The Crystal Coast, Salt water on my feet

Preparing for the Storm

When a hurricane misses an area, there is always a collective sigh of relief.

When one actually pays a visit there is lots of extra work and some lessons to be learned.

Certainly Cape Carteret and the beaches of Emerald Isle  have survived many storms including Irene which is when I first started writing this article back in August 2010.   

The worst I saw from Irene  was the shed roof peeled off at Winberry’s produce. I know many in the area were ready for even more than the lengthy beating that Irene gave us. Still these pictures and the YouTube I share at end show that a storm like Irene is not to be ignored.

However, Florence, eight years later, was a different story.  Many people lost their homes from Florence.  We lost a few pieces of soffit and a few cardboard boxes that were on the floor of our garage. Over fifteen years Florence was the only storm to even put a few inches of water on our garage floor. Our house was seven feet above the garage floor. I say was because in 2021 we moved inland to be closer to our grandchildren.

Irene was our first serious hurricane in our first five years that my wife and I have lived along the Southern Outer Banks. While we had a hurricane emergency kit almost from day one on the coast, its evolution to something much more sophisticated had only begun when Irene came ashore near Cape Lookout on Saturday, August 27.

There was nothing magic in those early preparations for Irene, mostly we used common sense and listened to the experts some of whom had been on the shore for their whole lives.  By the time Florence hit on September 11, 2018, we were really prepared but even so we followed the mandatory evacuation orders. Most I talked who did not evacuate were sorry they didn’t.

This list is in not particular order does not replace common sense. I can tell you that hurricanes love to hit at night.  There is nothing scarier than being in the dark during a hurricane so the top of my list is light.

Over the years we gathered a couple of LED battery powered lanterns and a number of very compact LED flashlights. These emergency lights are the first level of defense to make sure the lack of power does not end up being any worse  than it is normally.  Over time we added power bricks for our phones, small rechargeable light.  After our move from the coast we got a rechargeable power station that will run both our refrigerator and Internet service.  Likely the power station is a response to us leaving our generator at the coast.

Part of additions to our emergency kit before we left the coast was a fancy emergency radio from Amazon. It can be powered with anything from a hand crank to solar.   It supplements our battery powered transistor radio.  Not surprisingly power outages happen even away from the coast.

Next on our important items  list are a couple of coolers- one big, one not so big.  It takes forty pounds of ice to completely fill both coolers. In the case of Irene, I loaded them with ice on Friday afternoon before Irene arrived. The automatic ice machine in Peletier had a large line so I drove across the bridge and got my ice in Emerald Isle just before they closed the bridge because of their evacuation order. That gave me a chance to go take a few pictures of the Bogue Inlet Pier as the first big waves were hitting it.

When the power started flickering on Saturday morning, we took items out of the refrigerator that we planned to use in the few meals and put them in the small cooler.  It is probably no surprise to those who know me, but even back in 2010 we kept a small emergency plastic container of Duke’s mayonnaise.

The big cooler stays closed as a reserve for ice. Even after over 48 hours it still had over 75% of its ice on Monday morning long after Irene.  We were lucky during Irene.  The power went off just before midnight and was off for less than four hours.

We always tried to cook some easy to prepare protein for sandwiches the day before a hurricane is schedule to visit. We also stock up on tuna fish, peanut butter, and bread to go with the canned soup, salmon, and chicken that is usually on hand. Paper plates and cups along with plastic utensils and a fresh box of large garbage bags make life a lot easier after a storm especially if the power is out for an extended period of time.

We have always installed our grills to get  fuel from the large propane tank that feeds our fireplace and other appliances. If the power stays out, you cook on the gas grill unless you run the generator which in our case allowed us to use our gas stove.  If you don’t have a gas grill, get something easier than a charcoal grill.   You can have storms that bring extended rain.  A single burner propane cooking stove can make life easier than trying to get a charcoal grill going.

In addition to food, a stockpile of water is critical. We try to keep at least two flats of bottled water on hand all the time. After Irene, we bought from Amazon a six gallon drinking-water-safe water container.  Whenever a storm was close enough to make us feel uncomfortable, we would fill a few one gallon jugs that we had around. We also bought a dozen small bottles of water in case we had to leave by car. We planned to have over ten gallons of water for the two of us. Filling our bathtub with water before a storm was another regular step. You might need water to flush toilets.   Keeping buckets ready to fill whenever a situation looks like it was going from bad to worse is important. In our later years at the coast, we even added some water purification tools and food safe bags that could be used with five gallon plastic buckets.

An important step in storm preparation is to secure any important personal papers- passports, birth certificates, papers for insurance, banks, and loans.  We have two quick-exit, emergency brief cases and a backpack that carries four laptops. We also have a camera bag for three cameras, various chargers and USB thumb drives/portable SSD drives.  The quick exit strategy also includes at least $400 in cash.

When Irene came, we had a freezer full of frozen homegrown tomatoes, and packed with meat. We decided to buy a Troy-Bilt generator. We got one from  Lowe’s well before the storm so there were still lots of choices.  We used our generator a little over three hours with Irene.  In the eleven years after that, it was never used for a power outage.  However, I had to start it at least twice a year and keep lots of ethanol-free fuel around for it.

With the generator, you need spare gas cans.  We ended up with three five gallon cans.  That gave us enough ethanol free gas  to run the generator sporadically for four or five days without siphoning gas from the boat or truck. Our generator performed perfectly. It always started on the first pull but I always turned the fuel shut off valve and ran the generator until there was no gas in the carburetor to create a mess.  I also used fuel stabilizer.

For the Irene emergency, I wired a couple of circuits so that we had the refrigerator, lights, coffee, and a toaster oven.  Well before hurricane Florence arrived, we had installed a proper external plug for the generator and the proper switch with lock out to go from the power grid to the generator.  We could have had emergency electricity for a long time with just the boat gas.  I eventually added a battery powered pump that would have allowed me to easily access our boat’s gas.

Make no mistake, a generator is a lot of work.  If it is going to get really bad, you are likely better off getting out of town.  When it does get really bad, you might have power, but there are likely no other services including doctors.

We also kept a large rechargeable spotlight since we lived along the water, and it could be possible we needed to figure out how high the water had risen during the night.  Obviously we also stockpiled batteries of all sizes.

Our homes have probably always had  a little more than the normal first aid supplies that most homes have.  We lived on an isolated farm for ten years, it shaped our preparedness well before hurricanes. Being boaters we also had at our disposal  the emergency gear for our boat which included a larger first aid kit, flares, emergency marine radio, and emergency noise makers.

It is absolutely critical to not  forget to get cash from the ATMs while the power is there. When the first restaurants come back, sometimes they will only take cash.  It is important to check on your supply of medicines, fill your vehicles with gasoline, and make sure that all of your bills which might come due during the storm are paid ahead of time.

Actual preparations at the house involved bringing inside any items that might blow or float away and using bungee cords to secure heavy deck furniture to the deck railings.  You would be surprised what can float in a hurricane surge.

For us the final thing was to put our boat on storm footing. We had a side pole lift which doesn’t have the boat suspended from cables or slings. Our skiff sat on two metal arms. Sixteen years of experience, including Irene and Floyd demonstrated that our boat was safer on this kind of lift than on a trailer.

All our planning made us feel lots better but it never got bad enough for us to use all our gear.  Still I think it was well worth being thoroughly prepared for all the storms even if you like us end up leaving for a bad one like Florence. Solid preparations mean the next time around is usually a snap and if you are caught off guard, you still close to being prepared

You alway hope you don’t have to go on full alert status.  However, Mother Nature is truly unpredictable, so do whatever you have to do in order to stay safe which includes leaving when told to do so.

If you want to get a taste of the rains and winds that we experienced for hours, check out this YouTube video that I did during the height of Irene.  The only pictures I have of Florence are the aftermath which you can find in this post.  One last piece of advice, be cognizant of how the storm interacts with evacuation routes.  There are often times when flooding is worse inland than one the coast. More than one long time resident told me to watch the rivers if I evacuated because the window to get back to coast was often short.  Inland flooding often was much worse and lasted longer than coastal flooding.  We barely got back to the coast before the roads closed after Florence.

An Adventure Lived Well

Back in 2008, I wrote a post about what was our recent decision to move to Carteret County, North Carolina.  I likened moving to finding your mate. I said something to the effect that dating your mate is a little like visiting the place you want to move. I also suggested that just as you really do not get to know your life's partner until you get married, you never really understand a place until you move there.

Here we are in 2019, we have listed our home in Carteret County and are in our fourteenth year living on the Crystal Coast. What can we say about life in Carteret County?  Was our leap of faith to move to the North Carolina coast a good decision?  What have we learned?

The first lesson is an easy one.  What is around your house is as important or more important than your house.  The particular setting of our home on Raymond's Gut just off the White Oak River has spoiled us.  We have water in our backyard along with great egrets, great blue herons, osprey, otters, and other creatures.  When we were looking for a home on the water, we did not understand living on the water like we do now. This close connection to nature is the best since we left our farm in Canada in 1984. Life by the water has brought us many treasured moments.

The next lesson is a reinforcement of what we have seen in our other moves. The area where you move will have even more impact on your happiness than your actual neighbors. Carteret County has a reputation for good schools and reasonable growth. We have seen the benefits of the measured growth in our years here. The services available now are even more than we hoped for when we moved here. There was one drugstore when we came, there are now three.  Lowe's Home Improvement which came a year or so after our move is less than ten minutes from our home. Swansboro's nearly new Walmart is less than fifteen minutes. While the restaurants have changed, we still do not have to go far to enjoy a meal outside our home.  Just about anything else you could dream of except Costco is available in Jacksonville less than thirty minutes away or Morehead City about twenty minutes down the road. Had we moved to a less prosperous area, I think we would have been disappointed. We also do not mind visiting Wilmington once in a while to get a Costco fix.

The third lesson is to go for the things that are most important to you. Our new home on the water ended up a better fit for us than the similarly-priced old beach house four rows back that was our other choice. Both homes were close in price. Had we bought the beach house, it would have been easier to walk on the beach but much harder to boat or kayak. The beach house would have meant giving up not only the direct water access from our yard but also the water views that have so enriched our lives.  Being able to see the water from our home was high on our original list.

Lesson four, things that you do not think about can end up making a big difference. When we picked our new home, we never considered how nice it would be to have our own microclimate with a south-facing wall.  We also did not realize the way our house and the houses beside us were positioned would come to give us far more privacy than many of the new homes in the subdivision. We also no idea how wonderful it could be to have the swimming pool less than a five-minute walk so it would be easy for the grandchildren to come home when tired or go over after dinner for a quick dip. Finally, our location at the back of Raymond's Gut, a good distance off the river has turned out to be a good place to weather storms that visit the area.  We have never even had to take our boat off the lift even during Irene or Florence, the two most significant storms in our years here.

Lesson five, if you are going to do remodeling, go ahead and do it as soon as you can so you can enjoy it. We were able to add almost 1,000 square feet which included the nicest office for writing that I have ever had and a great room with amazing views of the water.  I am glad we did it early enough to use it and love what it brought to our home.

Carteret County turned out to be the right spot for us when we moved here.  We have come to know and love the area. If our grandchildren were here, we would not be moving. Everyone should have a list of what they want if they are planning on a move. Keep going over the list until you are certain of it.  When you are deciding on where to move, visit it during rainy and cold weather in addition to beautiful days. Imagine yourself living in the place that is at the top of your list. Ask questions of your realtor, but also ask questions of the people who might be your neighbors.

Moving is not easy but I am happy that Carteret County had a chance to find a way into our hearts. If you love the water, like a slow pace of life, enjoy roads that are rarely clogged with traffic, and want a place with unparalleled scenic beauty, visit Carteret County.  It might be the start of a love affair and a place that meets your needs for the next decade.

Living ten minutes from the beaches did not stop me from hiking all the beaches that my heart desired. I learned how to safely boat down here in the waters of the White Oak River and Bogue Sound with even a few adventures out into the Atlantic Ocean.  The White Oak River also became my personal kayaking paradise often delivering wonderful drum, trout, and flounder that we enjoyed fresh from the water. 

We had as friends and neighbors wonderful people, some with deep roots in Carteret County and others from places about as far from here as you can get and still be in the United States.  All things considered, the leap of faith was worth it.  Missing all the winter weather that used to keep us on our mountain in Roanoke, Virginia has been a real treat as was being able to garden twelve months out of the year.  I would have never guessed that I would end up liking Emerald Isle so much that I did an annually updated travel guide for six years.

 

A Gardening Update

Last fall I posted an article, Compost at the Coast. It was about changes to my composting system. I went through a winter with the system and I have made some adjustments. I found that my new rotating compost bins work best when given materials that have already started decomposing so I added a plastic garbage can. It actually doesn't need to be a full-sized garbage can but I went with full size because it was easiest to get. One third the size would be about right. When the weather gets cooler, I might cut it to that size.

I also added a smaller rectangular container to hold our organic waste when the barrel was in its composting mode. What ends up happening is that about two weeks worth of "nutrients" go into the barrel. Those nutrients are mixed and covered with the right amount of brown material to make certain that a proper carbon to nitrogen ratio is maintained for efficient composting. If you need more information on composting and keeping that ratio right, this page is a great resource.

At around three weeks, I empty my rotating barrels of compost and put them in the large square storage bin. I then shovel the decomposing material from the garbage barrel into the two rotating bins. I have learned that filling each rotating bin about one-third full works best. I close them up and give them a spin every few days.

Once my garbage barrel is empty, I pour what I have collected in my small container into the barrel. I thoroughly soak it and cover it with a one to two-inch layer of Daddy Pete's Raised Bed Mix. I like that particular brand and type because it has a little more of the woody material needed for good composting.

During the next week to ten days, I empty our nutrients collected from the kitchen directly into the barrel and add a little Raised Bed Mix every few days. Once or twice I will stir the materials with a shovel. After I have two weeks or so of rotting materials in the barrel, I cover it and soak it again. For the next week or ten days, nothing goes into the barrel.  All our nutrients go into the square container.

Then the cycle starts over again with the rotating bins being emptied and the materials from the garbage barrel being put in the rotating bins.

Maybe all of this sounds like a lot of work, but I can guarantee that good compost yields amazing results in the garden. Our sixteen feet of green bean trellis produced over fifteen pounds of beans. Our two small beds, one of them raised gave us over twenty-five heads of lettuce.  We ate the lettuce from the last of March until the last refrigerated head of Romaine was served in mid-June.  You can add spinach, spring onions, banana peppers, and tomatoes to our list of successful crops.  This year the garden also produced a monster cucumber plant which happens to be planted at the base of our compost storage bin.

Here is a link to a photo album of pictures which go from when the garden was planted in February to when we decided to give up on the remaining green beans and start preparing the soil for a fall crop.

An Abundant Coastal Spring Garden

The one positive thing about a cool spring is that it is great for growing certain vegetables like broccoli and lettuce.  Our gardening space is limited but we still found room for over thirty heads of lettuce.

With the recent Romaine lettuce scare, our organic, homegrown Romaine has gotten very popular. I can only eat lettuce two meals a day at best so we have given away a lot of lettuce.

Gardening on the coastal plain of North Carolina is different but can be very rewarding.  You have to work with the weather when you can and work around it when you cannot. The lettuce and broccoli pictured to the left were planted on February 10. We started eating lettuce the last week in March.  We usually get four good weeks of lettuce. This year it looks like we will have five weeks or more.

Our garden does well and I attribute a lot of our success to the compost that we make each year. If you look at the soil around our plants on February 10 when I planted them, you do not have to be a farmer to guess that it is very rich soil.  We have been working on it for years.  All vegetable and fruit trimmings, coffee grounds, eggshells, and discarded non-greasy paper products except for newspapers go into our compost bins.

My process is a very manual one of shoveling the compost from the first bin to one of three others. The material as it makes its way through the barrels rots.  I emptied my large square compost bin in late January and spread it onto my garden spots.  By end of summer, the bin will be ready to empty again as we start cleaning out beds.  The twice a year application of compost has made our soil a powerhouse.  The only plants that get a boost are my tomato plants which get some liquid fertilizer every couple of weeks during the summer.

Even with rich soil and great weather, our spring garden is winding down.  We will still be eating lettuce, spinach, broccoli, and onions for a while longer but if the heat comes quickly, the lettuce will also turn bitter fast. However, we already have tomatoes, peppers, and green beans growing as our summer crops.  While our tomatoes are not going to be ripe by that May 30 date like they often do, we should have tomatoes by end of the first week of June. A lot depends on the heat we get.  Our green beans will also come in during June. The green bean plants are about two inches high now.

All we have left to do for the summer garden is to stick in a cucumber plant and put in our second crop tomato plants which will provide us with tomatoes in late summer and fall. Sometimes we have enjoyed those tomatoes as late as December.  We will pull our green beans out in August and plant another crop of them in mid-September. If all goes well we will harvest them in early November. Once the heat is gone in the fall, usually after the middle of October, we will once again plant lettuce, onions, broccoli, and spinach.  Sometimes we plant kale for the winter.

It is not unusual for us to eat some of that fall lettuce in January and even into February. That did not happen this year as the extreme cold temperatures took out all of our fall plantings that had survived through December.

Every gardening year is different and it can be especially exciting in a place where it is sometimes possible to harvest crops twelve months out of the year. There is always a surprise in a garden.  The first of ours this year happened to be the strawberries that took over one of our beds.  We could have pulled them out but it was fun watching them grow and we have enjoyed having strawberries growing alongside our driveway. My wife even made a strawberry sonker out of the first part of our berry harvest. For those who did not grow up in Surry or Stokes County in North Carolina, this is a good article on sonkers.

 

 

Persistent Tomatoes Highlight Fall

While I have been absent from my soapbox for a while, one of my wagon train tomatoes continues to solider on into the fall of 2017.  My originial three wagon train tomatoes went into their pots about August 22, 2016.  They were amazingly productive in the spring of 2017. In early summer as the plants appeared to be finished, I cut their stems off just above the ground.

One plant had such a will to live that it sprouted new growth. My wife who always has a soft spot for a struggling plant took it under her care. In September, thirteen months after we planted it, we enjoyed a few nice tomatoes off of it.  All of our other tomatoes planted in the spring except for one were long gone. The picture of the green tomato was taken October 10, 2017 so it is likely we will enjoy another handful of tomatoes in November.

I am amazed that a tomato plant could last this long and continue to produce tasty tomatoes. While we had plenty of tomatoes this summer, it was not the bumper crop that we have enjoyed in previous years.  Many of our plants were felled by a disease that quickly killed them as they were approaching peak production.  We will try planting more tomatoes in pots next year. We planted tomatoes where our beans had grown for the last three years but it did not seem to help.

Aside from tomatoes, our spring and early summer garden was exceptional, lettuce, spring onions, spinach, beans, and cucumbers almost overwhelmed us.  Precipitation during the growing season was close to what we needed.  From January 1, through May 31, we recorded 18.45 inches. June brought 6.05 inches, July 6.20 inches, August a wet 9.27 inches, and September  6.90 inches.  So far October has been dry with only .55 inches in a couple of showers.

At this still summer-like point, our only fall crops are some hot peppers and cucumbers that refuse to give up and our second planting of green beans that should be ready to harvest in November.  With temperatures still in the eighties, it is still too hot for our fall lettuce, broccoli, and onions.  This year I do not plan to do another set of fall wagon train tomatoes but I will be starting a few plants in December and hopefully put them in our wagon in January or February.

The Crystal Coast remains a great place to garden, fish, and live.  If you are interested in visiting, fall is a great time.  The crowds are gone and soon the humidity will also disappear. If you need some guidance for your trip, try our book, A Week at the Beach - The Emerald Isle Travel Guide.  For full details on our great summer visit this site.

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 Pool is Empty

Most people think little about the weather but I long ago confessed to being a weather junkie so when it is hot, I think about how to share my experiences with the heat.  If nothing else, writing about the heat keeps me out of the heat.

It is the beginning of the second week in July and at the middle of the day, the neighborhood swimming pool is empty.  First let me say that the pool picture comes from the spring because it is too hot to walk over and take a new picture.  I could have taken a picture if I had thought of it during my early morning walk but I was busy with other thoughts.

Today's outside air temperature is almost identical to yesterday's but I can speculate on why there are no children at the pool today when there were several there yesterday.  My first guess would be that there is no air moving today.  Yesterday we had winds of 10-15 MPH.  At noon today with no breeze and with the temperature in the low to mid-nineties, congregating around the pool is a recipe for being cooked.  Unlike the morning hours when I took the picture in the post there is no shade from the trees so the heat can be brutal.  Also probably one afternoon of being cooked at the pool was enough to convince parents that maybe a movie in the heat of the days is okay once in a while.

I am reminded of winter when we get a hot spell on the Crystal Coast. The feeling of being trapped in the house by heat is reminiscent of being trapped during the cold weather that sometimes visits us.  Both the heat and cold rarely last for more than a few days except sometimes in August and in February respectively. I love the out of doors, but I will admit to both cold and heat draining my energy so I try to avoid both.

If you live along the southern coast of North Carolina, you will be no stranger to temperatures in the low-nineties and to humidity to match, but when the mid to upper nineties arrive, you either surrender some of your outdoor time or  you get very hot.  Our area will be back to normal by early next week and I already have a list of things that need to be done.  Fortunately mowing the yard is not one of them.  While I still mow some of our yard, I have happily retired from our big front yard which someone mows and trims for twenty dollars.  I mowed it far too many times during the heat of the day.  Sometimes a dry thread was hard to find on me.

My wife and I garden a lot and we actually plant part of our garden in the shade so that it will survive hot spells like this.  We have had tomatoes that would almost cook on the vine in the heat.  Still any garden requires some almost daily work.  This week our work has been done very early or almost at dark.  We have managed to take out our green beans which have finished their summer growth.  We will plant some more in about six weeks.  Not many places get to enjoy November green beans but we do.  The tomatoes and cucumbers will continue on for a while.

Even routine chores lose their fun when the heat gets in the mid-nineties.  I enjoy grilling out all year round and it is not unusual for me to cook something on the grill for lunch.  This week I grilled some turkey burgers for lunch.  I felt like I was partially cooked myself after I came inside after my time at the grill.  The slices of cheese were melting before I even got them to the burger. There are other challenges from the heat.  This time of year I have to remember to leave my camera in our garage.  If I do not, I end up spending the first five minutes wiping the fog off the lens. One of our cars is parked outside, so we try to put the windows down in the morning and put them up before bed.  When it rains, we have to be on our toes and put the windows up before the storm.

Cleaning your glasses or sunglasses after they fog up is another high-heat, high humidity ritual of the South.  We long ago switched to Tervis tumblers so we would not need coasters on every table. Another warm weather quirk is that usually on an extra hot day, we finish the day with slightly muted colors.  Even in the mornings on high heat days, we usually have stunning blue skies. 

As the evening is finishing today, a few children are gathering around the pool. It will not be long and I will try to get in thirty minutes of yard work before the sun sets.

The last two bits of trivia about hot days on the Crystal Coast both relate to water.  The first is getting a glass of water to drink.  In the summer when I get up in the night and have a drink of water from the tap in the bathroom, the water is warm.  By the same token when I get in the shower, I can turn the water to full cold and have no problems standing under the water.  Our water pipes are buried six to twelve inches deep.  The water we drink is freezing cold in the winter and warm in the summer.  Our pipes are not down far enough to keep them from the changes in the weather.  It is part of living on the coast.

My weather trivia if nothing else is a good way to learn about the Crystal Coast and its quirks.

 

 

Signatures of Spring

Three things define spring by the water along the Crystal Coast, low water, cold water, and whipped up water chased from every direction by the wind.  The picture above is of Bogue Sound on a day when boating water would have been challenging to find in many places outside the main channels.

It is hard to say which month, March or April, might be the cruelest month of spring.  I think many boaters along the Southern Outer Banks would agree that both can be challenging.  The air temperature often feels like we should be out on the water. The beautiful blues of the water are tempting but experience teaches us that those lovely shades of blue are hiding very cold water.

Also the water seems to stay calm only for brief moments. Then sometimes, as it has done in the last few days, the water just disappears, and you wonder what happened to all those predictions of rising sea levels.  High tide looks a lot like low tide.  About the time my thoughts wander to my kayak which could easily handle the low water levels, the wind starts blowing and reminds of how cold the water actually is.

Boating on the coast is often a grab the moment kind of endeavor, and it is very hard to do that in March or  April.  I have enjoyed trips in March that erase some memories of the cold boat rides that we usually face in spring but they are rare. What I really want is to go out and just enjoy the warm Carolina sun on my back and maybe try a little early fishing even if I do not catch anything.  Life has taught me that fish are optional even during the best fall fishing months.

I would love to catch a fish or two while soaking up the sun, but I am reconciled to taking this spring one step at a time.  In 2009 we waited until April 24 before we got a real day on the water.  The weather was even cooler in 2010, and it was June 1 before we got a really nice day on the water. Spring of 2013 had its own challenges.  However in 2015, we managed to get on the water on April 12.

March can tease us with an hour or so on the water and even some great mid-March weather, but we have seen a frost and lots of wind including even some small waves driven into our very protected cove.

I guess until our water returns and the winds slack off, thinking about some past great beach walks will just have to do with help from the occasional trip out into the river with the skiff until the water warms enough for some kayaking.

We are on the spring roller coaster and while this year's winter has not been as bad as some past winters, I will still anxiously await any warmth and a break in the winds.  Our weather is variable but generally nice. However, it can change very quickly especially once the water starts warming. That can be good if it warms up just enough to open the windows. Sometimes I have waded in the surf at the end of March.  If the weather warms too fast, we miss that great part of spring after all the pollen is gone when we can sleep with our windows open.

Until the changeable weather settles down, I will dream of glassy waters and you can find more to read about this unique area at our Crystal Coast Life homepage.

The Hesitation Between Seasons

Today the sunshine on the Crystal Coast is so bright that taking a picture of Raymond's Gut, our inlet, is challenge. Winter brings us intense colors but not a lot of cold or snow.  I like to think that is one of the reasons our great egret friend, Frank 29X, pictured here visits us each year.

A lot of folks besides Frank 29X come to the coast of North Carolina to get away from winter.  However, we make no claims to being immune to a taste of real winter.  Once some folks get here they decide they never want to feel even a touch of winter.  They end up moving further south, usually to Florida.

Then there those of us who have seen plenty of winter in our lives and appreciate a little reminder of what we are missing.  Winter is not harsh in coastal North Carolina except we tend to think it is tough because we have so much really nice weather.  Some years winter finds us by the end of December but not this year.  I am writing this in mid-January and I had to open the windows in my office because it had gotten too warm.  Today, January 16, we once again got into the mid-sixties but our version of winter is knocking on the door.

This has not been our mildest winter. The crown for that goes to the winter of 2006-2007 when we only had nineteen hours of below freezing temperatures the whole winter.  I doubt that we had what I call a winter day all that winter.  My winter day is any day when the temperature does not rise about fifty degrees Fahrenheit.  We have already had two or three of those this year and perhaps eight or ten hours below freezing.  Still, we have been able to enjoy a cherry tomato plant that remains growing in a protected corner just outside our garage.

However, as you can see from this forecast for the third week in January, we are going to have some cold days this upcoming week.  We will pick the remaining cherry tomatoes on the plant this Sunday. We picked a nice batch of them today. Then we will only have a few rutabaga growing in our garden until we start planting things once again in February.  That means not much will be going on outside.

Beyond the lack of a garden to take care of, the water is now too cold for kayaking or to go flying down the river in an open skiff. That leaves about a month to enjoy walks along the marsh and through the woods.  Even with the walks, it is a time when I struggle a little because my mind is on the water and my body is mostly stuck on land.  I need more than my job to keep me busy or I will end up baking too many biscuits.

Fall is such a wonderful time on the coast and our stretched-out spring is just as good. Life on the Crystal Coast offers us so much choice of what to do most of the time, that our short winter leaves me hoping for more of something.  It is too early for the spring festivals which start in March.  I have often found that  a trip to Beaufort or one of the local museums like the Maritime Museum or the NC Aquarium can get me through this period.

Visitors often help shorten the season. We usually get a good dose of ones from the natural world. Our Canadian great egret, Frank 29X, returned for his fourth straight winter visit to Raymond's Gut on December 29 this year.  The five otters that frequent our gut have been visible several times including the time when I caught this otter enjoying a snack.  We have also had a pair of great blue herons stalking the marsh.  Our normal cast of characters, the kingfisher, the grebes, and the rotating cormorants have been around most of the winter.  I have only seen one pelican, but they usually wait until the serious cold weather before holing up in the marsh.  The smaller birds must still be up north since we just have a few chickadees.

It is a good time of year to work on an update to our Emerald Isle Travel guide.  The update I am working on will be free if you buy the current Kindle version of the book.  Our month of winter is also a great time to get prepared for spring.  I have ordered some tomato seeds and will be planting some next weekend.  My skiff still needs some work and it is time to sharpen some hooks for spring fishing.

Our month of winter is just about the right amount of downtime for our garden and me.  Of course the yard mowing downtime lasts a lot longer here than it does in some places.  We stop mowing in early October and rarely do any mowing until late April. That's fine with me because by then the garden is already in full swing and we are usually out on the water.

Our great weather, like most things in life, is hard to appreciate without a taste of something not so nice. So I will proudly stand up take my month of winter weather. I can only hope that a month of it is all that I have to endure.  After all this is North Carolina and when we get to February 15, spring is just around the corner and from there we can often see the summer beach season.

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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.