Beach Report 5/31/24

Georgia and I persuaded Gabi to come to the beach for a while this afternoon.

It's a beautiful day, with temperatures in the middle 60's, a pretty good breeze coming from the NE (pretty much directly onshore for us).

The tide was near high, the beach was mostly sandy and the surf made it hard to hunt on the gravel line below, so tooth hunting was hard. I managed 4, plus a drum tooth, and a couple of ray barbs, including this small but perfect Snaggletooth . . .

And this much larger, and only slightly less perfect one. 

I took the big camera today in hopes of getting pictures of birds and butterflies. At least the birds cooperated. 

Eclipse Day at the Beach 4/8/24

I got onto to the beach a little before 2 PM, with the eclipse projected to start at 2:04 PM here, and peak around 3:21 PM, with my trusty eclipse glasses. The weather was perfect for eclipse watching, perfectly clear and blue.  

It was breezy from the SE and the tide was very high, so I could only go as far as the rocks at Calvert Beach. I could first detect a nibble out of the sun at 2:10, and it was getting near the peak when I got home a little before 3. 

Between the high tide, and the breeze, the beach was not really conducive to shark teeth hunting, but I managed 8, including this nice Contortus. 

I came home, and Georgia and Gabi and I got to observe the peak of the eclipse here, 87% coverage. It got distinctly darker for quite a while.

.Beach Report 11/17/23

After a series of fairly raw days, with high tides and wind, we finally got a really nice mid-November day, 60+ F, partly cloudy, and only slightly breezy. When we arrived I was pleasantly surprised to find this Common Buckeye butterfly fliting around in the dunes.

Georgia stay with Gabi to play in the sand on Long Beach, while Skye and I went up the beach, and managed to get all the way up above the "big tree."

Georgia outscored me in sheer numbers, 14 teeth to my 12, but I also found a couple of Sting Ray chevrons, and this very nice lower White Shark tooth.

Fireworks!

We met Corwin, Abi and Gabi around sunset down at the boat, and headed out for a short cruise before picking a spot to anchor to watch the fireworks.

A pretty decent sunset,

Abi and Gabi getting ready for the show.

It wasn't too long before they started.

These fireworks are set off by several groups of private people, totally unsanctioned by the government, illegal, in fact, but generally overlooked.

I don't think the displays this year were quite as extensive as in previous years, there has been a certain amount of commotion in the neighborhood over them pro and con.

Once Gabi started to get restive, we headed back to the harbor, with the fireworks still going off over our heads.

Beach Report 6/17/22 - Hot

A hot one hear today. This is the thermometer at home, but according to Cove Point, this was about what it was like at the beach.

We were watching Gabi today, so we decided to bundle up the kid and the dog and drive to a shady place to park close to the stream that she likes to play in.

She loves the Bay. I'm glad the Sea Nettles aren't here yet, but it could happen any day now. 

Skye and I walked down the beach to Matoaka, while I looked for fossils, and Skye begged for pets. I think she got more than I got shark's teeth (8).

This Zebra Swallowtail was puddling near the stream

After I finished walking Skye, it was time to go home and wash off.

Beach Report 10/30/21

At least we have a beach again, after the high tides from yesterday's storm have receded a bit. At their peak last night, the high tides were 2-3 inches over the top of the docks at the marina. The boat, however, is just fine.

You can see the amount of erosion on the dunes. When all is said and done, the beach will be wider, with the addition of sand from the dunes, but slowly, they'll grow back.

We did manage 6 sharks teeth today, despite the paucity of beach.

We couldn't make it around the point of rocks on Calvert Beach yet (the water is lower, but not that much lower), so we walked back through the avenues. These people take Halloween seriously.

As if that weren't enough, they had this in front of their garage.

We may have to drive Gabi over here for Trick-or-Treat.

When Life Gives You Apples . . .

Make apple crisp, apple pie, baked apples etc, etc, etc.

Many years ago, a few years after we had this house built, we started a small orchard in the front yard, planting a pie cherry (Montmorency, I think), and a Granny Smith apple tree. The pie cherry suffered from rot from the start, as well as birds, but we managed one decent crop of cherries, IIRC, before it gave up the battle. The apple tree muddled along forever in the partial shade from a large holly tree, flowering nicely in spring, setting a large crop of apples, dropping most of them before they matured, and the squirrels claiming almost all the rest. Over the years, we must have collected a total of about 5 edible apples. Every year I pruned it, swearing that if it didn't produced this year, I'd cut it down (like we did with one in the back yard). Of course, we never pre-treated it for any diseases.

This year, I just let the pruning go, and maybe as a result, we had what appeared to be a bumper crop which attained ripeness.  Yesterday, in advance of a storm, I went out and harvested the remaining apples on the tree, using a rake to pick the apples, and trying to catch them as they fell. I was usually successful, but next year, if we have a good crop, I should get an apple picker. Corwin and Gabi assisted by throwing the badly rotten apples (of which there were quite a few) into the woods. Apples that looked like we could salvage at least half were kept for immediate use. After those were peeled cored and set aside for baking (yielding a gallon of cut apple pieces), this was what was left for storage.

I know, they look pretty nasty, covered with mildew, and some even more resistant apple-cedar rust, but with a little scrubbing, that comes off, leaving just a few spots. As Joni said sang, give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees, please. Georgia took some of the cut apples went to make an apple crisp:

It's delicious.