Here in central Florida our spring began pretty normally, but for about two months we got no rain, causing some pretty serious drought conditions and much of the wild plant life died back. Fortunately, as things began to heat up we got back into our regular cycle of afternoon thunderstorms. Then hurricane Else made landfall just slightly north of us and gave us a good drenching for several days. After all that rain things were sprouting up everywhere. I spotted a bunch of new leaves coming out on the several ferns that we have around here.