The Four Seasons of Florida

I have to start this post with a disclaimer. I was raised to be respectful for and appreciative of nature. I was boy scout and loved camping, and my grandfather was a farmer. However, I’m coming to hate these Live Oak trees we have here in Tampa. They are not all that lush and green; the leaves never seem to rot; and they drop stuff the entire year.

People here get way to worked up about these things. You can’t cut them down or have them removed. When I first bought this house, the neighbor had a pretty big oak in her front yard that had been hit by lightening twice. I was dead as a door nail. There was not a single green leaf anywhere on that tree, but she had to pay an arborist to declare the tree dead so that it could be cut down.

That leads me to the four seasons of Florida. Three of them are related the Live Oaks. Around January and especially February is Autumn. This is the season in which most of the leaves drop off and are replaced. (Although live oaks drop leaves continuously to lesser degree.)

There, in May is limb dropping season. I’ve never seen this anywhere but here. The live oaks drop small limbs covered with leaves (so they’re not dead). I don’t know what that’s all about.

Season three in Florida just started today. That’s hurricane season, and it runs until the end of November officially, but last year we had a tropical storm in both December and January.

Season four is around November and December. That’s when the live oaks drop a million little sticks.

So there you have it. The four seasons we experience here in Florida.