Page 153 - Winterling's Chasing the Wind

New Jersey coast and New York City area. Lower Manhattan tunnels were flooded,
gusty winds fanned a fire that destroyed a hundred homes at the Breezy Point borough
of New York City and ripped sand dunes away into Jersey coastal communities.

The winter of 2012-13 was relatively mild and I enjoyed a Chamber of Commerce type
season. The azaleas were blooming in January and the citrus began to bloom a month
early in the first week of February. As expected, a brief mid-February freeze occurred,
but only caused minor damage in my neighborhood because of the moderating effect of
the St. Johns River. Our lawn, being serviced by TruGreen, remained truly green all
winter, unlike the landscape of more inland neighborhoods west of the river.

I had finally found a spot next to my driveway to place a sapling of a unique blooming
bush that my son Frank’s surgeon, Dr. Fechtel, had given me in the 1970’s. It’s called
“Yesterday Today and Tomorrow” because it keeps sprouting flowers that are purple
one day, fade to pink the next day and finally white until the petals fall.

We had so many 80 degree days in January that the citrus trees were sprouting new
growth a month early. I had been having only limited success in bud-grafting, the
process where you can have different varieties of citrus on one tree. I had been
unsuccessful in grafting my daughter, Wendy’s, Red Navel buds to my Blood orange
tree because that tree was older had less active buds. John Newbold, a grower in
Putnam County told me that around March 1 was the best time for bud-grafting. I had
limited success transferring Murcott tangerine buds to my Blood Orange trees. I
wanted the tangerines on my Blood orange tree because tangerines ripen earlier than
the Blood oranges which don’t ripen until March. That way I could enjoy the tangerines
if I lost the Blood oranges in freezes of our colder winters.

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