The wait is over.  Western Carteret County finally got some real rain in the month of June.  While it was not a lot of rain, this morning everything looks a lot greener.

At my rain gauge near the eastern shores of the White Oak River, we recorded 3/8s of an inch last night.

Lots of non-irrigated grasses look pretty happy this morning.  I have always thought that the plants enjoy getting their leaves washed.  That sounds crazy, but rain seems to do a better job than irrigation.

Our tomatoes and other plants have been well watered so this is just another treat for them.

I guess we have some more heat scheduled for the next few days.

That too will pass.

The Point at Emerald Isle is one of my favorite spots.  If you do not know where the Point is, you can find it towards the bottom left of my area map or you can look at it on a Google map.

The problem with looking at it on Google is that the aerial photo bears no resemblance to what the Point looks like today.

Back in November 2007 when I bought my first pass to drive on the beach, the Point pretty well disappeared under water, and the access ramp was closed.

The access point got repaired and as you can see from this photo on Panoramio sand started building in the area.
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Most people don't think of drought and beaches in the same sentence, but it will likely be something that you start hearing unless the weather patterns change.

While a couple of very light showers in the last couple of days have given this corn a little life, it is still about one half the height it normally is at this time of year.  There are very few cobs of corn in what would normally be a field loaded with them.

Just a week ago this field was so drought stressed that our Northern Virginia based daughter did not even recognize it as corn.  The moisture from the brief showers earlier in the week will be gone in a day or two, and the corn will shrivel up once again.

I talked to a farmer off Nine Mile Road last night.  He said that in his fifty years of farming in Carteret County, this is the driest that he has ever seen it.  I certainly have never seen the ponds on the local golf course any lower.

The farmer I talked to explained that some of his farming friends in Currituck County are already plowing under their corn and planting soybeans with the hope that there will be moisture when they need it.
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I will have to admit to being lazy yesterday.  A boring day of desk duty at the real estate office and a visitor-less open house the next day got me to the point of needing my batteries recharged.

I actually do much better when I am busy.  I would rather do anything than sit at a desk waiting for the phone to ring.  Sitting in a house waiting for someone to drop by is equally mind numbing.

Before the heat got bad yesterday, I took the boat down to Swansboro harbor.  It was a perfect morning cruise.  I went down the river at almost 30 mph on a perfect plane, and came back up almost as fast.

When I got home, I was saddened to see that the fiddler crabs had stolen one of my nice tomatoes.  We are getting three or four a day, but I still do not like to lose one to the crabs.
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One of the many things I get asked about the area is just how hot and how humid does it get here along the Southern Outer Banks. To anyone who is looking for an answer to that question, now would be a great time to come for a visit and find out for yourself.

Like much of the east coast, we survived a much colder than normal winter which even gave us some measurable snow for the first time in years. Spring eventually came, but it was windy and dry.

Then someone turned on the oven and forgot to turn it off.  We had at least one day the past week when the temperature was above eighty degrees Fahrenheit for over sixteen hours.  To the south of us, Myrtle Beach set a record high temperature of 97 degrees.  Here on the Crystal Coast, we only reached the lower to mid-nineties, but the humidity was so bad that the heat index reached 104 a couple of days.
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This is the time of the year to rise and shine at 6 AM.  We have an early siege of hot weather, and if you have chores to do outside, you had best be at them before 8 AM.

Yesterday I was mowing my yard by then.  By the time I had finished trimming at 10:30 AM, I was glad that I had started early. In fact I was wondering if I should start at 7 AM the next time.

The ground is so dry that I watered the yard before I cut it and again this morning.  Hopefully we will get some showers this week. They seem to be passing us by this spring.

It is hard to even mention the word spring when we are in the depths of a real heat wave.  Official summer does not start for about a week, but there is no doubt that summer is here on the Crystal Coast.

Today we plan to take it easy with an early morning trip to the pool and perhaps a late evening trip to the beach.  We might even go try some of T&Ws all you can eat Dungeness Crabs.
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I was born in Charlotte, NC so I can rightfully lay claim to being a Southerner. I lived with my mother in the Piedmont area of North Carolina until I went away to military school when I was fourteen.

Family was always at the heart of our life.  My mother was a beautician and every Saturday morning, she would cut hair for the family.  She did if for free though some vegetables might have changed hands, no money was involved.

Many Sundays after church and Sunday lunch, we would drive across the Yadkin River from Forsyth County to Yadkin County and visit with relatives living between East Bend and Yadkinville.

In the fifties and sixties in rural North Carolina, few people had the money for air conditioners.  When it was hot, you wore as few clothes as possible and stayed in the shade while praying for a breeze.

That being the case, those family gatherings would take place under the shade trees.  Often there were watermelons involved and if we were lucky someone would churn some homemade ice cream.  We kids ran and played while paying very little attention to the heat.
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Summer is definitely here.  Anyone who tries yard work from 10 AM to 4 PM is either crazy or a professional.

I have learned that getting your yard mowed early is easier and much safer.  In times of high temperatures and high humidity, mowing during the heat of the day is asking for trouble.

Two or three years ago I was mowing during the dangerous period of the day and got dizzy.  I managed to make it in the house and collapsed on the floor.  My wife thought I was having a heart attack and called 911.  They were there in minutes, but by the time they arrived I had started to recover.

They diagnosed my problem as heat stroke.  I had been fishing a few days in a row and had let myself get dehydrated.  Now I am very careful about fluids.  I drink lots of fluids before and during outside work in the heat.  I actually have some fluids waiting by the chair which I have positioned in the garage to catch our near continuous breeze.  I use it as my cooling off spot.
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Today I needed some Carolina coast comfort seafood, and I remembered that I had seen a post on Facebook from Sam at Ballyhoo's about some new seafood lunch baskets.

What had stuck in my memory was that you could get combination baskets of shrimp, oysters, or grouper fingers.  The individual baskets are $9.99 and the combination of two items is a few dollars more.

With a morning thunderstorm shutting down the possibility of doing any further work outside, I decided to run a few errands in town and head over to the Island.

Traffic was definitely less than it was on the weekend, but the cloudy skies made me yearn for some that magical blue sky and emerald water that we have seen recently.

I have enjoyed going to Ballyhoo's for a quiet a while.  I first went after Sam invited me to try one of his delicious burgers.
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After a warm and mostly sunny Memorial Day holiday, it clouded up just before noon on Tuesday. Now some light showers have moved into the Crystal Coast area.

We can use the rain, and perhaps some folks could even use a little inside time after a busy weekend.  There was plenty of sun, heat, and breeze over the holiday.

I managed to not start up a motor yesterday.  So I took it easy for a day.  I updated my main Southern Outer Banks website and had a very nice nap.

I did have to work on my tomatoes a little.  The horned worms were attacking them for the first time this season.  After making a half dozen worms walk the plank, I ended up dusting the plants.  A couple of them can destroy a tomato plant.
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