Cleo's Corner (4.02.10)

As I sit this day typing I realize how quickly the year is passing. So much of my energy has gone into adjusting to the cold weather that I haven’t been as present as I usually am as to what is going on. To make up for my lack of attention, I headed to the beach one Sunday with my camera to see how other people were adjusting on a day when the sun was out and the wind was not blowing. The following shots tell the story:

Click the photo above to view a slideshow of the photos

New Street Lights in Pass-a-Grille
We will all be thanking the City of St. Pete Beach and Pinellas County when the street light project in Pass-a-Grille is finished. The City has responded to the problem of the bright lights on the beach which, last year, attracted a number of newborn Loggerhead turtles up to beach bars and motels instead of to the water. What happens is that they think the bright lights are the moon showing them to water but instead they end up on decks, lost. The County came up with $25,000 and Progress Energy hopes to have the whole project done before turtle season.

The shots show the bright, old lights and then the new, “quiet” lights which make a marvelous difference, both aesthetically and for the turtles. We have many people to thank for this new installation, including Bruno Falkenstein who has been the “turtle man” here for many, many years.

The Monarchs butterflies need our help:
The following website gives a very good description of the rigors hitting the Monarch Butterfly population as it tries to survive this year. At the following link you will read the whole story. Here is the intro:

The regal butterflies, hit hard by the torrential February rains in Mexico, are at their lowest population levels since 1975, according to Chip Taylor, director of Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas. The storms killed 50 to 60 percent of the breeding colonies in northern Mexico; the butterfly population was already diminished by unfavorable conditions last summer.

The monarchs are just about to start their springtime flight back to the United States and Canada. Taylor and other researchers are asking the public to help the remaining monarchs by planting the butterflies’ favored food, milkweed, along their flight path. Visit the Monarch Waystation Program for information on how to establish a milkweed plot to help these beautiful and imperiled critters.
To get more information, go to http://www.scienceforcitizens.net/blog/2010/03/help-needed-monarch-butterflies-in-trouble/.

Mosquitoes: sea grape leaves, flower pots, plugged rain gutters
Tis the season to be careful, tra la la la la la la la la! Sung to the Christmas tune, you’ll get my point. Mosquitoes are just waiting with great expectation for warm weather to come. They are especially anxious after such a cold winter, so we can expect to have a really bad mosquito season.

What to do? LOTS!! For starters, take a walk around your yard and see what is holding water…today. We had rain days ago, and yet if you look closely you’ll see sea grape leaves and palm leaves and boots holding enough water to produce a lot of mosquitoes. Remember, it takes one thimble full of water, sitting for 3 days, to produce 10 mosquitoes! Humbling thought. Add to that the fact that they tend to hang around and bite the very people they are visiting!

Flower pots that are wet with standing water, plugged rain gutters, even indentions in garbage cans that get filled with rain water can produce the little buggers. When I was a kid in Pass-a-Grille a favorite game was slapping our arms with our full hand and then whoever had killed the most mosquitoes, won. 10, 15, 20… mosquitoes know how to reproduce!

So get walking around your yard (sprinkler systems are guilty if they water areas that don’t need water but hold water). Make your yard waterproof as much as you can and you’ll have a much easier time. If you do get bit, rubbing a little raw aloe plant on the bite can ease the itching.

Have a great time outside now that the weather is breaking into sunshine. On April 1, I saw an enormous green flash as the sun went down in front of the Bell at Paradise Grille. What a blessing to see.

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