What’s kind of amazing about a place like North America is the variation in climate. In March while the northern U.S. states, and much of Canada are still locked in a cold winter, you have this wonderful peninsula of land, called Florida, which can be quite warm and sunny, almost summer like.
I have the great privilege to have homes in both places, and last week, after a particularly long stretch of cold snowy weather, I was able leave the north and in several hours, be instantly transported to summer like weather in Florida.
It’s easy to become acclimatized to this glorious weather in Florida at this tie of year, sitting in the back yard.
We have a wonderful Tabebuia tree, with brilliant yellow flowers. While they never get super large, they are a harbinger of spring in a place like Florida, and I was grateful to be there while it was in full bloom.
We did get some rain which cooled off the temperature and it lost most of its flowers. It burns brightly for a short period of time, but adds great colour to garden. What’s the Neil Young lyric from ‘Hey Hey, My My’ … “It’s better to burn out, than fade away.”
Here’s another photo from the backyard.
The reality of the two extremes in our climate was brought home when I sent a photograph of the Tabebuia tree in bloom to a friend in Canada.
He returned the following photo entitled “The View from My Front Porch” from his place in Tamworth, Ontario. He noted there was still a foot of snow on the ground and many more weeks of ‘non-spring-like’ weather to go before he even got to see his lawn again.
We live in the best of times that I have the luxury of leaving that cold reality and escaping to a sunny warm place. I can also spend my summers in the north when their summer looks like a Florida spring, and the Florida summer seems just a little too hot for my liking.