Spring Has Come - How Will We Cope?

We in the south have been subjected to a miserable allergy season  with no end in sight.  Mild and moist weather over the last 12 months has encouraged plant growth (and pollination).  And our few cold snaps may not have been enough to kill our insect pests, so get out there and start scouting your plants for varmints and diseases - just remember that chemicals can cause collateral damage to beneficial species.  You have other safer options.  In the case of fire ants, you'll have no trouble finding them because they're just outside your door.  They've moved their nests to higher ground (right next to our home's foundation) to escape the flooding.  See the University of Florida's solutionsforyourlife.com website for sustainable fire ant control techniques.

Bald Eagle Nests

St. Johns County has over forty identified bald eagle nesting sites, including one at Alpine Groves Park, where our Freedom Butterfly Garden is located.  Click the map image for a printable PDF (Adobe Reader required) showing in-county locations (the map is over 1MB in size, so be patient). 

The official nesting season is from October to May.  However, the month of March offers some interesting viewing opportunities for bird fanciers watching from the ground with only a set of binoculars.  That is the month that the eaglets start leaving the nest.  First, they try "branching" - hopping from branch to branch as they build up their leg and wing strength.  This is also the time the young birds are the hungriest, adding a pound or more a week to their size.  Then, they will try out their wings for short flights from the nest.  The newly-airborn fledglings soon find out that they haven't mastered all the skills, most importantly - how to stop.  There are several "crash landings" during flight school.  By May the eaglets have become young eagles, as their new cap of white feathers announces.  They are ready to depart their birth nest and face the challenges of self-sufficiency in order to find a lifelong mate, build a nest, and begin many years raising families of their own.

The American Eagle Foundation has two online northeast Florida "eagle-cams" that provide live feeds from nests at undisclosed locations.  Be aware that eagles are carnivores and young eagles must have plenty of fresh meat.  Some scenes could be graphic.  This is what happens in the wild in order to survive.  

     Go to the northeast Florida eagle cam.

If you want to trace the journey of a nest from egg to adult, you can visit the

    The American Eagle Foundation Facebook page

Berry College in Georgia has an eagle cam on campus.  It is the only live feed of an eagle nest in Georgia.  Nesting, hatching, parenting, and maturing start later in Georgia than in northeast Florida.

    Berry College Eaglecam

Unfortunately, none of these cams has a microphone.  You'd be surprised at what you hear.  The sound Americans have come to associate with a bald eagle is actually that of the red-tailed hawk.  The bald eagle has a rather timid call - not something we'd associate with our national symbol.  So our movie media dubbed in a more robust red-talked hawk call.  To hear the difference (and perhaps understand why the deception was attractive) play the sounds at each of these links from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology - and turn your speakers up. 

    Bald Eagle Calls

    Red-Tailed Hawk Calls

Then take a walk down the nature trail of Alpine Groves Park where you can see a bald eagle nest.  And even if you don't see them, you may be able to hear them - now that you know what to listen for!

Bee Action Week - Get Informed

Have you heard of colony collapse?  Do you know that pesticides are the major man-made threat to bee health?  Would you like to do something to protect the bees?  First, you can learn which pesticides pose the most risk and work to eliminate their use, not only in your own garden, but by influencing chemical companies and resellers to stop making them available.

  
To learn which pesticides do the most damage, see these links:

• Pesticide Toxicity Profile: Neonicotinoid Pesticides - a publication of the University of Florida describing the negative effects this class of pesticides has on various animal species, including humans.
• Neonics in Your Garden - a consumer-oriented fact sheet from the Xerces society identifying pesticides that contain neonicotinoid chemicals by their commercial names.
• Bee Killing Pesticides Found in Garden Plants - an NBC news report citing a study from Friends of the Earth claiming that nionicotinoids used on commercially-grown plants pose a continuing threat to bees.

Groups such as Friends of the Earth, Center for Food Safety, and the Xerces Society are rallying to persuade lawmakers to ban the use of neonicotinoid pesticides. Learn more about bees, including the differences between a bee and a wasp, types of native Florida bees, and general pollinator information.

Winter Solstice 12/21/13 at 12:11 EST

The annual winter solstice begins winter for the northern hemisphere today at 12:11 p.m. EST. At that time the sun appears directly overhead at the southernmost point in our sky, along the Tropic of Capricorn, at 23.5 degrees south latitude.  With sun in this position we get our shortest amount of daylight for the year.  This is because the Earth’s North Pole is at its maximum tilt from the sun.   Locations north of the equator see the sun follow its lowest and shortest arc across the southern sky.  For the next six months, the days again grow longer as the sun spends more time each day above the horizon.

After reading this description of the northern hemisphere's relative distance from the sun and the shortest day, you might think that winter solstice would be the coldest day too.   Not so.    As you can see by the image of the St. Johns weather indicator, temperatures here aren't event crisp.   St. Johns in northeast Florida doesn't typically see a substantial dip in temperature for another three weeks - just long enough to give the grandkids a nice warm visit with grandma and grandpa before starting school in January.   And Fruit Cove is not unique.  Northern hemisphere temperatures post-winter-solstice will decline for several more weeks to come.   Why is that?

And while we're at it, what is a "solstice"?  The word itself is derived from two Latin words: "sol" means "sun" and "sistere" means to "stand still".  Now you know the origin of the words, but you may be even more confused than before.   To describe the sun as "standing still" is surely a puzzlement.   These days we know that the belief that the sun moves around the earth is itself an old misconception, based on the perception that it  moves across the sky (along the other heavenly bodies observed from earth).  We now know the sun, moon, and stars only appear to move across the sky from horizon to horizon because the earth is rotating in a west-to-east direction once every 24 hours or so, causing night and day.  Astronomers since Copernicus have proven that the earth's movement is the cause of night and day.  But "solstice" refers, not to the sun's "movement" east-to-west, but to its daily position north-to-south at its high point each day.  This position change is caused not by the earth's rotation, but because the earth tips back and forth, from north-to-south-to-north, once a year.  Winter solstice is the moment  when the tipping changes direction from north to south, when the sun's apparent position stops "retreating" south along the sky.  For six months thereafter, the sun appears to be at its highest each day in a more northern point in the sky, until the summer solstice, when the earth changes the direction of its own tipping motion, and the sun appears daily in an ever more southern high point.  

So the "standing still of the sun" at solstice is actually a "standing still of the earth"  (or more correctly, "changing the direction of earth's tilt").  It begins to sound a little like the science fiction movie, "the Day the Earth Stood Still".  And while that story had no basis in fact, solstices are real and they occur twice a year, ushering in both summer and winter.  The summer and winter solstices also are the cause of the longest and shortest hours of daylight.  And in between each solstice is a celestial event called, "equinox," (equal day-and-night).  The vernal and autumnal equinoxes that issue in spring and fall respectively are also caused by the earth's rotation and tipping.  (Look up this blog for a future posting on equinoxes.)   Heavenly events like these are significant for farmers.  Equinoxes and solstices are also important to world religions, architecture, and culture in general.  Some Christmas carols and traditions refer to the pagan winter solstice celebration of  burning a "yule" log at Yuletide.

But what about the "lands down under"?  Do they experience the same phenomenons?  Yes and no.

So perhaps it's interesting to note that solstices and equinoxes define the start of the seasons, but is it necessary to know when they occur? Can't one just remember that winter begins on December 21? The long answer is, "no". The reason for the answer is that solstices and equinoxes occur at slightly different times each year. Nature does not set her events by our calendar. Given enough time for the earth's position to change relative to the sun (and therefore, for the sun's position in the sky to vary slightly from year to year), the winter solstice can occur anywhere between December 20 and December 23. It just takes years and years for the event to actually slip or advance by one day and thus reset the start of a particular season. Many of us mere mortals may never experience the change in dates for the seasons because planets generally change slowly.

So to all us residents of the northern hemisphere, winter has officially arrived.  Unless you are referring to "meteorological winter".  In which case, you're about three weeks late.  Meteorological winter refers to the coldest three months of the year.  In the northern hemisphere it means that meteorological winter begins on December 1 and ends on the last day of February (the 28th or 29th depending upon leap years).  Let's not even touch the global warming debate... 

One CAN say with certainty, however, that the start of winter is in the eye (or the thermometer) of the beholder.

Seed Exchange Resources

PARTNERING TO PROMOTE SEED EXCHANGE LIBRARIES
The Friends of Northeast Florida Community Gardens and Second Harvest teamed up with other local organizations at Chet Creek Elementary School on 11/23/13 to present a Seed Exchange and Community Garden Expo.  Enjoy the photos!

RESOURCES FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IFAS

• PDF presentation from the University of Florida IFAS on proper storing of seeds
• PDF titled,"Seed Production and Seed Sources of Organic Vegetables"
• "Seed Sources for Florida Home Grown Vegetables"