Cold Is A Welcome Visitor
This seems to be a colder winter here than most. Nearly a month ago now, our temperatures dipped slightly below freezing for 2 consecutive nights and periously close to that on another. The surface water on my bird bath froze and I had to bring in my collection of non-native orchids. Across the world of social media, folks here in Florida bemoaned the destructive force of a hard freeze (or even a frost) on the plants in their landscape. Perhaps, I am just simply eccentric, but I welcome this kind of weather to my landscape. Cold is one of the most important abiotic forces to a Florida landscape. It resets the table and cleans up the clutter. Florida is different from other places where I've lived. Our weather patterns are certainly not uniform and that greatly impacts the types and species of plants that naturally occur here. As a big, somewhat open-toed sock, plants naturally stream southward down from the states along our open border. At the same time, tropical plants