Hurricane!

This is one aspect of the hurricane devastation that I'd missed until now:

But of course that's not what I want to write about. Anything but that. What started this was about Wednesday, when they came to take my citrus trees. I came home from work, and where my tangerine, grapefruit and orange trees used to be was just three sandy places in the yard. They even took the stumps. The grapefruit tree was in full bloom at the time, and there's only two or three better smelling flowers on the planet; two of those were open blossoms on the other two trees. When we were leaving to get Abby three years ago, those trees were in bloom. The smell of citrus blossoms and the anticipation of soon having my second child placed in my arms will be forever linked. It really must be experienced to be appreciated.

No crime, though. They took them with my consent, but they could have taken them without it. "They", of course, is the Florida State Department of Agriculture. Why they took them is just another one of those unfinished details from the hurricanes. See, some rocket scientist that lives down near Orange Avenue and 528 took a citrus tree of some sort from a quarantined area in Florida, and it had citrus canker. Hurricane Charley tore across that tree and spread canker for a couple of miles downwind. Any...