Monthly Archives: April 2010

When I worked as a chauffeur for a time, picking up people from the airports in south Florida, one of the questions I’d ask new residents was how they liked it here. Often they’d say they missed the “seasons.” To me it seems that the “seasons” the people missed were for dumb folks who pay little or no attention to their environment. “Look, Martha, there are no leaves on the trees and the ground’s all white. It must be winter.”

There are four distinct seasons in Florida, too, but you have to be aware. You can’t spend all your time in your air conditioned home, move to your air conditioned car that takes you to your air conditioned office or mall. There’s a statement in a song by the jazz poetry group in New Orleans that says, “there’s nothing more southern than air conditioning.”

Sure, Summers here are stiflingly hot and humid, but then one day, if you’re paying attention, the humidity seems to have disappeared overnight, the temperature has dropped a couple of degrees and it’s Fall. Fall slides seamlessly into Winter with the passage of the first cold front and then Spring announces itself with brilliant splashes of color as the various flamboyant trees begin to bloom.

While many people think that the first green buds on the dormant trees in the north signal Spring, I think the true color of Spring is yellow. One of the first to show up is the forsythia This was taken from http://corditecountryshownotes.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/40409/

My friend Omar who edits http://epiac1216.wordpress.com/ had a post today about a brilliant yellow tree in bloom in Panama now called the Guayacan:

It is very similar to a tree that grows here in south Florida though I can’t recall its name at the moment. All I do know is it raises havoc with my nasal cavities and thank whomever it’s only in bloom for a couple of weeks. This one is about two blocks from my home.

A close up of the flowers:

While it’s very similar to the Guayacan I don’t think they’re the same. It seems that Omar’s tree has a smooth bark while the one here in Florida is rough barked.

When I was in Chitre, Panama, last spring I found this yellow tree which no one could identify for me:

Spring on the French Riviera where I lived for nearly three years brings in the mimosa which I loved:

Those two photos were stolen from the blog http://menton-daily-photo.blogspot.com/ that I visit daily. I dated a doctor in Menton for a short while and loved walking through the old town there. It’s the last town in France before you enter Italy.

It seems there have been a lot of cataclysmic earthquakes lately. While many believe the quakes are caused by the movement of tectonic plates, I always harbored the idea that the pumping of billions of barrels of oil  have somehow destabilized the earth. Hey, why not?

But it seems that both theories are wrong. According to Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, a senior Iranian cleric, women who wear immodest clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes. “Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,” Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran’s acting Friday prayer leader.

Makes as much sense as anything else, I guess. After all, Eve got mankind kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

Actually, the statement is just another example of why I shy away from religious fanatics of all faiths. Besides, I’m rather fond of promiscuous women.

Properly displayed.