View from the Mountain

The greening of the valley and mountains

It is the start of spring, and the Roanoke Valley is not going to disappoint us.  The grass is turning green, the Bradford pear trees are in full bloom, and the daffodils are probably at their peak.

Certainly they look a little perkier than the ones in my post, Damp Daffodils, from March 27, 2005.

While today the temperatures only got into the mid to upper sixties, the forecast for the next week has the Roanoke area getting to seventy by the end of the week.

I wish it had come a week earlier.  We drove up from the beach earlier in the week.  Just before we left, we had been enjoying some very good beach weather which required shorts.  When I got out of the car in Martinsville to pump some gas, it was pretty obvious that the temperature outside the vehicle had dropped around thirty degrees.

While the temperature is all over the place both at the beach and in the mountains, the swings are becoming more tolerable. Also a cool morning is a lot easier to take with blooming trees and bright sunshine.

I was kayaking on the river by our house earlier in the week.  It was great to be out on the water, and it was especially nice to see some fish jumping.  Before we left, I also saw some strawberry plants blooming down at the coast.

It is no surprise that the grass is starting to grow quickly in Roanoke.  Some eager beavers have already mowed.  Since I have been keeping records for the last four years, we have done our first mowing of the year in Roanoke sometime between March 24 and March 29.

From the looks of our yard, we will once again fall right in that range.  We have a few spots that already could use mowing, but by the middle of next week, the whole yard should be ready for a clipping.

After everyone has done that first mowing, the Valley will be truly green, and I suspect also decorated with Redbuds.  Today we saw the first Redbuds starting to show some color along Route 419 between Oak Grove Plaza and the Post Office.

Early spring in the Shenandoah and Roanoke valleys is about as pretty as spring gets.  A few years ago I issued an invitation to Canadians to visit in early spring. While our Ace Hardware that I mentioned in the post is long gone, spring is still outrageously beautiful here in Virginia and North Carolina.  

April is usually a great month in the south.  You can enjoy all the blooming things, and by then some fresh produce is starting to hit the market. Once you have tired of the beauty in the mountain valleys, you can head to the coast.

Since we have been spending time on the North Carolina coast, we have had fresh local strawberries before the middle of April each year.  It is also in April when the beautiful flowers of Tryon Palace in New Bern, NC are at their peak.  We visited April 20 last year and just missed the tulips but caught lots of other flowers and plenty of warmth.

If you cannot stretch your visit until the middle of April, you can always swing by Newport, NC and visit their Barbecue Festival on April 4 which is billed as the largest "whole-hog" barbecue contest in the US.  I can vouch for the deliciousness of their eastern NC style barbecue.

If you can make the visit last into April, northerners have been know to stick their feet in the southern ocean water before the end of April.

In fact the two people in picture in the post almost had to be dragged off of the beach that April day.

Four years and still writing

Sometimes I briefly lose track of some of my blogs.  I have a secret spot on one of my homepages that takes me to my personal cheat sheet which has links to just about everything that I do on the Internet.

It has been over four years since I first started writing on the Internet.  My first post entitled, My Welcome to Windows, was written on November 23, 2004.

I have easily written a couple of thousand posts since then.  Yet I still enjoy writing. 

In the last few days I have written about things as diverse as the Canadian Parliament being prorogued, using a $199 HD video camera with my Mac, spam causing email censorship, seasonal peace on the beach, the Silver line in Reston, Va. and winter color saving the day.

In addition to regular posting on those blogs, I do a bi-weekly update on my Crystal Coast homepage, and now I a write a blog, Crystal Coast Living, for pay.  I also write articles as the spirit moves me.

I have a real estate blog and contribute to the new Crystal Coast Electronic Village.  I post regularly to the forums at City-Data.

I have tried just about every blog platform that has been a serious contender. I even have a blog using Apple's infamous iWeb. Some of the platforms that I have used have disappeared.

It has been a very interesting four years of writing.  I have certainly learned a lot, met a tremendous number of people, and responded to some very strange requests.

I am pleased that some of my articles and posts have turned out to be hits.  I wrote an article for the Guardian in London.  That was a lot of work, but the traffic it generated was in the tens of thousands.

Some of things that I have written have touched people.  I have received a lot of wonderful notes that keep me writing.  Over the years there have been a few nasty grams but not enough to deter me from enjoying what I am doing.

I am pleased that my travel guides to Swansboro, Emerald Isle, and Beaufort have become very popular.

I have done lots of photo sites also including the waterfront subdivision Cannonsgate, Tryon Palace, fall leaves in Roanoke and a number of other photo sites like  Emerald Isle this summer and Mackerel Morning which is just one of my fishing exploits here on the coast.

I have found that I can only write about things that I have actually experienced. My writing production is therefore limited. There has to be a real connection at some point in my life before I can write about something.

I also need pictures to inspire me.  More often than not I can be found chasing sunsets or other great scenery before I start writing.  Other times we enjoy life and the seasons here on the Crystal Coast, and the stories just come naturally.

I have expanded from photos of sunrises and sunsets into video which is just another way of telling a story.

So far I have had no trouble coming up with topics.

I plan to keep writing.  Perhaps now after four years of lots of online experience, I just might devote more time to my book project which has been on the back burner for a couple of years.

It will be interesting to see what my next year's worth of writing will produce.

Shoes to fit a changing life style

I have done more than one posts on shoes.  It does seem that shoes have defined my life.

In one post, It's the footwear that defines you, that I wrote in the summer of 2005, I talked about the boots I wore hiking reminding me of days on the farm in Tay Creek.

Those days on the farm we just another step in forming the person that I am.  The shoes and boots were different than the ones I had at Harvard and at McCallie, the Presbyterian military school, that was my high school.

Since we are living on the coast my shoe choice has evolved once again.

In 2006 my feet got introduced to Crocs.  As you can see from the picture, I have taken to them like a duck to water.  I now have three pairs and have already worn out one pair of dress Crocs.

Sneakers and Birkenstocks have been constants in my life.  I didn't wear them much on the farm since there was always something trying to smash your toes, but I had some and probably wore them to town.

In the twenty years that we lived in Roanoke, I wore out a couple of pairs of hiking boots, several pairs of Birkenstocks, and lots of sneakers.  A few casual shoes got used up, but I still have some of my best dress shoes, and my favorite suit.

I wonder if I should get rid of the dress shoes and suit.  I would rather be dressed for eternity in LL Bean's cargo shorts than a suit with a tie.

On the coast my dress shores are a pair of Sperry Topsiders.  I would wear the dress Crocs to church, but my wife objects.  I like to take the position that being 59 years old makes me invisible except to people who are about my age.  Most of them care more about being comfortable than about fashion dictates.

I have taken to wearing nice polo shirts to church instead of a sports coat.  One of the members was joking with me about that the other Sunday, and I told him that I hoped church got out on time since I wanted to go home and get more casual for work.  He did a double take.

I explained to him that male Realtors® in our office consider shorts to be our summer uniform and sometimes our winter uniform if the temperatures cooperate.  This week he had on a short sleeved dress shirt.  I think he is getting with the program.

My white Crocs are my boating shoes.  They don't mark the boat, and they are great in the water.  My orange Crocs are my around the house shoes.  I even do some gardening in them.  Sometimes I ride my bike with them, but usually I take time to put on my sneakers.

My sneakers are my walking and shopping shoes.  Of course the Birkenstocks are my beach shoes.  I keep them in the back of the car for impromptu beach walks.

I actually have a pair of white rubber boots in the garage that I use once in a while when working in the mud behind the dock.  There is also an old pair of sneakers that I use to mow the yard.  I have given up on my requirement to wear steel toed boots while mowing.  There are no hills to slip on down here, and it is hot enough in sneakers.

While I wear all those shoes, my favorite footwear is nothing.  I love to go barefooted, and I do around the house and even outside.  It was part of growing up in North Carolina.  Whether in Lewisville or Mount Airy, I spent time running around barefooted.

Much of the summer we shunned shoes.  Certainly there is no better way to enjoy a beach or a nice green yard.

I am personally glad to have left the wingtips behind. They actually remind me far too much of those spit-shined black shoes in military school.  My Sperry Topsiders remind me of the soft loafers that I wore in college.  I was also glad to leave the farm boots behind when we moved to the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia from our farm in Tay Creek, New Brunswick.  Somehow I don't even miss hiking boots these days.

It will be interesting to see if my shoes continue to evolve or if I have finally gotten to a set that will do me for a while.

I'm not planning on changing careers or moving so maybe that will be the case.

Organizing your time in Paradise

Mostly I think that there are not enough hours in the day.

That would especially be the case for daylight hours.  I always run out of daylight.

Sometimes I work hard at planning around the weather, the tides, and the daylight. If you are careful you can even manage to stay up with your work.

We actually had something of a less than desirable weather week. This second week in July here on the Carolina coast was too hot and humid which is not far off of normal for this time of year. 

There is no sense in cooking yourself even in a boat if you know better days will be here shortly.  As a resident if the weather is too hot or humid, you stay out of it unless you have visitors coming.

Last week, we had no visitors scheduled other than some real estate clients on Monday morning.  Early in the week, I had to do some supplemental watering since we were very dry until the rains came just before the weekend.  Wednesday morning I dedicated to mowing the yard, trimming the grasses behind the dock and any other home maintenance.

I actually managed to catch up a lot on my writing during the hot and humid weather. On Friday we found out that we had company coming on Saturday.

One of my cousins who was almost like a sister to me called to say that she and her husband were going to be in New Bern for a couple of days and wanted to visit us.

That meant a little house cleaning, but fortunately we had guests the previous Saturday night for dinner so I had already done the floor mopping thing which is the only really bad thing about visitors coming except cleaning the bathrooms.

With the house cleaning done and the rain stopping Friday afternoon, I decided to create a new video in response to my former college roommate's movie, "Toad Spawn."  I was actually more interested in learning the new iMovie than I was in doing a frog movie.

Still I had fun with the movie and got it posted to YouTube late Friday night.

Saturday morning the air had cleared, and I decided to sneak in 5 miles of biking and a few laps in the pool.  I didn't have time to relax a lot after that on Saturday because I also had to photocopy and mail some Homeowners' Association covenants and other information before the post office closed at noon.

After making it to the post office by 11:50 am, I then stopped by one of the local fisherman's stands and bought some fresh shrimp and flounder fillets.  I headed home after a phone call from my wife enlightened me that some other friends were going to bring us some eggplants just after noon.

I was more excited about seeing our friends than getting some eggplants, but I do plan to give them a try.  We ended up inviting our friends for lunch which was a lot of fun.

When they left I dove into cleaning the shrimp.  It was fortunate my cousin and her husband were late since it gave the shrimp twenty minutes to finish cooling in the fridge.

After catching up with them and having a shrimp appetizer, we took them on a tour of the area. Fortunately traffic was much lighter than last weekend.

In fact we stopped at Jordan's Seafood in Emerald Isle for a quick dinner.  We walked in a little after 5 pm and with only about ten minutes of waiting sat down at a table.  We all had senior plates of fried oysters and founder.  It was very tasty.  I was amazed that we even got into the restaurant.  When we left, I am guessing the wait for a table was over an hour.

Our friends left about 8pm, and I spent much of the time before bed working on my real estate web links.  We were in bed just before midnight, and I got up at about 6:45 am.

I answered a few emails, read the morning newspaper, cooked breakfast, helped clean up, and then decided to go for a short kayaking trip.  I was in the water by 9:10 am and back on dry land at 9:45 am.  I hit the showers at a little after 10 am, and I was properly dressed and leaving for church at 10:35 am.

We got out of church right at noon.  We ate a quick and cheap double cheeseburger lunch at MacDonald's and got back home by 12:30 pm.  I  changed clothes since wearing shorts to work is one privilege that I don't plan to lose.  By 12:48 pm I was headed to work.

It's now a little after 5 pm, and I am headed home.  I think a nap is in order before I start cooking fish for dinner.

Then again the nap may have to wait, I am hoping to cram in a beach walk and/or a boat ride around dinner time.

If I could just add a few hours,  I would be fine.

The heat builds in the mountains

It is the south, and it is the summer, but why is Roanoke, Virginia hotter than some piedmont towns that are usually cooking in the summer?

The folks at Accuweather are proclaiming heat the winner this weekend. Many of the east coast cities are going to have their short cool springs end in a pool of steam.

Having grown up in the south, I don't get too excited about heat even with these dire warnings from Accuweather.

Humidity will add to the discomfort, leading to triple-digit RealFeel® temperatures. Heat advisories are in effect in New Jersey and southeastern Pennsylvania, including the greater Philadelphia area, and along the Eastern Seaboard from Virginia to the Carolinas.

I just follow the rules of the South.

The rules are get up early, do your outside work before the sun gets high in the sky.  This morning I watered some sod that I planted a couple of weeks ago, sprayed some of our palms for rust, watered my tomatoes, and washed my truck all before 7:30 am this morning.  It was plenty warm by the time I was done, but it was still a lot cooler than it is now.

Kevin Myatt of the Roanoke Times is expecting some Roanoke records to break.

Strong high pressure is building in, and this will give us several days of extreme heat for early June. We're talking mid to upper 90s in Roanoke now through at least the middle of next week. Record highs for each of those dates are, well, in the mid to upper 90s, all dating to the time period between 1914-1939. Blacksburg's daily records in the upper 80s and low 90s are likely in jeapordy as well.

100 degrees in Roanoke? It's not impossible we could scrape the century mark a day or two, and I thoroughly expect somewhere like Martinsville or Danville to have a 100-degree day before the middle of next week.

These temperatures from Weatherunderground show Roanoke hotter than Beaufort, SC. Now that's hot.

I saw a note that kids in Pulaski County are being dismissed two hours early because of the heat. 

I seem to remember that none of our schools were air conditioned back in the fifties and sixties.  I can still remember the first air conditioner that we got for our home.  It was a wonder.  It cooled only our living room.

Before we got that we relied on shade from trees, window awnings and screened windows.  A wading pool or a nearby creek was of critical importance to those of us who were younger.

We have become accustomed to our air conditioned cocoons, they will likely be mighty expensive this summer.  Last summer we set our thermostats on 78 degrees during the day and 77 during the night.  That worked pretty well, but we might have to inch them up this summer.

Since I am down on the Carolina coast more often than not, the water is the most effect way to cool down.  A few days ago I managed to do my first dip in the surf.  Since I hardly ever manage to get over to the beach until after 5 pm, the air and the water are a perfect complement to each other.  Those evening sea breezes don't hurt either.

I am thinking the swimming pools in Roanoke will be busy this next week.

It is hard to believe that Roanoke is hotter than Cornelius or Mount Airy.  Cornelius which isn't that far from Charlotte often cooks.  Pittsboro which is close Raleigh is often one of the hottest spots in North Carolina.

I suspect we all are going to see the heat over the next week.  Perhaps we can dodge the severe weather that often comes with it.

Maybe it is time to consider that long delayed trip to the Canadian Maritimes where it was a sweater day instead of a sweat filled one.

You can check out my Maritime Canada travel guide.  The rocky shores of Nova Scotia are a good place to hide from the heat.