Do You Have Autumn in Florida?
by DK Christi
September 21, 2010, 5:44 pm
Ghost Orchid inspires us. One flower. Four destinies. – Romancing the Pubs
My first sign of autumn is cooler nights for a pleasant walk. The mahogany nuts fall on the driveway. The grapefruit start to ripen. My bush of tiny purple blooms reveals golden berries. However, my favorite autumn is found at Corkscrew Swamp. Yes, we have autumn in Florida. Oh, it’s not every color of the rainbow as far as the eye can see over non-existent hills. My Florida is flat. It takes a little more scrutiny to appreciate the magnificent greens and browns of an Everglades autumn. It’s worth the extra look. I found my autumn today.
The cypress fluff turned brown. Soft pieces stuck in my hair and carpeted the boardwalk. Vines have dropped a few multi-colored leaves, mostly red trimmed. Giant alligator flags, some nearly eight feet high at least, have been thoroughly nibbled in their summer growth and now dangle from their stems, brown, curled excuses for their former green, waving glory. As if to soften the blow, tiny purple flowers still show between the large leaves, blowing in the wind on spindle threads of stems.
Giant ferns, in competition with the alligator flags to find the sunlight during their summer growth spurt are also bending as they turn brown and brittle, the wind separating the former soft leaves from the stalks. Spider webs are visible in the brown remnants with the green foliage no longer hiding them. Every shade of brown and green waves in the autumn breeze set free by the reduction in leaves to stop its journey through the bald cypress. The wind hums, reminiscent of other autumns with the wind in the woods. Cicadas keep up their usual chorus, oblivious to the changing season.
In stark contrast to the browns of the dying leaves, bright red berries fill their bushes, more visible because of the greens and browns, a splash of red on an earth tone environment. It reminds me of foreign films in sepia with a woman crossing the street in a bright red dress, sensuous and alluring. Across the marsh, St. John’s wart has set the field aglow with a profusion of yellow blooms, as though God dumped a pot of gold to celebrate the oncoming winter. Purple pickle weed blooms follow in the water along the boardwalk’s edge in sharp contrast to the multi-greens of the lettuce lakes, covered with tiny, green floating leaves and large heads of lake lettuce. I startled a brown, barred owl that flew deeper into the canopy.
The squirrels must have been gathering nuts. I neither saw nor heard them. Only a few birds were adding their chorus, perhaps because it was high noon and over 90 degrees. In spite of the heat, a steady breeze made the walk tolerable. I missed some of my favorites, the blood hibiscus and the swamp lily, the blue iris and the orchids. My ghost orchid bloomed five times this year, twice in September, the last bud a weak, small flower. I know it’s autumn when my ghost orchid is reduced to its brown and deep green, slender roots clinging to its perch until it blooms again next summer.
I was alone on my walk. Few people visit the swamp this time of the year. There are fewer colorful birds because they have not yet returned from their own homes in the north. I didn’t even hear the alligators today or a bullfrog either. Butterflies did brush by as if to say, “don’t forget us.” Then, as I neared the end of the trail,a rainbow fell from a little scud cloud overhead, appearing to touch down in the golden marsh. That was the finishing touch on an autumn’s walk in Florida, every bit as grand as Maine, in its own way.
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