A melancholy Monday rain that promises to be around all day.  Fine.  We’ll just go with that.  It’s good to let go and embrace it.  On days like this my attention turns from a preoccupation with the ocean to the Hammock behind the house.  No, not the kind you lie in, the flora kind, perhaps unique to Florida, a stand of hardwoods, palmettos, and palms; no pines. There is a section of Flagler county to our north on A1A called The Hammock, where this phenomenon can be experienced in a natural abundance, but our small one stands alone in this part of Skinny Island, the rest having been clear-cut for building years ago.  On rainy days it takes on a special character, the trunks of the Florida Bays and oaks glistening black, the palms and palmettos quietly rustling. It isn’t big– maybe a hundred by a hundred feet– but it seems bigger because standing just behind the house you can’t see the back or side fences for all the vegetation.  Maybe a little local geography will help the picture.

In the natural state of terrain on the seaward side of these barrier islands there is, of course, the beach, the width of which is determined by tides and storms, which can either take away sand, or build it up.  After the hurricanes of ’04 there was a twelve-foot vertical drop at the dune vegetation line, resulting in the ocean being much closer in than normal for quite some time.  It has gradually filled back in so we have a beach nearly wide as it was before.  Then there is the first dune, a buffer really, on which typically sea oats, beach sunflowers, cactus and palmettos flourish. Continuing westward, what naturally occurs then is usually a trough, and then another dune.  Highway A1A was built in what would have been the trough, so you can’t see it anymore.  One of the only places I know to really see the natural state is at Canaveral Seashore, and in a few places on Amelia Island.  Our house was built into the second dune from the ocean, and you can see the natural terrain very well, as the dune falls off a good twelve feet behind the house, and the hammock begins.  I built a small deck at the top behind the house, then descending steps, then a larger deck some eight feet down, the western side of which is still five feet off the ground. Our three-year old grandson loves it back here.  He calls it The Jungle, and can’t get enough of it.  I have cleared a fifteen by twenty-foot section on the north side for a garden, a project which, other than upkeep on the house, has proved to be the most challenging.  I’ll have much more to say about the garden another time, the soil and salt issues.  For now though, in this blessing rain, the parsley, cilantro, dill, oregano, rosemary, mint, basil, and lettuce I have managed to coax along are doing beautifully, rich and luminescent.  I’m hoping to have a breakthrough with vegetables this spring with some new methods. Planting is just a couple of weeks off.

Wet Hammock

Wish I could put in the sound, too.  Gonna be a great nap today.