Tree Sale!

Now that the weather is getting cooler it's a good time to plant some trees in your yard. Pritchard Road Tree Nursery is offering some great prices on trees right now. Here are some examples:

3-gallon (container size) Live Oak.......$10.00
3-gallon, other species*......................$35.00
15 gallon, all species...........................$75.00
30 gallon, all species...........................$100.00
45 gallon, all species...........................$175.00

The price for 3-gallon Live Oaks is very, very good. And, Live Oaks are perhaps our most beautiful native species. Plus they have a very long life span (hundreds of years), are insect resistant, and are very hardy.

*Red Maple, Sycamore, Magnolia, Golden Raintree.

Pritchard Road Tree Nursery
8300 Pritchard Road (I-10 west to I-295 north to Pritchard Road, west about a mile to the Nursery)
Jacksonville, Fl 32219
378-8808-office 614-6686-cell

Sale ends November 30th.

For tree planting information: www.americanforests.org/planttrees/howto.php
For info on species of trees: www.historictrees.org/toppicks.html

This starts a new feature for the RAP blog. If you have heard an old story that needs verifying, have an old photo that needs identifying or you found something in your yard, send us the image and the particulars and we will ask our readers to help you identify your mystery.

When you live in Riverside and renovate an old house, you never know what you might find - or find out. My house has yielded some pretty interesting things. Last week, a man showed up at my door and wanted to see the place. He grew up in the house in the sixties and seventies. It seems that Lynyrd Skynyrd actually jammed on my porch numerous times. He told me all about the missing plaster in our house, the windows that used to grace our house and the history of some of the renovations that were made. He told me how the huge magnolia in our back yard was used to hoist engine blocks out of his friends' cars to work on them and how the gouges can to be in the bathroom door. We always thought that the owners we bought the house from were responsible as they hacked up the kitchen cabinets fairly well among other destructive things.

The stories from the past are certainly amazing. I can't imagine what we don't yet know, but it's the yard where the best treasures are found. Every time I work in my yard (and believe me, it needs work) the earth yields another secret. Recent finds include Batman and Power Ranger figures, a rubber lizard that has been keeping all the Cuban lizards company and a Ronco-matic type hair trimmer comb. Every time Mother Earth is tickled, she yields another secret. The most amazing by far is the unidentified copper work of art my oldest dug up while weeding. If you know what it is, please drop me a line. It is made of copper and is just a bit larger than my hand. The word "Riverside" is clearly legible. It has no visible means to attach to anything. If you need a larger image, click here. Thank you.

The Birds Are Back!

One of Jacksonville’s truly amazing natural phenomena is now taking place in our neighborhood, and we thought you might enjoy seeing it (and spread the word).

Every year, thousands of chimney swifts migrate through Jacksonville on their way to Central America and Peru. Their annual flight path brings these birds back to the exact same place in large numbers, and for over a decade they have been roosting in the chimney of the Riverside Avenue Christian Church on the corner of Riverside and Cherry Streets.

This has been happening for years with the largest showing of these birds is usually in October. Each night at sunset (a little after 7:00 p.m. this week) the sky begins to fill with hundreds of the little birds, scattered over a few miles in all directions at first. Slowly, the birds coalesce into a swirling cloud. This vortex of birds moves faster and faster until they suddenly begin to shoot down the chimney at incredible speed, as many as 10 birds a second plummeting down the shaft.

In 20 minutes, the spectacle is over. The birds spend the night down in the unused chimney, and emerge the next morning at dawn to spend their entire day in flight, eating Jacksonville’s bugs, and they return to the chimney at night to complete the cycle.

In recent years, the greatest number of birds has been observed back in 2002, when there were thousands and thousands of them by the third week in October. By the first day in November they were totally gone.

Last year there were almost none at all. This year for the last several nights there have been hundreds and hundreds - enough to put on quite a display. There is no telling if the numbers will increase over the next few weeks, or if they will be gone by tomorrow night.

But they will be leaving soon, so you might want to see them while they are here.

I invite you to join Dr. Wayne Wood and others this Sunday night a little after 7:00 p.m. to watch this phenomenal display from the church parking lot.

You can read more about chimney swifts at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimney_Swift


Thank you to Dr. Wood for sharing with us.