It’s Sunday and a short beach walk day. The weather is heating up. It’s cool enough this morning, but haze from high humidity already shows, obscuring the far bank and other more distant objects. No clouds are about nor planes or contrails, old or new, for the moment. A couple boats have shown up, but may be fishermen in pleasure craft.
The beach shows little traffic after the recent few days of smoothing tides. Today there’s no breeze for the moment no any wave action, so it’s very quiet. Even bird life is absent along the riverbank.
One fossilized oyster shell had a very high count of growth rings. It looks to be about 42 to me. Here it is if you want to count.
We use the main access road to meet our distance goal and pick raspberries on the way back. The haul this time is 233. That’s probably the peak number available for such a small area, about fifty feet along the road.
Chiggers are now a problem. Two of them already left their mark from either the last picking day or other work around unmown areas of our yard. Repellent on my shoes, socks and cuffs along with taping closed the cuffs is good protection, but takes time and a fair amount of tape. I’ll know in a day or so if the protection worked this time.
The cool air of the morning intensifies natural scents. Mostly its the smell of composting soil and moist earth. All the scented flowers have gone. Magnolia blossoms are out, but have no scent. For the summer all we’ll have now is the result of farming from mown crops and tilled soil….
