FAIRHOPE, Ala. — Most jubilees — those celebrated natural phenomena where crab, shrimp, flounder and other very edible fish leave deep waters and congregate in shallow coastal areas — occur in the pre-dawn hours along the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay.

Although reported elsewhere, Mobile Bay is the only place on earth where they happen regularly.

When the rare event takes places, notice spreads rapidly by word of mouth, and the shoreline suddenly fills with dozens of people scooping and spearing up the bay’s bounty with nets, gigs and bare hands.

But Wednesday evening, in the pre-dusk hour at the corner of Section Street and Magnolia Avenue, a jubilee of a different kind occurred.

“This is what you call a ‘flower jubilee,’ said John Pershina, smiling widely, as he loaded a box of daffodils into his car.

With two friends, Pershina was busily scooping up flowers at just after 5 p.m. along the south side of Magnolia Avenue and west of Section Street. About a half dozen people were doing the same thing across the street on the east side of Section.

“We also get some flowers for friends,” said Sybil Tobias, as she made room in the back of her car for another box of flowers.

They had followed in the wake of a city crew digging up the plants and preparing beds for the next seasonal display of flowers, working literally in the shadows of the city crew’s rakes and shovels. As the flowers were dug up and placed on the street, the residents scooped them into plastic boxes and then into waiting cars.

“We know when it’s about to happen each season and start keeping an eye out,” said Pershina, who has been enjoying this flower jubilee with his friends for several years.

“They are winter flowers,” said Assistant Public Works Director Arthur Bosarge, referring to the pansies, daffodils, tulips, Dusty Millers and other flowers dug up this week. “They won’t take the heat. We’ll be putting in the spring flowers later in the week.”

The old flowers are bound for the compost heap to be recycled, which happens four times a year when the seasonal plants are changed for new ones, he said.

Unless flower-jubilee veterans get there first.

“People are always asking me when it’s going to happen,” Bosarge said. “I don’t tell them. It’s sometimes gotten so crazy out there, that I’ve almost had to call the police, like when they start pulling up plants they shouldn’t be.”

Bosarge said things went smoothly Wednesday and usually does, so long as the residents wait until the plants have been removed by city crews first.

“We pull them up, and they come in behind us,” he said.

Bosarge said it takes about a week to change out the flowers throughout the city. He said the new spring flowers would include impatiens, blue and white salvia, petunias, and a kind of geranium.

He said the new flowers are also being planted in time for the Arts and Crafts Festival later this month.

“Everything you see, we’ve grown,” he added, noting the city grows all its own flowers in several local greenhouses.

By Friday, that same street corner at Magnolia and Section had new flowers planted.

Fairhope is well known as a community with flowers on every corner. What happens to the flowers is less well-known, but there are some local people who wait each season for these flower jubilees.

“It does help our guys, and saves them some labor from having to take them back down to the compost heap,” Public Works Director Jennifer Fidler said. “But it has caused problems, including traffic and safety issues. They’ve sometimes gotten ahead of our guys and started pulling up and messing up the beds.”

The morning after the flowers are pulled there’s a line of people at 7 a.m. at the city’s landfill where the compost heap is located to collect the flowers before they are recycled into mulch, she said.

“That’s what I’d rather have them do,” Fidler said. “But it’s only for residents, whether they gather them on the streets or the next day. They have to show a Fairhope resident sticker.”

The groups of people taking place in the flower jubilee Wednesday worked quickly as the crew finished up on each corner. They didn’t want to miss the next location where the crew went in their trucks.

“They’re over on Morphy (Avenue) now,” someone shouted.

“That’s where we’re going,” someone else answered.