Offline! At the Beach! With pending weather events! (Part I)

Monday, August 30:  (transcribed from handwritten notes:)

We arrived at Caswell Beach last night, unpacked the car, provisioned ourselves at the grocery store, and then took a short sunset walk on the beach. Bou the Beagle sniffed diligently, fulfilling her self-appointed duty to pee in every crab hole she could find.  Meanwhile, Asta the Wonder Mutt forgot her manners and pulled, incessantly, on the leash while we were near the surf. Too near, it seems, for Asta. It takes the pups a few days to acclimate to that loud, moving body of water.  For a brief while Asta barked at wind-driven foam, but the novelty quickly wore off.

Sunset on Monday

Out at sea, over the curve of the earth, Hurricane Danielle is moving out to the mid-Atlantic, leaving us alone whiel supposedly leaving a legacy of swells and rough surf, but there’s no evidence of that here on Oak Island.  More of a concern is Hurricane Earl, which is brewing up to be a big storm that just might mess with our plans later this week.

Asta insouciantly awaits the pending hurricane.

All last week I monitored Danielle’s progress via an RSS feed from the National Hurricane Center, delivered to my iGoogle desktop several times daily. I'm somewhat of a web weather junkie, with mild tendencies as these things go. We have a regional NOAA station in Blacksburg, and I check their website daily. If there’s the possibility of a weather “event,” as the professional weather pundits might term such natural occurrences as snow, heavy rainfalll, or a hurricane, then I go into researcher mode and dig deep into various weather resources. I rationalize this because I’m a librarian, and we like to search and then research. The online quest, in and of itself, is fun. And somewhat addictive, at times. More on that later.

Sea oat seed heads in a sandy hollow near the dunes

So Earl’s out there, and I'm at the beach without ongoing online RSS updates. That's because we’re offline for the entire week. Sure, I brought a laptop (mostly because there’s thousands of songs on my iTunes), as well as  my iPad, just  in case I wander off to the local public library or one of the handful of internet cafes here in the Oak Island/Southport neighborhood.  We’re offline because Birds of A Feather, the mawkishly monikered cottage we’ve rented, is a bit run down (check out the sound construction of the spiffy walkway in the above photo of Asta, and you'll see what I mean about rundown).  Wi-fi is pretty much out of the question here.  It’s full of rustic beachfront charm, but if you want your weather, then it’s the Weather Channel on the 24” Samsung TV. 

Overlooking the Intercoastal Waterway in Southport

So, for this week, we will be connected to weather prognostication via a method we don’t have at home, plain ol’ twentieth-century cable television.  Specifically, the Weather Channel. We’ll see how it goes....

In the meantime, we’ll have fun.

(We now leave me at the beach, reporting from last week, with a potential weather event looming over the horizon.  What will happen? Stay tuned....)

Imperiled by giant tropical drinks

Solstice morning wildflower patch

Last summer I decided, on a whim, to let several large swaths of the yard go unmowed. We let the grass grow all summer, dubbing these areas "the sergeneti."  They were a big hit with the dogs, who loved to run through the tall grass.  About mid summer, however, we plowed up a patch in the middle of this grassy spot and planted wildflowers.

 

 A view of the wildflower bed from the deck

The results were so wonderful that this year we decided to plant a large wildflower bed in the middle of the backyard. Here's some pictures of the wildflower patch, taken on the first morning of summer, a few minutes after the actual solstice.

We planted a mixture with lots of cool, as-of-yet unidentified flowers.

Taking a solo, thank you.

 Another view, highlighting the variety and color.

Bright, blue, sunward gazing.

Asta watches from the deck.

Another happy flower enjoys the Summer Solstice.

Spring hike on ye ol' familiar War Spur Loop

Daffodils, itty-bitty leaves on trees, forsythia bursting out all over; yep, it's spring in our little part of Southern Appalachia.  And no better way to beat the latent winter blues than a romp on our old familiar trail, War Spur Loop.  We trekked up to Mountain Lake Wilderness on Sunday to hit the trail.

Verdant sward of a trail, awaiting further verdancy

The trailhead is about 3700" elevation, and often cooler than Blacksburg's 2300", so we donned our sweatshirts and fleece, but quickly removed them once we spent a few minutes in the warm, sunny mountaintop. It's still barely spring up there, with just a few things blooming. Here's a chronicle of the hike.

There wasn't a lot of spring color out yet, at least on the ground,and these red berries were easy to spot.

 The last vestiges of wintertime on War Spur, mingling with nascent spring signs, make for some interesting views. Since much of the trail runs on a flat mountain, you can see the ridgelines of the surrounding mountains through the trees.  Here's a set of layers, with the green laurel, the white tree flowers (never did figure out what they are) , and the distant ridgeline forming vertical lines, all framed between the brown leaves and the bright blue sky.

 Baby leaves just starting to come out. Color returns to the mountain! 

  Looking across the valley from the War Spur Overlook really shows how spring is slowly moving from the valley up the hillsides, with the patches of brighter green just starting to emerge in the lower elevations.

Barrie relaxes in the sun

A wake of turkey buzzards was flying around the overlook while we were there.  

Here's one in midflight.

Melting apace: Spring musings (first installment)

Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods wide along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still at the east end. A great field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear a song sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore -- olit, olit, olit, -- chip, chip, chip, che char, -- che wiss, wiss, wiss. He too is helping to crack it.  - Thoreau, Walden

The backyard, late last week. Still snowy. 

The snow is melting, the rains are falling, and spring is dropping some pretty strong hints of its imminent arrival. Folks all around the New River Valley are noting this warming - a friend at work paused in her tasks, giddily telling me that her husband called just to tell her that "the last of the snow finally melted in our yard." It's been a long, hard winter here, and we've had snow on the ground for months.

Hammock, awaiting spring.

As I write this it's just six days away from the Vernal Equinox, which officially occurs next Saturday, March 20, at 1:32 EDT. Astronomically speaking, the equinox occurs at the point when the sun crosses the equator as it moves from south to north. Day and night are roughly equal then - hence, "equinox." Here's a nifty image that shows the Earth's alignment with the sun:

Practically speaking, it means that Spring begins in just a few days, as that big ol' nearby star continues to warm our little green planet. At least that's true in the Northern Hemisphere, but our friends down below the equator will be experiencing their Autumnal Equinox, as fall starts for them.

Dog toys, long covered with snow, emerge during the Great Melting

It's been a long, eventful winter. We witnessed (and shoveled, sloughed through, slipped in, discussed, ruminated, cursed, and marveled at) Blacksburg's largest accumulative winter snowfall in years (52 inches).  At home, our quarter-century old oil furnace slowly slipped into decline, finally dying the same day that our new natural gas line was run to the house. Our new, highly efficient furnace is quietly warming the house as I write. (The photo on the left documents the brief time between heaters - the oil monster is gone, the natural gas one is ready to be installed.)

On the family front, we witnessed a decline in our parents' health, with my mother moving to an assisted living facility near our house on New Years' Eve, which is the major reason that this blog has been neglected over the winter. We packed my mother's house, moved her here, and have been settling her in and dealing with her various health issues since she arrived. But spring is almost here, and the song sparrow will soon be singing from the bushes.  We're quite ready for it, thank you.

Awaiting spring, Heritage Park, Blacksburg

 
Sources: Henry David Throeau, Walden; "The March Equinox," www.timeanddate.com

Late January Snow!

Big snow in Blacksburg, January 30!

An unruly golf course lurks beneath this placid snowfield

 

Tee times were unavailable. 

 

Snowboarders, sledders, and a brave runner

  

 Yard art in snow

 Snowplow chasing SUV

 Asta

 Bou in her fashionable attire

Snowy pix review

It's been a cold, snowy winter for southwest Virginia. We've had a brief respite that melted most everything, including the big piles of shoveled stuff by the driveway, but more might be on the way this weekend. Here's a photo recap of the two snow so far:

Our hammock awaits summer.

The back deck during the big snow.

Nestling dove during the first snow.

The dogs plowed their own path to the rhodo patch during the big snow. Here Asta confronts Bou on the way back to the house, insisting that Bou stop and play.  Bou is declining Asta's offer in this photo.

Asta frolics during the first snow. Malamute lineage?  Perhaps.

Woods and views: photos from late November

A long-belated post with some images from late November, starting with this rather aggressive looking bloom on our Christmas cactus, looking like a bright red bird of prey in our kitchen window.

Around Thanksgiving we took a brief trip to Blowing Rock, renting a cabin on a long ridge just south of town with a walk to a great view overlooking the Globe valley. Asta strolls down the rock face in the first photo, then becomes very interested in something in the woods in the second.

On the day we left the Globe valley was filled with fog, and you can see Table Rock and Hawksbill Mountain jutting above the low-lying cloud.

I spent some time walking around in the woods (no surprise there), taking these photos of the forest floor, complete with glassy trash:

Random mossy things on the forest floor

Bottom of a wet leaf

Buried bottle, bottom side up, ensconced in leaves

Fuzzy plant

NovPhotos: Day 6: Jesus in the waning light

Statuary of Jesus and lambs in the Sunrise cemetery in Fairlawn, Virginia. Taken at sunset.

NovPhotos: Day 5: Dawn and Dusk

Dawn, a few minutes before sunrise, from our backyard

Dusk, a few minutes after sunset, from our front yard