The radiator

Warm day. Squarely into the 80's, watching news of the northern blizzard grateful to be only 30-40 miles west of the center of the gulf stream as it wraps it way around the horn of Florida. Haven't had a lot of time to dig in like a pig into the garden. There are things to be done; pot the bamboo palm, clear out purple bougie from small square planter (or not, let it grow back from obscene pruning). Swept up today in preparation for a possible visit by a neighbor I've spoken to while walking the dog. He has 3 terraces and says he's unable to find wind tolerant plants etc. Designing a terrace garden from scratch with a few grand to spend would be a fabulous project. I'd love to submit my plans for planting all 3 terraces. Anyway, back to earth, the Vietnamese gardenia was getting gangly with branches crossing over each other. I hadn't pruned it when I first bought it, usually best to cut all branches except 4 or 5 main branches that look like that they will provide a nice ball of foliage. I cut back today, it will be fine.  Dinner time. More later.

The beginning of a large radiator passes through this gauntlet. Even during the pleistocene period, when FL's land mass was much larger, the straights were a deep cut around the eastern end of the peninsula. Hungry minds see below.

 The Strait as Conduit

The Strait's primary hydrographic feature, the Florida Current, creates the conduit, channeling back to the North Atlantic much of the water volume lost to the Southern Hemisphere via the deep thermohaline conveyor. Though only a short segment of the North Atlantic Gyre, its enormous mass transport, a mean of 30 Sverdrups (Sv), funneled through such a narrow channel, makes it the spigot of the Gulf Stream. A Sverdrup is a measure of volume transport equal to 1 million cubic meters (of water) per second. Mariners have used this powerful current for centuries to carry ships northward from the trade wind belt and Spanish Main to the prevailing westerlies for the return trip to Europe. Biologically, the one-way flow creates a continuous enough environment so that many bottom-dwelling organisms have ranges extending from northern South America to southern Florida.

Hence, USDA agricultural zone 10b, Bermuda shorts, the English rose,