Location: Fellsmere, my yard
Raining today. I need 2 raincoats, one for me, one for my camera. This blog will get boring pretty quickly if I can't go out on rainy days. I did a quick Google, and most weather and real estate sites claim that we only have rain on 120 days per year here in Florida. That is simply not true. I am pretty sure we have already had 120 days of rain this year and it's only January 13th. I need to start charting rainfall myself as the data on the internet clearly isn't accurate.
Anyway, this picture shows the rain accumulating in some dead leaves by my sidewalk. I generally leave most of the leaves that fall where they are as they decompose and add nutrients back into the soil. I do gather up a few leaves now and then to feed to my pineapple garden. In addition to adding nutrients, if you let them get thick enough, the dead leaves eventually kill off the grass which, for the most part, has no place in a native Florida yard. We don't use fertilizer or water the lawn, and eventually plan to smother out most of the grass. Our dream is to someday have a certified Florida native yard1, but we are a long way off from that, with lots of work to do.
Sources: (1) UF/IFAS Florida Friendly YardsRaining today. I need 2 raincoats, one for me, one for my camera. This blog will get boring pretty quickly if I can't go out on rainy days. I did a quick Google, and most weather and real estate sites claim that we only have rain on 120 days per year here in Florida. That is simply not true. I am pretty sure we have already had 120 days of rain this year and it's only January 13th. I need to start charting rainfall myself as the data on the internet clearly isn't accurate.
Anyway, this picture shows the rain accumulating in some dead leaves by my sidewalk. I generally leave most of the leaves that fall where they are as they decompose and add nutrients back into the soil. I do gather up a few leaves now and then to feed to my pineapple garden. In addition to adding nutrients, if you let them get thick enough, the dead leaves eventually kill off the grass which, for the most part, has no place in a native Florida yard. We don't use fertilizer or water the lawn, and eventually plan to smother out most of the grass. Our dream is to someday have a certified Florida native yard1, but we are a long way off from that, with lots of work to do.
Photo and text © 2017 Dee Fairbanks Simpson
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