It’s warm even early in the morning today, but comfortable. We had a thunderstorm last night. Sandy areas that were dry are rain spattered from riverbank to high tide limit, then smooth down to the waterline; low tide at the moment. The air is still enough that the river surface is level. Further out it has the same rain spattered look from agitating bursts of air.
Much of the beach touched by tidal action today is covered with ripples, six-pack abs everywhere. And the surface has a wavy appearance.
Riverbanks previously covered with mats of gray kudzu vines are now green, the leaves having slowly emerged until the color is intense enough to catch your eye. The embedded patch of onions close to the beach have blossomed. Baseball-sized balls tightly packed with small, light-blue flowers sit atop each stalk.
The sand pit that formed on the high upriver side of the first jetty has been stable. It filled in once, but has not changed for several weeks. Sometimes as we pass over it quick movement can be seen from some critter ducking into cover as we pass by.
The storm brought ashore a ten or twelve foot piece of four inch PVC pipe, capped on each end and a rusted eye bolt in one that had broken. Most of it was black from being under water. The upper end was painted tan and had a large yellow J painted near the top. It’s an oyster bed marker. Further down the beach a twelve foot piece of bamboo had washed ashore. One end had been leafy and it looks just like a number of oyster bed markers used in this part of the river. No attachment hardware was on the bottom to show how it had been attached to the riverbed.
A couple oyster boats are out in their usual place. In addition a single boat is working pretty close to shore further down stream. It was there yesterday, too, a smaller boat manned by one guy rather than two or three in the larger versions.
Some sort of engine noise can be heard most mornings. It may be the oyster boats, heavy equipment ashore somewhere, traffic on nearby roads, passing aircraft , all mixed together or alone, but only noticeable if you think about it. It’s missing this morning.
Work has been done to a jetty close to the fancy pier. Two courses of large concrete blocks start at the bank out about thirty feet. Beyond that pieces of broken concrete have been piled out another thirty feet. The last couple weekends landscape blocks have been stacked atop the broken concrete raising the height several feet. It looks good, but may not stand up to heavy wave action in a storm. A good sized driftwood limb was thrown over this work during the night.
No contrails are visible this morning, active with attached planes, or left from their previous passage. Two jet liners can be seen and heard as we walk. They are high enough to be barely visible, but too low to make a contrail. They are heading away from our airport area.
The tree we crawl under at the promontory has company this morning. A forty foot maple at the edge of the bank thirty feet above has snapped off about five feet above the ground and toppled headfirst down the bank next to our tree. The crown isn’t very bushy and rests against the bank with the trunk lying straight up the bank. The tree size at the break looks to be at least a foot and a half across.
A short ways past this obstacle a twenty-foot-wide bank of climbing roses are in bloom. They drape over the top of the bank and hang halfway down, a good fifteen feet. It looks like they were planted along the top, then grew over the edge while the edge eroded away.
Past this point we enter the uninhabited part of the beach where no houses are obvious. It’s about half the distance we cover. The warm weather and water is now causing rocks and debris covered the tidal action that were previously barren to now become coated with green algae.
A large amount of brown organic matter has washed ashore near the waterline here. It looks like thirty or forty pounds of tea leaves have washed ashore
Few birds are out this morning until we arrive here. Then down the beach four eagles spring out from the trees and fly away from us. Suddenly an owl bursts out of the tree tops, apparently spooked by the eagle activity, and flies towards us along the tree line. It passes over without a sound and disappears back into the trees. If you were not watching, you’d never know it had passed. We hear owls and sometime see catch dim glimpses of them in the evening as large forms swooping through the trees. This is the first time I’ve ever seen one during the day.
Despite the early hour we still are quite warm by the time we get back……
