NORTH FLORIDA FLORA

The Jacksonville Arboretum & Botanical Gardens offers an education in the area’s interesting ecosystems

- GREG COPPA i

FOR THANKSGIVING LAST YEAR

I was fortunate enough to spend a week or so with my daughter’s family. They now live southeast of Jacksonville, Fla., not far from the St. John’s River, and the girls were on a five-day fall break from school.

The weather down there was comfortably warm prior to the holiday—welcome because back home in Rhode Island the late-fall chill had arrived immediately after a gloriously colorful foliage display rivaling anything seen in northern New England. However, only a few days after Thanksgiving we woke to an early-morning Dixie frost thick enough to require a scraper for car windows and white enough to delight young, inexperienced Floridian schoolgirls who thought that maybe it had snowed overnight.

As the three young ladies filed out of the house that frosty morning, I saw that they had seized the opportunity to wear scarfs, warm coats (such as they were) and mittens. I chided them about overdressing just a bit.

“Papa, you do know that we’re Florida girls and it’s freezing!”

True as that may have been, by mid-morning the golfers and tennis players in the neighborhood were dressed for warm-weather activities.