Achoo!
We were all sneezing in the office where I volunteer this morning, and when I happened to check today’s weather on Weather Underground for Pensacola, I saw that there was a pollen count measure of 10.8 out of 12.
I never knew that there was a Pollen.com, but there is. This is the graphic they show for pollen today in Pensacola. Oh – red means HIGH count.
Pensacola Sunset
We’ve had a few days of low humidity and warm temperatures, perfect for all the Spring Breakers here in Pensacola. We don’t even complain about the clog on the highways and lines in the restaurants, after the big oil spill devastated the tourist industry, we’re just glad to see them back. 🙂
AdventureMan said “Hey, let’s go watch the sunset down at DeLuna Park” and so we did. It was a glorious sunset. In the other direction was a HUGE boat!
Signs of Spring in Pensacola
Coming home from a meeting last night, I head into Joe Patti’s to pick up some crab for dinner, and holy smokes! The parking lot is full! There is no line coming out the door, and a car pulls out so I get a space, but what is going on?
Once I get in, I know. The place is PACKED, and most of these folk are wearing beach clothes or short sleeves, a couple young women in strapless sun dresses . . . I get it. It’s Spring Break time in Pensacola, and Joe Patti’s is as packed as it was on Christmas Eve Day. Lines to pay are snaking around everywhere, and I get the last loaf of multigrain French bread.
At least the lines are civil. The locals smile at one another – we’re all wearing long sleeves, it’s cloudy and a little on the cool side. Part of me smiles to think of myself as ‘local.’ Guess I’m getting there.
When I get home, AdventureMan is all smiles, and not just because I’m going to make Open Faced Crab Sandwiches for dinner. No! One of his Monarch butterflies has hatched! We’ve had such a mild winter that we’ve had a few hatching here and there all winter, but this is the first butterfly of spring, and he is fresh out of the cocoon. After losing two cocoons to hungry birds, he devised a protective shoe box. AdventureMan is fast becoming a local expert on creating a safe environments for butterflies to feed, lay eggs, cocoon and hatch. He’s also having a lot of fun with it.
On our back fence, a vine we planted last October is taking root and taking off. I think it is a coral honeysuckle, also called a coral trumpet honeysuckle, or coral trumpet vine. It attracts both butterflies and hummingbirds. 🙂
This is not particularly a Spring photo, but it is a seasonal photo. The oysters right now at the Marina Oyster Barn are HUGE! I had a bowl of oyster stew, AdventureMan had six raw oysters and the little lady sitting behind us had a full dozen. “I can’t get these in Illinois!” she exclaimed; AdventureMan could barely eat all six, they were so huge, so we had a hard time believing she could eat 12, but she did!
Just as the weather is perfect for getting outdoors and cleaning out the weeds, the pollen also starts flying. I get out while it is cool, weed a selected area and come back in and shower all the pollen off. It doesn’t do that much good; my eyes are still watering and I am sneezing, but who knows how bad it would be if I didn’t wash the pollen off?
Mardi Gras Legacy
We had almost a full week of grim, grey skies and little sunshine, during which I saw the sad reminders of Mardi Gras valiantly trying to sparkle in the trees:
Record High
Today the high temperature in Pensacola, FL was 87°F. It was a record high temperature for this date, March 2. The temperature yesterday was also a record high, 82°F.
It is also raining. So it is hot, and it is humid. And it is only the beginning of March. At the beginning of February, I celebrated. We didn’t have to use the heat or the air conditioning for the entire month, and our electric bill was a mere $100. You need lights. You need to use the oven now and then, and the washer and dryer, computers and TV’s. If you could see our other electric bills (the heat and air run on electricity) you would know why I celebrate $100. for January.
Earlier this week, it was in the 60°’s (F) in the mornings, and I weeded! It was foggy and cloudy, and it felt a whole lot like Seattle, where the temperatures are around 40 something this week. Give me cold any day. You can always put on more clothes when it gets cold, but when it is hot and humid, even with the AC, it is still hot and humid.
It is still raining, and humid. There is a tornado watch on until midnight. I was near a tornado once, living further south in Florida, and the sky turned green and it sounded like the biggest loudest freight train in the world, and it didn’t even hit in my neighborhood. You could hear it anyway. It is a terrifying sound.
Our pomegranate tree is leafing out, our blueberries have blossoms and it really is time for a spring clean up, if only we can have a few more cool days in March before the serious heat sets in.
Snow Quilt in Steamboat, CO
People are SO creative!
Pensacola Advisories from Weather Underground
Active Advisory: Tornado Warning, Tornado Watch, Severe Thunderstorm Warning, Flash Flood Warning, Areal Flood Watch, Wind Advisory (US Severe Weather)
Rainy Saturday at 5 Sisters in Pensacola
It’s been rainy and dark the entire day, and I know what I need – I need to go to Five Sisters. We had planned to go to the huge Pensacola Mardi Gras Parade, but as the rain came down, my spirits were also dampened. There was a time – and I could see in AdventureMan’s eyes, he was hoping this wasn’t one of those times – when I would have said “We HAVE to go, even if it is raining!”
He has a little cold and I drift in and out of allergies, and standing a couple hours out in the rain and hollering and catching beads is probably not what mature people like us should be doing. (A part of me is greatly depressed at being so ‘mature’.)
But I know just the thing. Five Sisters. As we drive up, a parking space becomes available, always a good omen, and as we walk to the door, we are greeted with divine fragrances of smoke and grilling meat and we are starting to feel better already.
On the menu board, one of the specials of the day is BBQ Shrimp. Ummmm, ummmmmm, doesn’t that sound good on a rainy day. I order the BBQ Shrimp with cheese grits and a salad, AdventureMan orders the Seafood Platter. Bluesy music, some old hits from the 60’s and 70’s, and our food comes.
My BBQ Shrimp was AWESOME. Today it was tangy, vinegar-y and Tabasco sauce, the essence of Louisiana. It came sizzling hot, but the shrimp still had the shells on, which AdventureMan tells me is the way it comes when it is BBQ Shrimp in the South. Oh well, it is a good thing that the shells are on and I have to work to get them off before I can eat each one, if I didn’t have to get those tails and shells off I would probably gobble them down in no time at all! As it was, I was able to bring about half of the shrimp home to savor later. 🙂
AdventureMan said on the way home “Oysters sure are rich, aren’t they?” I just laughed, I like oysters cooked, but mostly I like them steamed, and even then, they are so rich I can’t eat many of them. If you deep fry them, you just add rich on rich. His dish was fish, shrimp and oysters, deep fried, and some of 5 Sisters fabulous fries, which he didn’t eat, and didn’t need because there was so much seafood on the Seafood Platter:
As we left, it was still raining, one of those days that went from dark to dark grey to not-quite-so-dark grey to a couple moments of light grey and then back to dark grey and now it is almost dark once again. We don’t often have a day with no sunshine in Pensacola, and it is very very sad when that one day is the day of the Pensacola Mardi Gras Parade and it pours down rain just as the parade is starting. Sometimes life just isn’t fair. But Five Sisters puts a smile back on our faces every time.
Winter Beach in Pensacola
We had great weather during the Doha reunion, great in that it was warm every day, and it only rained a little now and then. We had lots of sunshine, and they even got to experience a little bit of Pensacola sultriness.
The big thrill, for me, was the winter beach. I love good wave action, and a little drama in the sky. The Pensacola beach, with its gorgeous white sands, gave it to us in full:
Slow Moving Severe Weather
The last of my Doha friends left yesterday, not without moments of hilarity. We had a great time together, and all my concerns about visiting Pensacola in the coldest month of the year were for naught. The weather, every single day, was in the 70’s, and one of the days it almost hit 80. One friend was flying straight into severe weather, and I wonder how it affected her day – if she even got home.
We had one lovely evening when our son and his wife and little happy toddler came over, laughing and talking, and our sweet daughter in law introduced all my friends to a Pensacola specialty, Sin in a Tin. Our last stop on their last day was the market where they could stock up on it to take back with them!
I am keeping my own eye on this ‘slow moving weather front’ because it is headed our way. If you’ve seen the devastation in Dallas, you’ll know – hurricane level destruction, 90 mph winds – high winds and lots of rain, and flooding.
When I checked Weather Underground this morning, this is what it looks like heading towards Pensacola:
Scary looking, hmmm?
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