The Crystal Coast, Salt water on my feet

Twelve Months of Crystal Coast Gardening

We have been through eleven winters along the Crystal Coast and ten of them have involved some gardening.  Three years ago I wrote about Gardening in December.  In those three years, I have worked hard at refining our winter gardening techniques.  One of our most successful ventures has been our Wagon Train Tomatoes.  The plants were put into planters on wagons around the third week in August. We hauled them in and out of the garage depending on the weather.  This year we have enjoyed tasty, ripe tomatoes in December, January, and February.  We will likely get a few in March just as we are putting our first 2017 plants in the ground.  Our late tomato crop has been amazing with more than enough to eat and plenty to share a few.  I picked another eight tomatoes on February 21.  Aside from our traveling tomatoes that go in and out of the garage as the weather changes, we have also managed to enjoy lettuce, kale, and rutabaga this winter.

Aside from some very cold weather on January 7-10, the winter of 2016-17 has been a mild one and since the first of the year, it has also been dry. We got over six inches of rain in December but only slightly over three inches of rain in January.  February has been even drier with only one and one half inches with one week left to go in the month.  We could actually use some rain which is not something we have said a lot in the last couple of years.

I got all of our beds ready for bad weather before the end of December.  The bad weather never came. We did pull some of our rutabagas with the approaching cold weather in early January and I put buckets over three over-wintering heads of lettuce and our Swiss Chard.  The 15F temperature was cold enough to melt our Swiss Chard and to damage some leaves on our kale.  I picked the damaged kale leaves off and we should enjoy some fresh kale before the beginning of March.  This last week of February has been so nice that I transplanted broccoli and Romain lettuce plants into our raised bed on February 20. Some radish seeds also went into the ground on the same day and I planted onion sets the next day.

My tomato seedlings are from two to four inches high so they are on track to go into the ground around the end of March unless this exceptional weather continues.  As much as I love this weather, you cannot fall in love with warm days in February because the cold winds of March will likely break your heart.  I have seen far too many late snow storms ruin an early spring than I care to remember.

The plants that I have put in the ground are a gamble, but I already have backup plants growing.  It is always challenging when you are trying to out guess mother nature.  If you wait too long, the weather can be too hot for lettuce, broccoli, and other cool weather plants. If you plant too early, your plants will go into suspended animation.  One year it was so wet that over half of my onion sets rotted.  I am only going to plant half of the bag onion sets that I have.  If they do well, great.  If not I will plant some new ones and hope for better luck.

It would be rare to have an early spring warm-up without some shots of cold March air. It also takes longer than most people imagine for our waters to get warm. Slowly warming water and cool spring winds protect us from early heat waves but keep our soils cool.

Once our tomato plants are in the ground around the end of March/early April, we will start thinking about planting our green beans, squash, and peppers.  Our second crop of green beans this year was severely damaged by Hurricane Matthew so we are hoping this early crop does well.

If you want to enjoy vegetable gardening, find yourself a home on the Crystal Coast.  Just make certain that it has a south-facing garage like our home so you can try some wagon train tomatoes.

The Peace of the Season

One of the true benefits of living along the Crystal Coast is that we can choose to not be swept along with the holiday rush.

There are people who can rush themselves to death anywhere but it is harder to do here in our mostly natural world.  I often clarify that by saying that we have 158,000 acres of Croatan National at our back and we are bordered on the west by the White Oak River which has a mile or two of water that can get very quiet this time of year (see picture in post). To the south is the Atlantic Ocean and to the east you will find the marshes of Down East and the 56 miles of Cape Lookout National Seashore.

Fortunately or unfortunately depending our your outlook on life, you can count the area's big box stores on your fingers and not run out of fingers.  It you want to go to Target, you need to go to Jacksonville or New Bern.  I have been known to do my Christmas shopping at Ace Hardware or even Reel Outdoors.  To get into a festive shopping mood, I might have to drive an hour to Neuse Sporting Goods and look at the decorated trees in their cleverly attached gift shop that entertains the ladies not interested in fishing tackle.

I like it this way and the peacefulness of the holiday season is one of the things that attracted me to the Crystal Coast.  It is a totally different world than Northern Virginia where I used to work and sometimes try to shop during the holidays. Even in those days ten years ago, you will see that I have never been properly wired for Christmas shopping in malls.  My first year down on the coast I did head off to Wilmington, our big city, but even then I avoided the crowds.

I always manage to come up with a few presents for loved ones, but Christmas is not about presents anyway.  In addition to the religious significance that should define the season, it is also a time to be with family and friends.

That leads me to ask.  What better place could there be to spend time with family and friends than the peaceful beaches of the Crystal Coast and our beautiful and still warm waters?  I went kayaking on December 11, 2015, and the water temperature is still over 60F in the river.  It was virtually the same temperature last year in December.

Our area has a number of nice trails that are a lot more fun to walk and certainly easier on your feet than a mall.  You can hike our woods and marshes and Nature's peace will flow into you.  Certainly if you take the time to walk some of our beaches like the Point at the western most end of Emerald Isle, you will find serenity that is hard to find anywhere. Even if you just sit a spell with some of your friends in our quiet surroundings, you might find that the holidays look a little different.

While you can never guarantee middle of December temperatures like this year's five straight days of seventy degrees Fahrenheit or better, we generally have more warmth than the interior of North Carolina this time of year and life on the White Oak River in December is pretty nice most years.

We look forward to Thanksgiving and the Christmas season because we long ago figured out how to escape the madness.  Plenty of our family traditions like Rook and peanut brittle have followed us to the coast but little of the madness.  There have been many magnificent Christmas trees over the years but this are just lighthouses for the memories.

One of the things that we have always told our children is that home should be a place where you are always welcome no matter what. I think that will remain true no matter what kind of home we have for the holidays.  We have been blessed to have some wonderful homes over the years but even the humblest one was filled with love for family and friends.  Our coastal home might only have room for a crab pot tree instead of a big balsam fir but it is accessible by boat and we will be in good shape if the North Pole melts and Santa has to take to a watercraft.

As usual we are looking forward to having some family at our sides over this Christmas holiday and even if they all cannot make it, they will be here in spirit and that includes those all important family members whose influence shaped our lives before their spirits left their bodies.

It has been over eleven years since we had a Christmas with my mother who was the last of our parents.  Her footprints are still with us even though she never walked in this house.  We will never forget that one Christmas when all of our parents laughed with us and gave the grandchildren their first taste of Rook in the family room in our Roanoke home. That magic memory will never leave us.

Living for the Water

Long ago I lived a life which had far too much emphasis on what my company wanted me to do.  I worked too hard for them, and in the end all my talent and effort certainly did not matter.  I am fortunate to have escaped to the little piece of paradise that stretches south and west of Ocracoke Island. 

The lesson that I learned is one that many in America need to take to heart.  We should all strive to do our jobs well and to the best of our ability.  However, we should not allow the companies where we work to own our lives.

In the over seven years that I have been on North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks I have grown to understand that I wasted many weekends trying to please a company that could not be pleased.  I can recall none of those weekends.  None of the great presentations that I labored over will ever be as memorable as the recent Saturday morning when I stood in the surf and marveled at the blue skies and felt the warm ocean waters washing around my legs.  Even that does not compare to the kayaking trip where I caught a magnificient red drum.

Today I am away from the traditional corporate world. The company where I work actually trusts me and because of that I actually work with even more passion.  I want our company to be successful and will work hard to make that happen but not at the expense of the life that I have rescued from corporate America.  We have a limited number of days on this planet and how we use them is up to us.  While I plan to work for a long time, I will never again let my personal time be consumed by my job.  It is not worth it.

October 17, 2013, was a busy and productive day for me at work, but by 5:30 PM, I was in my car headed to the beach.  Before 6 PM I was standing the surf pictured in this post.   While I was holding a rod and doing a little fishing, mostly I was enjoying one of the most beautiful places in the world.  The chance to relax and do something that I love almost never presented itself in my earlier careers. It was all about work and so much of it was busy work that did not matter then and certainly does not matter now.

Eventually if you give everything to your company, you have nothing left for yourself.  When you take time for yourself and let your batteries recharge, you are even better at your desk the next day.

I am lucky to work for a company that gives me some flexibility in my schedule.  I am even luckier to be working from a place that can heal your spirit if you just give it a chance.

Careful consideration and conscious decisions brought us to this place where it is possible to live very close to nature and still lead a productive life.  Just the opportunity to be in a place where it is easy to live a life without walls makes a huge difference.

Being close to the waters of the Crystal Coast makes me feel like I have finally come home.  The journey that brought us here was not a particularly easy one but the rewards of living a more meaningful life in an area of unequalled natural beauty have been worth the effort.

Some folks live to work.  I live for the water.  It can be the White Oak river from a kayak,  Raymond's Gut as seen during my morning walk, the calm waters that I sometimes enjoy on a morning boat ride, or the surf over by the beach.  Which water it is matters little to me.  I love it all and it all makes my life here very special. It is just icing on the cake that my wife also takes great pleasure from living here by the water.

The waters along North Carolina's coast are a true blessing and a national treasure. I feeled doubly blessed in that they have become such an important part of our lives and we get to wake up to them every morning.

This link is to a post with some of the lessons that I have learned living by North Carolina's beautiful coastal water.

 

 

 

Are you hard wired for new places?

Moving is not a lot of fun.  Leaving your home of over twenty years is even less fun.  Yet my wife and I did just that a few years ago. 

While I really wanted to move, my wife was letting me live one of my dreams.

There are a lot of people who can be born in area, live there all their life, and be very happy.  Some of those folks travel to see new places, and others are perfectly happy never getting more than a few hundred miles from home.

I doubt that I was born with wanderlust, but I know that I was born without the fear of new places. From my earliest days I can remember studying maps and wondering what might be found at a particular crossroads.

When I was seventeen, another friend who was twenty and I drove around the United States in three weeks.  It was a grand trip for two young guys.  We saw Yellowstone, Glacier, Crater, and lots of other parks.  We drove through LA traffic, drove by Hoover Dam when it so hot that our Polaroid film almost melted, and we rolled into Las Vegas early one Sunday morning.  We even drove straight through from Carlsbad New Mexico to Myrtle Beach.  I can still remember stopping for breakfast outside of New Orleans.

Later as a college student, another friend and I took all summer to drive to Alaska and back.  It was the trip of a lifetime.  We slept on four inch thick foam mattresses under the cap of my Dodge PowerWagon.  I came back with a taste for the wilderness.

After graduating from Harvard, instead of going to Law School, I scraped up a little over $6,000 and bought an old farm with a barn and 140 acres.  Some roommates from college helped me to gut the place and remodel it.  While gardening there and taking care of a few head of cattle, I decided that I wanted to farm.

My new wife and I investigated a good chunk of Atlantic Canada including a secluded valley in Newfoundland where we had to go by float plane.  We ended up twenty miles north of Fredericton, New Brunswick.  We farmed there for over ten years, and then we decided that we need a more secure future for our children.

Eventually I took a job with Apple Computer, moved back to Nova Scotia, where we lived in Halifax for two years.  Then we moved to Columbia, MD and eventually to Roanoke, Virginia where we stayed for twenty years.

In 2004, I decided that I needed to see some new horizons.  Eventually in 2006 we moved to the western side of Carteret County.

So here we are four years later in Carteret County, and I absolutely love the area.  It is not that I did not like the Roanoke area.  I thought it was a great place to raise a family.  We lived on a mountainside above the city, and I will always have some great memories of that home and of Roanoke.

However, it was time to move on and to stretch out of our comfort zone once again.  Are there risks in moving to a new place? Yes, and it is something you should not undertake unless you have the ability to re-create yourself in a new place.

We moved to this area, knowing only our real estate agents.  Yet we now have a number of friends and are close to being as comfortable with the area as we were with Roanoke where we lived twenty years.

My wife and I have a very strong relationship so in times of challenges, we can and do lean on each other.  There are times in moving when even the best of relationships will be challenged.

Many things that you take for granted in your old home have to researched and recreated.  We have learned to make creating a life in a new place a shared journey.  My wife and I both take responsibility for making our life here in Carteret County a success.

We have found it to be a good place to live.  Modern services are convenient to our location.  We have found a great church, and I have had some success in my real estate business and even more in my writing.

Beyond that, we once again live in a place of unparalleled beauty.  Just driving across the Emerald Isle bridge for some gas can renew my soul.

Pressing a button on the lift behind our home puts our boat in the water and opens a whole new world for us.  The waters of the White Oak River, Bogue Sound, and Bogue Inlet are minutes from our backdoor.

The blue skies and crystal clear waters along the beaches make this an attractive place to call home.  I have no regrets about pulling up stakes and moving here.

The opportunity to live and grow in a new and possibly better place is what the American dream is all about to me.

While I am likely hardwired for moving, plenty people who have not moved nearly as much as me will find the Crystal Coast an inviting place to live.  I encourage you to trust in your abilities and make the move if it makes sense for your family.

Even days on the beach in May can be magnificient.

My thanks to those who moved before me

There was a moment the other day when I was visiting a property here on the coast that made me want to pull up a chair and sit down for a spell.

I see lots of different homes and usually I try to tuck away one feature that might be special about a particular listing.

Once in a while, even in the heat, or maybe especially in the heat, I get caught thinking about what it would be like to sit and talk with the people who first lived in a place.

The cozy spot in the picture has been around for twenty five years. It started as a raw lot, filled with trees and brush.  A lot of hard work made it a comfortable home for a husband and wife who in this particular case took the risk of moving to a place far way from where they spent most of their adult lives.

There were not many year around residents when they moved.  I am sure they faced plenty of challenges, but I am willing to guess that those challenges ended up adding richness to their lives.

I know people who have moved lots of times and people who have barely left the area where they were born.  I don't know that one group is wiser or happier than the other.  They are just people who have different priorities.

I do know that it takes some courage to pack the the bags and move to a new spot.  You have to ride your dreams to get to a new place. Once you are there, the only way to really make it a home is through hard work that may not resemble the dream.

Yet most new comers persevere because going back does not fit their personality.

When I moved to Canada to raise cattle, it was a great adventure filled with lots of back breaking work.  I never dreamed that I would come back to states working for a computer company.  Apple Computer did not even exist when I moved to Canada. A move sets in motion wheels of change that cannot be predicted.

When visiting online forums I see lots of folks who spend time asking questions about a new place.  Sometimes they are very serious, and just looking for the right kind of information to motivate themselves to move.  They need the right neighborhood or a certain kind of house.

Then there are a few folks who ask endless questions looking for the perfect place without ever realizing that there is no such thing as a perfect place.

Actually maybe that is wrong.  If there is a perfect place, it is up to you to make it so.

Some people do not really have that spark which drives you to actually pick up stakes and moves.  That reluctance is understandable.  Moving is filled with unknowns and has plenty of stress.

It is hard moving from an area where you have made great friends and perhaps raised your kids.

I do not know what separates the people who will gamble on a move from those who dream but never act. I think I was born with a little wanderlust.

However, I know that meeting and working with people in an area before I move has always eased the strain.  As I find good people, they fill in the gaps that Google with its clever daily intelligence or glue for the modern world cannot.

Talking to people and sharing your worries is hard if you do not know people well, but it is a way to get to know people well.

I enjoy meeting people, helping them, getting to know them, and sometimes letting them listen to my problems.  It helps a lot when moving.

In the end I am thankful for those people who have been willing to try a new place, to hack some of the brush back, to find those secret waterways, and to populate some of the more challenging spots in America.

Without the people who could dream of the beauty and actually have the courage to bet their dollars on finding it, we would never have gotten to enjoy some of American's best spots.

If I had a choice of talking to someone no longer around, I would rather sit back on the porch and talk to those who lived their dreams rather than who lived in a dream.

While moving anywhere in American today is a lot easier than it was 25 years ago there are still challenges.  Technology has made it much easier.  Access to the Internet is in places I would never have guessed.

Services like those on this map make even those of us who live just beyond the reach of the big box stores  pretty comfortable.

Comfort is all relative.  Some move to find it.  Some do not move to keep it. Others find comfort just in the act of moving.

Sitting on the warm porch in the picture brings back memories to me of another time, and another place when I was surrounded by family. 

It was a good time, we were young and the memories are still fresh of those great days in the fifties and sixties. 

]Perhaps I do so well in moves because not only do I haul the old memories with me, but I am pretty good at creating some new ones.

Some Advice to My Kids

I was writing a post on my Ocracokewaves Blog tonight, and I remembered this post.  I wrote it about three years ago.

Three years later, there is nothing in here that I would change.  Of course the three kids are all out of college now, and I still haven't figured out if all of them ever read it.

I guess it will be here if they ever need it.

-DLS

It's been almost a year since I left the corporate world of Apple. It's been one of the best but most challenging years of my life.  The changes have been immense, and it has given me time to explore lots of new things and a chance to stand back and perhaps glean a few nuggets of wisdom from my experiences in the real and corporate worlds.

Here my first crack at list of what I've learned since my education expanded beyond the relatively safe confines of Harvard Yard in 1971. Perhaps I should call it, "56 Thoughts from 56 Years."  These aren't in order of importance.  It's more a function of where my brain has been this morning than anything.

1. Always do what is right no matter what the personal cost is.  You won't regret it.
2. Never shirk from standing up for others, a life where you care only about yourself is a hollow one.
3. Always do you job to the best of your ability.  Anything less is cheating yourself not your employer.
4. Leave every organization that you have been part of and every place that you visit, better for your having been there.
5. Expect the best of others only if you are willing and able to do the same in their position.
6. Try to never burn bridges, and always attempt to mend fences unless you have to give up your principles to do it.
7. Value people not for what do they but for whom they are.
8. Not everyone has your specific skills, but everyone has skills to contribute to the success of the team.
9. The best teams are the ones where people are willing to whatever job that needs to be done, no matter what their job description.
10. Though this is listed as number ten, it is the one rule you must remember.  Your family is more important than your job which means give them your full attention every chance you get.
11. You will run into some really bad people, just don't let them force you into doing bad things. Don't be afraid to stand up to these folks especially if you can protect others.
12. You will run into people who gain your trust and then disappoint you either through lying or manipulation.  Don't let a few bad eggs destroy your faith in the rest of us.
13. Take the time to do things right the first time.  It ends up being more productive in the end.
14. Don't be afraid to learn from others. In fact when you get near someone who has more skills or knowledge than you, work at being a knowledge sponge.
15. Try not to make someone look bad in front of others, if you have a problem with someone have a private conversation about it.
16. Speak the truth even if it hurts, but don't assign blame, you might not know the whole situation.  Sugar coating a situation will just come back to haunt you.
17. Try to have an open mind for new ideas especially when they come from others.
18. If at all possible build a consensus around important decisions, it's worth the effort and time.
19. Everyone makes mistakes, try to be tolerant and give people more than one chance.
20. When someone is obviously not capable of doing the job, be honest with them but help them find something which better matches their skills.  They will thank you for it.
21. Never ask someone to do something you're unwilling to do.
22. Remember to carry the water buckets when necessary and never be afraid to get your hands dirty helping others get their jobs done.
23. Never quit learning and trying new things especially if they make your job and that of others easier.
24. Hold yourself more accountable than those with whom you work. Never expose someone to blame when you can shelter them from the powers that be.
25. Deliver more than is expected of you and be happy with less than you expect from others.
26. Understand that how much money you make or what your title is are not as real  a measure of success as how you treat the people around you and the respect that they give you.
27. Know when the train has left the station. Be prepared to either be on it or find something else to do.
28. If you find yourself in a company that lies to customers or hides key information that employees need to do their jobs, find yourself a new job.
29. Respect the achievements of others even as you make certain you give credit to everyone who helps achieve a task before you take any credit.
30. Try to laugh at yourself occasionally.
31. Learn how to grow things.  Getting your hands dirty is good for the soul.
32. Learn how to build things.  Building things is better than tearing things down.
33. Go for a walk in the woods as often as you can and while there learn to appreciate the changing seasons, and the quiet of nature.
34. Challenge yourself with new activities, that keep your body and mind moving.
35. Don't forget how to swim, you may need it someday.
36. Go camping just so you can appreciate your soft bed.
37. Don't trust anyone that mistreats animals.
38. Take the time to help others, especially family members achieve their dreams.
39. Take care of yourself, by taking the time to exercise and staying away from fast food.
40. Always be thinking about how you can improve your habits.
41. Learn to appreciate a good bottle of wine and/or a glass of beer.
42. Figure out how to cook a few things well, you won't regret it.
43. Clean up after yourself, no one enjoys being someone's maid.
44. Take good care of the things you have worked hard to obtain, someday you might not be able to afford a replacement.
45. Recycle things that can be recycled, throw away stuff you don't need, but keep all your good memories.
46. Experience the unconditional love of a dog, even if you have to borrow one.
47. Don't stop looking for someone with whom to share your life.  The pain and effort  are worth it.
48. Figure out something you love to do. Learn to do it extremely well and with great  passion.
49. Don't forget the others who have been part of your lives, stay in touch. Your life will be richer for those efforts.
50. Call home once in a while, we still want to a tiny part of your lives.
51. Take the time to walk on an isolated beach if only to listen to the waves and dream of limitless possibilities.
52. Never try to be someone you aren't.
53. Try to never take your anger out on someone else, if you do, apologize as fast as possible which means don't go to bed mad.
54. Remember your loved ones at birthdays, anniversaries, and holiday times.  E-cards cost nothing but your time.
55. When someone talks to you give them your attention if at all possible.
56. Always wear steel toed boots when you mow the lawn and your seat belt when you're in the car. You never know what might happen.

I don't claim to be a perfect practioner of all these, but I keep working at it.