History In the Windrows

In recent weeks I've made some interesting discoveries as I've excavated the windrows next to the fire lane, that have all kinds of accumulated detritus from past dumping episodes.
The latest was a 1965 Polk County license plate.
Earlier I had found an old vehicle inspection station sign that was discarded from the nearby county barn where the inspection station was housed. 

No century oaks, just century palmettos

I was out today calculating the age of a few of the Saw Palmettos on the preserve, based on a formula I learned recently.

Several of the palmettos I checked were more than 100 years old. That raises other questions. How long to do these plants live? How big can they become?

By the way, the ageing calculation was a revelation to me. I knew I had long=trunked palmettos, but I always ascribed that to the lack of fire. As it turns out, unless the fire is hot enough to kill the palmetto, it regenerates and continues to grow. The fire doesn't affect the measurement at all.

Amazing.

I'm next to the city limits

I was looking at the property ownership maps today to see who the northern neighbors are and decided to look at the aerial layer and kept going west and made a discovering. The notch outside the west fence that TECO owns is inside the Auburndale city limits, but the preserve is not.

I can't think of any advantage except maybe that Auburndale could claim the place as a natural area in its growth plan. Who knows, the city may map it conservation or at least try.

The chain of events that brought me here

I was listening to a quirky song by John Hammond, I believe, about a series of happenstances behind a personal situation and thought of the forces that brought me to the preserve. If I hadn't been looking for a job and ended up in Polk County and hadn't been at Bok Tower that day and fallen in with a group of birdwatchers and hadn't become interested in learning more about nature and hadn't met some people from the Florida Native Plant Society and if I hadn't been single all of these years that gave me time to learn something about the outdoors and if I hadn't married someone who agreed to live in Winter Haven and if we hadn't picked the neighborhood we picked and if the Ridge Rangers hadn't been organized and if I hadn't had a truck to haul stuff to and from in and if I hadn't been active and interested and if I hadn't had the support to continue the work, then things would probably be a lot different.