Around the Yard

Our "tree man" is coming tomorrow to prune our neighbors' mahogany trees and our carambola (starfruit), so I took a walk around our yard to see what else needs to be attended to.

While I was making notes, I also looked for the oddities which make Florida such a fun place to live. Here are two I found:

Epiphyte

This epiphyte or air plant has attached itself to our carambola tree. It is one of many varieties that can be found in warm and humid places; in the United States, that means the South. An air plant is not a parasite because it doesn't feed off the tree or bush host, but just finds a convenient place to live and grow and settles in. I've even seen epiphytes clutching telephone wires high above the ground. They are cousins to orchids and bromeliads.

Soaking up the sun on the trunk of a Christmas palm in our front yard was this nymph of an eastern lubber grasshopper. It is quite spectacular looking with its bright yellow stripes, and in addition to its menacing look, it hisses to discourage predators. The adult grasshopper can be orange or red or yellow or even black and can be as big as three inches long. The eastern lubber, too, is common in the South. In its black phase, it is sometimes called "Devil's Horse" or "Diablo." 

Eastern Lubber Grasshopper

We're going to ask the tree man to trim the bougainvillea, which is threatening to brush against the screened porch, and the white bird of paradise, which is touching the eaves in a front corner of the house. We have managed to control the size of everything else over the winter when there was little rain.

The rainy season in southwest Florida starts June 1, and that means showers, often with lightning and thunder, can be expected nearly every afternoon. In winter, our grass needs cutting only about once a month because of the lack of rain. We don't have a sprinkler system, and neither do most of the neighbors where we live. In summer, our grass may need cutting every five days.

If you leave town for even a week or two in the summer, you will be amazed at the growth of everything while you were away.