Never summer? Not here. We’re officially about two weeks into summer, but for Floridians, the first day of summer is really just a day on the calendar. It’s been summer since at least May. This year, on the first day of summer we found ourselves in the Never Summer mountain range of Colorado. You aren’t going to believe what happened. It snowed. It started as a hailstorm in the evening, complete with sky-illuminating lightening and cracking thunder. By morning, a few inches of snow had fallen and covered the mountainside. Within a few hours, it began to melt, but as a Florida boy, it sure threw off my sense of what time of year it is.
On that first day of summer, we went for a hike along the Fraser River, which ran below the house we were staying at. And just to take a little hike, we had to put on layers of clothes and pack gloves and rain jackets. Florida spring has been over for a while, but here in Colorado, it is just getting started.
And with spring trying to arrive in the mountains, we got to do one of our favorite things: search for wildflowers. It’s kind of like a scavenger hunt for plant geeks. We identify what we can along the way and take pictures of flowers we haven’t seen so that we can cross reference them with the books on Colorado wildflowers that are back at the house. It occurred to us on this trip that we get so eager to find and identify the tiniest little flowers when we are here in the mountains, but we hardly ever pay attention to the same flowers when we are home in Florida. I think the fact that the seasonal changes are so dramatic in Colorado feeds our enthusiasm to see flowers that manage to hang on with only a few months to grow before snow and ice take over again. While we do have a spring burst of growth and blooms in Florida, it is not quite as dramatic as emerging from under the snow and ice.
Now we are determined to pay more attention to wildflowers on our future Florida explorations. We even got a Wildflowers of Florida book so that we can track what we find. There is no way that Florida matches the rugged and awesome nature of the Colorado mountains, but it’s home and we love it.
Regardless of temperatures, summer is here and with it, Independence Day. Happy Fourth of July! Gardening and agriculture have always been a part of the American spirit. Click here for a little bit I wrote about the book Founding Gardeners. Many of our Founding Fathers were avid gardeners, collecting plants for their landscapes and tending their own gardens. Many of the important discussions that shaped our country happened in various gardens of the northeast. No wonder getting our hands dirty runs thick in our blood. Have a happy and safe Fourth.
