A blustery morning and the sky is initially clear. The wind is from the northeast and river is covered with whitecapped waves. Tide is low, but waterline is driven further shore by the wind. We had about a half inch of rain last night and it erased all the old tracks in the sand. No boats are out and not one contrail can be seen in the clear sky.
Folks and dogs can be seen down by the fancy pier so we head back for the main access road. The wind has blown much of the old pollen-producing parts off some of the trees so we immediately find a thin covering of pine and, I think, locust tree tassels. One looks like short brown caterpillars and the other a long, skinny lime-green tassel. The wind also drives enough pollen into my clothes that my wife has an allergic reaction to me and I have to shed everything outside to be washed, then rinse out my hair and wash my face.
Another place along the road is littered with petals from tulip tree flowers. Tulip trees were new to me when we moved here, but have been around for awhile. One old plantation miles up the James River has a number of these around a large back yard and they are over a hundred years old. They’re about seventy-five feet tall. We’ve a half dozen in our neighborhood, the tallest being about fifty feet. Flower petals from these have a tulip-shaped petal that’s a lemon yellow, with a half inch orange band across the bottom. Tulip tree seeds are aerodynamic like maple seeds.
A small patch of raspberries at the end of a row of blackberries is now showing some buds and blossoms. None of these appeared last year and when they do appear one can gather only a half dozen cupfulls. These have slightly more flavor and I prefer them over the wild blackberries.
I’ve been watching for several small patches of free-range asparagus to reappear alongside the road and finally discovered a few stalks in the largest of these. The roadside grass is rapidly growing and is about two feet high preventing early asparagus discovery. Eight stalks are now above the surrounding grass, but two of these have already gone to the flowering stage so I only harvest six. All are at least two and half feet high; yet half of that is edible, about twice the length of the shorter grocery store version with the inedible ends.
Blustery weather is a time to keep an eye out for overhead hazards. A large dead pine tree at one spot by the road kept everyone interested until the owner took it down last year. Pines are more likely to die nowadays than other trees judging from the number seen. Age of this one could easily have been a hundred.
When large trees die, the first hazard is the limbs. Decay causes them to fall first. On pines the next thing is the bark. A limb can kill or maim and a big chunk of bark will probably do some damage, too, if it hit you, bark usually falls closer to the tree than outstretched limbs. This tree had a slight lean towards the road and speculation was that it would eventually fall that way. Before it was cut down all the bark had been shed and the next decay stage was achieved when the top twenty feet broke off and fell away from the road. Then the remaining thirty feet was finally felled.
Our path to the beach at the upper end of the neighborhood is level until we’re about a hundred yards from the river. The road here continues in a loop back but has a side road that slopes steeply down to the beach. The road slope is a constant problem to the owner because each heavy rain causes erosion. The soil had been heavily furrowed from runoff until a layer of pea gravel was laid down. Unfortunately water makes equally deep furrows in the smaller gravel and it has to be replaced and smoothed each time. The homeowner, here, as with four others in the neighborhood, has a small tractor, a step up from the riding mower crowd. The riding mowers are also available. I group these devices by tire size. Riding mowers have tires a foot or two high. These small tractors have tires about four feet high. Anyone wanting to graduate to bigger toys has to consider farming and construction work to justify the acquisition. Many home owners in our neighborhood have been or are in construction-related work: shipyard, state transportation, power company, home building, farm supply. Oddly, I don’t think any are hunters!….
