It may be a little later in the year, and for a shorter period of time, and a bit unreliable, but it is just lovely right now! Hope you can get outside and enjoy it this weekend - take a walk, ride your bike, go to a park, take a hike! This is a beautiful place to live.
And a little food for weekend thought: Cows Worse Than Cars for Global Warming
The Enemy is in our own backyard!
It is so lovely outside - cool, sunny, breezy... a wonderful day to fling open the windows and let in some fresh air. But it's November and leaves are beginning to fall here in Gainesville. And men in uniform are out in force with their weapons of mass displacement. Freaking, gas-powered, fume-spewing, ear-splitting leaf blowers are blowing leaves hither and thither in neighborhoods (that can afford them) all over town. For what good? So we will be spared the offensive sight of leaves on the ground in autumn.
Dear God, No!
What happened to little kids with rakes and brooms making a little money for baseball gloves and Christmas gifts? What happened to the "For Better or For Worse/Family Circle" adults who got their butts in gear finally at the end of the season and raked off the colorful offenders themselves. What happened to just letting the things fall where they may and rest in peace for a bit? What is wrong with us?
Stop the violence! End the war on autumn (and eardrums).
. . . blockin’ up the scenery, breakin’ my mind (Five Man Electric Band, c. 1970)…
What is wrong with us? I always feel a little embarrassed driving along I-75 north of here. Such beautiful north Florida landscape – pine trees, rolling hills, wildflowers, and BILLBOARDS EVERYWHERE. Seems a shame this is the first view folks get of Florida. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s half-naked women advertising Café Risque or a giant lawyer-face suggesting you give him a call in case you’re in an accident, it’s a blight. And apparently it’s big business too.
For the second time in the last few months, Clear Channel, owner of many billboards (among other things), has got its chainsaw out. First it was four oak trees along the 600 block of 13th Street, now its cabbage palms along the rail-trail off Waldo Road near 8th Avenue. The Gainesville Sun had a good editorial on the whole thing last week.
It’s wrong that a city can’t have a say in deciding what its citizens want to look at. And a bigger shame that our goofball state representatives keep earning their good old boy reputations by selling themselves to their buddies in the sign business. I’d write letters telling businesses who advertise on these mega-signs that we’re boycotting them, but I can’t find any billboard advertisers we support anyway. Are these signs really profitable? Must be, but I don’t get it.
And I am so grateful for the little signs and symptoms of impending Fall. I once planted a sycamore tree just so I would have something to give me hope when I looked out the mildew-spotted window in September.
Sycamores are a godsend this time of year. One of the last to sprout new spring leaves, they're also the first to start letting them go in the autumn. They're natives - and one of the recommended shade trees for Florida (which God knows we also need in September).
In addition to the bronzing sycamore, I came across a row of river birches planted along one of the streets near our house that showed a little color.
And then this lovely tree, which I couldn't identify.
Okay, it's not New England. But it's something. And during these last clingy days of summer, I need something.
