The Dragon I Cannot Slay
Recently I traveled to Florida where I spent time with my mother on the farm she inherited from her parents. I‘ve been visiting this farm for as long as I can remember. Childhood was a long time ago and I try to pinpoint when exactly that moment of transition took place. I’m referring to that strange moment somewhere between childhood and becoming an adult when you find yourself gazing out at the world through different eyes than you looked through before. You know you aren’t yet an adult, yet you also understand that the magic of viewing the world through a child’s eyes is officially over. Everything is suddenly so much smaller than it should be. And the colors are not as vivid either. Those huge trees, that vast garden, the wide rolling river that betrays itself as being just a creek, they are all unfathomably smaller and less dramatic than memories proclaim.
The America of my childhood, one which prominently featured the Great Summer Family Road Trip, was made up of distinct states, home to unique diners and roadside attractions. You could hear the region in people’s accents and the lingo they used, sometimes even saw it in their dress. It was a time before our collective landscape formed a monochromatic sea of chain restaurants, shops and similar looking apartment blocks. Going to my grandparent’s farm each Summer almost felt like travelling abroad. To a little girl from the Texas suburbs, it was an exotic, magical place.
Florida may have been the land of Disney World and beachfront hotels, but to me it was also an untamed and wild country. The backwoods and farmland seemed to stretch for an eternity. Even the sky looked bigger. And Florida, of course, was also the Land of Oranges. As soon as you crossed over the state line you could stop at the visitor’s center where you’d be given a complimentary glass of orange juice. Back in the car I remember driving for hours by what looked to be an unfolding, never-ending grove of orange trees. Green in the Summer, full of sweet white blossoms in the Spring, and bursting with bright, ripe oranges in the Fall.
It's ironic, I suppose, orange trees are not from Florida. Native to China, they were planted in Florida in the 1500’s by Spanish explorers, most likely including Ponce de Leon. Even so they came to symbolize the “Sunshine State.” Think of Florida and you probably picture orange trees. But now Florida’s citrus trees are dying. I learned long ago that change is the only thing we can be certain of in this world. And yet, a Florida without orange trees is not something I seem to be accepting easily.
The trees are dying from a disease known to scientists, arborists and professors of agriculture as Huanglongbing, which translates to “the yellow dragon disease.” Florida citrus farmers simply call it “the greening.” When you see the path the greening leaves in its wake you begin to wonder if dragons aren’t real after all.
The greening starts with a single leaf, but it spreads eventually starving the tree of nutrients leaving its branches bare, grey, gnarled. And then it moves on to the next. Eventually it looks like a dragon has breathed fire over the entire grove.
Oranges, tangerines and tangelos are easy prey and succumb quickly. Lemons, grapefruit and pomelos manage to put up a stronger fight, live a bit longer, but they too, eventually succumb to the yellow dragon’s deadly greening breath.
As with any disease that has no cure, a parent looks to their sick child and tries to believe, “this is not that terrible disease; this must be different.” As the disease progresses one’s mantra might turn to something like, “my child is strong, resilient. We will get through this.” I think this is how a farmer thinks of his trees. The greening starts small, with a few yellow leaves on just a single branch. It could be anything, you might tell yourself. But then the color spreads until a whole group of leaves are infected. No longer just yellow, they are now mottled, reflecting different patterns on the opposite sides of the same leaf. This is when you seek out new procedures, treatments, antibiotics. When fruit forms it is usually lop-sided, oblong shaped, and smaller than it should be. It turns orange near the stem but stays green at the blossom end. The greening never allows the fruit to fully ripen. This is when you can no longer pretend.
According to the US Dept. of Agriculture Florida’s 2024-25 growing season had its lowest yield in more than a century. Orange production was down over 32% from just the previous year. Trying to make a living from the dying trees is becoming harder and harder for the independent and small farmer, and the Florida citrus industry now covers less than half the acreage it did in the mid-1990’s. The grove-covered countryside of my childhood is fast becoming a patchwork of dead and dying trees next to plots stripped of trees entirely and now growing sod or other crops. Making the landscape even less recognizable is that more and more is sold to developers who cover it in houses, condos, apartments, parking lots and stores. Florida is looking more and more like other places found throughout our increasingly undistinctive country.
The disease of the yellow dragon is actually spread by a tiny bug—the Asian citrus psyllid—about the size of a flax seed. It is hard for me to believe our orange grove, like so many others, withstood hard freezes, citrus canker, even the wrath of hurricanes, but could not win a battle against a puny little bug.
The yellow dragon did not make its way to Florida while my grandparents were alive. The greening became my mother’s battle. By battle I mean a series of “we’ll try this” and “we’ll try that.” Each possibility filled her with optimism and renewed hope. Each one failed, making her irrationally and unfairly believe it was somehow she who was failing her parents. When we finally decided to stop fighting the disease it was a strange relief to have the trees pushed up and burned, even though a vast emptiness suddenly surrounded our once-hidden farmhouse.
I had never thought of my grandfather’s land as being flat until then. Flat and empty, the sandy dirt itself seemed to unleash memories and voices of those who had walked and worked and loved and worried amongst the trees that were no longer there. I thought I heard them, especially that first trip after such a shocking change, when I walked out into that vast emptiness. I kept wondering if I was supposed to know what they wanted us to do. I finally came to believe that my long-gone relatives live in that land, just like the memories of those trees do, and so even though the landscape continues to change and turn into something none of us ever imagined, some part of their spirits will still be there in the sand under my feet even if it is covered in concrete one day.
This most recent trip I again walked alone out into the land that, thankfully, is now covered in grass. It looks and feels less barren, although I am also probably simply becoming more accustomed to seeing it that way. But even with the trees gone and the farm transformed into a place so different from the one I knew, when I closed my eyes I immediately saw my grandfather. I saw him exactly as he looked all my childhood, dressed in work clothes, a sunhat on his head. His hands resting on his hips as he surveyed his beautiful, lush grove. I used to tag along after him when he’d take his evening walk. I’d stand silently at his side until, having seen that every tree was in its place, he’d drop his gaze to mine. If the fruit was ripe he’d often pick an orange and, using his pocketknife, cut into the juicy sweet treat which the two of us would share. Then he’d take my small hand in his strong, leathery grip. He’d shorten his gait as we’d walk together amongst what seemed to a child like a thousand giant trees, trees he’d grafted and planted and nurtured with his own hands.
I miss my grandfather. Especially when I’m in Florida. I want to walk out in the grove with him and then wander over to the pasture to say goodnight to the cows. I want to hear him call me Kimber, and hear him laugh and even hear him argue with his irascible brother, my Uncle Delmas. But I’m happy he isn’t here to see what became of his beloved trees. I’m happy that he never knew the breath of the yellow dragon.
And I tell myself, even as I cry, that change is our only certainty. That transitions are what make life interesting. That nothing can get better if it stays the same. I try to hear other voices, ones I never knew, who are also buried in that sand and in the dirt wherever I walk, knowing they too saw changes in the land they had never anticipated. Maybe they can impart some wisdom for coping to me. I try all these things. I try, and I try, and I try.