend of the family framed to me as a matter of fact (and who am I to doubt someone ten years my senior) that “fifty is the new thirty.”

While I didn’t have the data in hand to either confirm or deny his postulation, I was quite comfortable in presenting him with the corollary –

“Forty” I told him “is the new sixty.”

He was genuinely surprised by my statement, but also intrigued. “That means in ten years you’ll feel thirty years younger.”


Who can ever guess 10 years ahead anyhow?

Isn’t it the case that the most well-intentioned 10-year plans invariably drift, if not so much “off track,” then onto a new one, and then another, and then one more (ad infinitum) …

Before you know it you’ve lost track of what the original station even was let alone where the track you’re on is going.


And what’s that old adage about actually – and finally – finding the station you set out (and worked so hard) for?

In no time flat you’re bored to tears and ready to hop a new train for some distance dream of a new station (that quite frankly you’ll probably never reach).


What is it about trains and stations?

To be honest, I don’t like either.

I’d much rather kick around in the watershed I’m in, read a book (or ride a bike), and just have a place to hang my hat at the end of the day that I call home.

(Not that I wear a hat.)





To me traveling is the hardest thing.

And that only proves what I said in the first place:

“Forty is the new sixty!”

Rain-delay roof keeps spectators dry

Big League rains - "Yankee style"

Does Florida’s water cycle mimic Major League Baseball?


Spring Training, among other places, is featured in Florida,

And baseball teams famously start the season on equal terms – all in first place.



The same can’t be said for the Everglades, at least not this spring:

A record slump, in the form of a drought – the deepest in two decades – dropped the wetted wild lands into a dry season decline that seemed insurmountable:

Summer showers would have to “fill up” that hole before they could “spill out” into the swamps.


But then came epic May rains which splashed water stage up before even the sea-breeze fed rains got started,

Meanwhile the "hot teams" of spring (think Boston Red Sox) “cooled off” as the summer grind proceeded.


Major League Baseball’s “marathon” regular season (162 games – that’s 6 months) plays out in concert with the south peninsula’s sweltering summer “wet season” of humidity and rains (May to October – also 6 months).

Day after day, game after game, both plod along …

Only ending – and finally – with post season play in October and early November, followed later in the month with hurricane season’s official end.


Post season fire works were reserved for the Yankees, thanks to “Game 6” heroics by Hideki Matsui.

(South Florida’s 6th month of the wet season – October as counted from May – was notably absent, thanks to a remarkably quiet Tropics.)


As for the other 29 teams, they buckle down for the long cold winter to come, but are too perhaps buoyed by visions of swaying palms and renourished swings in Spring Training that awaits and the Grapefruit Leagues that beckon ...

And the mantra, of course, that “we’ll get ‘em next year, you’ll see!”

Meanwhile, Florida is quenching its thirst by another fruit – a Pineapple Express – which by way of the Pacific has brought a dry season drenching to the Yankee’s spring training home.






Congratulations to New Yorkers everywhere,

And the Grapefruit Leaguers down in Tampa, Florida where it all began:

The New York Yankees are World Champs,

And Tampa’s multi-year drought has finally drawn to a close!







Happy New Year everyone!

Celebrate safely.

wood stork

70/40 degree rule

What’s winter is an open question in south Florida.

Without snow and not much cold and lots of greenery all around, the usual standards don’t apply.


That being said, Floridians know winter when they feel it:

• In the day, if the mercury doesn’t break above 70 – That’s winter!
• Or during the night, if the mercury doesn’t break 40 – That’s also winter!

Naples airport has recorded 5 days so far this winter that haven’t broken above 70º F.

On average we can count on 17.


We’ve yet to have a single night break below the 40º F mark, however.

That happens about 7 times per year on average.


Our coldest winter of the past 30 years was the winter of 95-96 when 41 days didn’t break above the 70º mark and 17 nights plunged down to 40º or below.

That was an El Nino year by the way.


I wasn’t here at the time, but even if I was, quite frankly I’d have a tough time calling even that winter.

cypress balls

Deciduous conifer

I’ve been conditioned to think of cypress and slash pines as polar opposites:

Cypress are found down low in the swamps deeper half – better known as strands and sloughs – and commonly flooded with water up to their knees;

Whereas slash pines stake out their ground in the “highest and driest” country the swamp has to offer. Fittingly they are named for their most frequent tree: Pine Islands.


That being said, the vertical difference between the elevated islands and swampy sloughs are only a three feet, sometimes less, and despite the generalized clustering rule, you’ll often find individuals of each standing side by side to one another among the mish mash of subtropical and temperate plants we call the mosaic.

That makes it a bit of a battle to distinguish the two during summer when both are green.


But come winter the difference is "night and day:"

Cypress are deciduous – they shed their needles (turning stark gray).

Slash pines stay evergreen all year round.


Polar opposites yes, but also the same:

Both are conifers.

They are organized in the plant kingdom under the same division as other cone-bearing trees, including redwoods, spruces, cedars, and junipers (to name a few).




Cypress cones are called “balls” – which has a holiday look (and ring) to it ...

If only they were hanging on an evergreen tree, not bare branches.


They may be similar, but these trees don't share:

For me they will always be “opposites.”

sliced view shown below
explains why they are called "red" navels

Never judge an orange by its peel

We’re all familiar with the well-worn phrase:

Never judge a book by its "cover.”

(And no I’m not talking about The Geology of Florida by Randazzo and Jones, which I might add is a terrific book – and more than just a pretty cover – it digs deep into the endlessly fascinating geologic story of the peninsular state.)


I’m talking about not judging an orange by its peel,

And more specifically – the many varieties of Florida oranges.


Florida oranges – its true – do not have California good looks,

But trust me:

That’s a beauty that runs “peel” deep.


As easy as they are to peel and pull apart, and eat – all in sequence – without a drop of juice sticking to your hands ... therein lies the problem:

The California orange – which in technical circles better known as a Washington Navel – is a tamed down version of what an “orange in full” was bred to be.

In terms of variety, juiciness, and taste the Florida peninsula is the Napa Valley among citrus connoisseurs.


Last I checked, you can’t eat the peel, but you can fresh squeeze out the juice on the inside ... by the glassful if it’s a Floridian, but only drop by drop for a Californian.


I wasn’t surprised to see the Honeybell Tangelo take the prize as the “preferred” form of Florida citrus on the recent poll I posted on the journal – I am a big fan myself,

But I was disappointed to see the Dancy Tangerines not get a single vote.



In season now are the Sunburst Tangerines. They are billed as “easy peelers with few seeds.”

The peeling was easy enough, yes … but as for the seeds:

I lost track at 44!


I reached for my calculator to confirm but pulled back in better judgment:

My hands were coated in a sticky film of juice.


Florida oranges are for squeezing you know, just as books are made for reading.

Or in other words,

Never ever judge a peel by it cover!

Snow in Naples, Florida?

Big foam day

There’s been no snow this winter in Naples,

But we did have a “big foam day” at the beach.




A cold wind was blowing in from the northwest.

That flavored the surf with a cappuccino-style froth, which then slid up on shore and globbed up in little piles on the wet sand “shivering” in fright in the unstable air.

Soon thereafter that foam met its demise by being plucked into the air and propelled south, rolling like tumble weeds on the desert floor ...

Then disintegrating.



What made it so frothy?

The primary cause was physical – the wind, even if water chemistry was presumably a factor too (i.e., organic matter).

The wind was so strong that it “fast forwarded” the first half of our footsteps much farther than we anticipated. (We started our walk to the south.) It was only upon turning back north for our return, finding ourselves face first into a stiff headwind (all the while foamy tumble weeds flying by in the opposite direction), that we realized our miscalculation.

The flat surface of Naples Beach never seemed so steep or elicited so many shivers.


It was only foam and barely cold (by northern standards),

But through my squinting eyes – on that day:

It sort of looked like snow.

kitchen of Palm Cottage

Art of "regifting"

There’s not a lot of “old” things in Naples,

At least not by New England or Old Europe standards.


But if you nose around long enough under its canopy of quivering palms, you’ll come across a lot more history than at first meets the eye.

Case in point is Palm Cottage in Naples, Fla.


It’s locate in the hustle bustle of the coastal strip, a block away from Naples Pier, in the quaint village setting of downtown … better known as “Old Naples.”

Palm Cottage wasn’t the first house and it certainly wasn’t the last (here we are a couple of housing booms later), but it is officially our “oldest.”


As much as I believe in conserving large tracts of land (and water), I’m repeatedly reminded – and so often struck (and surprised each time I might add) – how it’s the smaller “tucked away” places, and more specifically – strolling through them, that connect me most deeply with the watersheds I live.

The Palm Cottage is a “gift” that keeps on giving and a “present” – wrapped in an evergreen bow – that is always there, for us, ready (and waiting) to be discovered.


It may be the “oldest,” but by my estimation it’s as perpetually “new” to us as are the presents unwrapped by children under a tree:

Special thanks to the Naples Historical Society for "taking something old and making it new again (and again and again)!"


Peace on earth and good will to all on this holiday season.

Peace on earth

15 gallons per minute

Fifteen gallons per minute


Alternative measurement units:

0.03 cubic feet per second
508 barrels per day (using 42.5 gallon barrels)

24 acre feet per year
7.9 million gallons per year
12 Olympic swimming pools per year

Area of fair play in Fenway Park
filled a third of the way up
the 37.5 ft high "Green Monster" per year


That makes me wonder how deep the snow is, up against the warning track, from Boston's recent Nor'easter.

Probably not that high (yet) ... but snow, like flowing water, has a way of adding up over time!

gutter to drain

Blizzard of rain

As big as last week’s two big days of rain were …

At least we can be thankful they weren’t snow.


Turns out the same low pressure system that brought us our rain did turn into snow as it moved up the Atlantic Coast and took on the shape of a classic Nor’easter.

That’s as perfect a winter snow-making machine as the peninsula’s summer sea breeze is a rain maker.


The magnitude of the rains was unexpected – especially the local accumulations of over a foot that fell along the East Coast (almost sounds like snow!), but even if a precision-proof prediction could have been produced, the result would have been the same:

Giant ephemeral puddles everywhere.

Flat Florida’s urban grid can only handle a few inches per day at best.


Who would have thought that a single December storm could outdo an entire hurricane season?

Long-time residents in the heart of those flood zones couldn’t recall a hurricane storm this season, last or forever that brought so much water, so high and all at once.


It splashed Miami on the "national news" circuit then, just as quickly (like a receding puddle), faded from view:

A blizzard was blowing in offshore up on the Atlantic Coast.


Whether you remember the rain or the snow will depend on where you live:

Weather at its essence is a "local story."

Mammatus cloud at sunset

over Ochopee Post Office

World's smallest sunset

Is it still safe to call it "sunny" Florida despite the early onset of dusk?


The days are mostly sunny through the morning and mid afternoon hours, but yes, its true, like the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, days have finally ebbed to their sunlit low.

Today (Dec 21st) is the turning point:

From here on out – for the next 6 months – the hours of daylight will dilate …


Not that sunsets tomorrow or the next day or the next will be noticeably delayed – they won’t (other than of course that instantaneous and quite disorienting one-hour leap in daylight on the second week of March:

Otherwise it’s an imperceptibly slow process.


The photos do not show the sun set of the year’s “smallest” day – both were shot about a week ago when the days were still shortening.

But they were both taken over the “smallest” post office in the United States:

Better known as Ochopee, Florida

Zip Code 34141.



Close enough!

And yes, Florida is always "sunny" relatively speaking.

The sunset in Ochopee went down over one hour later (at 5:40 pm) than the 4:14 sunset over Cape Cod Bay in New England, as viewed from Wellfeet looking west toward Boston.