Beach Treasures

My personal goals for this beach adventure are simple.  Rest, eat healthy, walk abundantly, explore unceasingly, breathe deeply, reconnect with myself and my spouse.  We have been extraordinarily blessed with visits by friends and family since arriving so in between various Me Times I've enjoyed this place through their eyes as well.

A favorite time remains the early mornings.  Long, early walks with Baylee followed by long solitary walks on the beach picking up treasures.  Amazing finds continue to be these fabulous green rocks that the wild, wild sea throws up onto the beach.  Some were too large to carry back, sadly, but the ones I could manage were hoisted under one arm and slogged back to the house, soaking my t-shirt and making my arms quiver with exertion.  What fun!  Free rocks!  Free BEAUTIFUL rocks!  I'm saving up for a rock garden that I'm designing in my head.

This is the first one that I found, all nestled among the dunes next to our walkway. It's a chaos of blues and greens with what I thought to be rusty places embedded throughout.

Upon closer inspection these appear to be fossilized areas of some sort.  Still, there is rust or something there.  I purchased a rock and minerals book to help me identify these rocks but no such luck.  I need a degree in geology simply to understand what they're trying to get through to me.  I'm as dense as a ... rock.  I have scads of these rocks, various shapes and sizes lining the front hallway just waiting for their place to be created.

Some have barnacles crusted on them.

They are so beautiful.
(Blogger refuses to let me center this...go figure...)

This one is small but spectacular.  The camera just can't do it justice.  Shades of chartreuse with these same rusted fossilized places.

I see a face.  Can you? 

When there are no rocks to be found I pick up bits of beach stuff like these bits of petrified wood, likely from the gazillion shipwrecks that line the eastern coast.  At least that's what the romantic in me likes to believe. 

The big surprise has been discovering WWII 50 caliber machine gun bullets driven into the sand by the waves.  These are very heavy, but if the Wild, Wild Sea can hoist boulders onto the beach a "little" bullet wouldn't be a challenge at all.  These come from Fort Fisher, just south of where we are.  During WWII Army soldiers stationed there would fire practice rounds out into the ocean.  Amazingly, these bullets tumbled around the sea and ended up back where they began.

 And then there are the shark's teeth.  These are all fossils, except for the grey one which I suspect is in the process of fossilization.  ?  The two large black blobs at the top are chunks of fossilized turtle carapaces, and the little white circle is a vertebra from some huge fish, likely a shark.  I was quite proud of my little collection until a neighbor showed me a fossilized shark tooth he found that was, I swear, about 4" long and very thick.  Wow.  These are mostly white shark teeth.  Some are too damaged and some too odd for this amateur to identify.

The power of this ocean always thrills me.  Huge waves, powerful currents, the ebb and flow of vast tides, the migrating birds and sea life, the grandeur of this place - I'm blessed to be here.  Looking forward to seeing what Autumn is like on the beach.  Thank you all for hanging in here with me.  I have missed reading your blogs, missed keeping up with you all, and have missed writing and photographing nature.  However, I think my personal tide is still in the process of changing.  Blessing to you all...

November 5, 2005

Autumn is in the air. The Red Buckeyes are bejeweled with their luscious, textured seedpods. Soon they'll open and these rich, mahogany seeds will drop to the ground and do their best to ensure continuation of the species. Buckeye seeds appear in late summer in a fig-sized leathery pouch. The dark brown seed are large, smooth and take on a rich luster as they harden and are handled. Wildlife, with the possible exception of squirrels, shun the bitter, poisonous seeds. Squirrels have been hoarding these seedpods long before they reach the stage you see above. This photo was taken in 2005, and since then I've rarely been able to find any seeds themselves. The Red Buckeyes are denuded of seedpods much earlier these days.

An old custom is carrying seed pods in your pocket. Supposedly, the seeds are carried as an old remedy to ward off rheumatism and other assorted ailments. Mostly, they are considered lucky charms. The old saying went "You'll never find a dead man with a buckeye in his pocket." Today, their most likely used sort of like a worry stone - something to roll around in your hand.

I have a little clay bowl of dried buckeyes on my table. They dry into a dark, chestnut brown and get slightly wrinkled. They are beautiful accompaniment to my clay and wooden bowls filled with rocks and flotsam from here and other sites.

The little teal clay bowl to the lower left holds about 7-8 buckeye seeds. The solid reddish rocks are from Wales, the gold & red rock is from our backyard.

This wooden bowl from Valdivia, Chili holds smooth river rocks from around the Southeastern region.

This blue pottery plate from Chili holds fossils and petrified bones from our riverbank, plus some seashells from the Gulf of Mexico. If you think I have a lot of rocks, you should see my seashell collection. And these are just the small rocks. My husband tolerates this obsession and actually brings me rocks from his journeys. My challenge is keeping up with where they came from! I'm not that organized, you see.

The sign on the door reads...

Three years of drought and no real spring and injuries and no gardening all came to a screeching halt several weeks ago. We have had the most glorious, perfect, exhilarating Spring we've seen in a long, long, long time. Folks, I had to go out and garden! I've hauled rocks for new borders, I've planted roses, lantana, geraniums, tomatoes and herbs. We've cleared the bank and are preparing it for the native azaleas. I've weeded and mulched and pruned and created paths. Every day I hit the garden before dawn and worked most of the day. I simply could not sit down in front of a computer - it was not possible!

Today, it is raining so I have to stay inside and do indoor stuff....hence my first post in weeks. I've taken a few shots and will take many more in days to come.

My front porch with the ferns, coleus and geraniums and sedums and dwarf alberta spruces, fresh mulch, new rocks. Time to pressure wash the ole' sidewalk, I see.

I love the way the sweetspires cascade over the sidewalk. These long white blooming tassels attract all manner of butterflies, especially the Red-Spotted Purple swallowtails which I've not seen yet but watch for them with great anticipation.

This is one of two baby Rainbow Knock-Out Roses. They bloomed on the second day after planting and have bloomed every day since! These will be exquisite when they're fully grown. This particular rose will only get up to 4' high and wide, is completely resistant to black spot, mildew and rust. How perfect is that?

My guilty pleasure - sedums. I blew too much money early this spring on sedums simply because I love them. The kind of cabbagy looking plant in the tall blue pot is called "Hobbit's Foot," which is all I had to read - that was going in my yard in some capacity. The green pot upper left is a Silky Dogwood received for free from TVA upon attending a seminar on riparian zones. That will go on my bank along with the native azaleas. Most of the rocks I'm still in the process of placing came from a bank next to Wheeler Dam and are filled with all manner of fossils.

These are Virginia Sweetspire "Henry's Garnet." They are indigenous, sporting chartreuse leaves and white tassel blooms in spring. The word "garnet" comes into play during the winter, as the leaves shed to expose these amazing reddish-purple/burgundy stems. They turn 5 years old this year, and this is the prettiest they've ever been. They are literally stopping traffic. If I'm outside people ask what they are. Why they're not planted more I'm not sure. They do tend to colonize, so I'm constantly uprooting new shoots, but they root easily and I sell them in the Master Gardener annual plant sale. And give to friends! They're great on our banks.

Just so you all know that I'm still alive. In fact, I'm more alive than ever and outside playing in the dirt! (excuse me..."soil," for all you master gardeners out there - LOL!)