All week we have had our standard blue skies and white puffy clouds in the morning followed by more ominous clouds in the afternoon.
Today we lost our blue skies, but not before I cooked myself by mowing the yard at noon in full Southern heat. I know better to mow in the midday heat, but sometimes you run out of options.
It did get partly cloudy this morning and by later in the afternoon, we had full cloud cover courtesy of Tropical Storm Danny.
I was working hard this morning and early afternoon to get a contract on a property. So instead of starting to mow, I was waiting by the telephone. I took advantage of the time and responded to someone considering moving to the Carolina coast.
Finally with the phone not ringing and noon approaching, I left my wife in charge of the phone, donned my straw hat, and let the heat wrap its arms around me.
I had only mowed about fifteen minutes when I caught sight of wife coming down the driveway with one of our phones. Fortunately it worked even out at the street. I got to talk to the other real estate agent and found out than another offer had come in while my clients were considering the seller's counter offer.
I went inside and called my clients to alert them that we did not have a clear path to owning the property like they had hoped. There would be some more waiting.
Going inside while heated from mowing is never a good idea. In fact I have a chair that I place in the back door of our garage where a cooling water breeze is almost always present. When I get hot mowing, I head there instead of inside. The very cool inside air can almost cause you to cramp up if you stay for very long.
I managed to finish our large front yard with our walk behind Toro mower in about an hour. I headed for the garage and called my wife for delivery of some cold liquid. I cooled off for about ten minutes before finishing a couple of small pieces of yard.
When you are mowing in the South in the real heat, you really get cooked. Right now the ground is rarely hot. Our cold water is even lukewarm once we have used whatever is inside the walls of our chilled home. Just running through the ground warms it up.
As the sun bakes down on you, the heat rises from the ground, and your own body heats up. It can be a deadly scenario. Fortunately today just as I was beginning to think that I might have to retreat to the garage for a while, some great breezes kicked up and made the last few laps of the yard bearable.
After a shower, we headed off to the real estate office to pick up a fax. That entailed more waiting so by the time we had delivered our modified offer to purchase, we were looking at 3:00 PM which is almost evening meal time. We headed over to Chowdaheads where my wife ordered fish tacos and I ordered one of their burgers with their homemade potato chips or Chowda fries as they call them. I love the food at Chowdaheads, but they still need to work on their air conditioning. It was warm in there today, but I managed to adjust. It was after 4 PM when we left, and we had to make a stop at the trash transfer site to get rid of some garden waste that was a result of my pruning of the tomatoes.
As we came home, we saw a few sprinkles. As I am writing this at 8:30 PM I have noticed that the driveway is wet so I may get by without watering the lawn tonight. Perhaps this is a clearing front working its way through.
The weather folks are saying that other than larger waves, we might have a fairly normal late August beach weekend which would mean we will be back to those blue skies and puffy white clouds.
We stopped by Bogue Inlet Pier just after eating this afternoon. Most of the surfers were leaving the beach when we got there. Apparently Danny was letting them down. While there were pretty good sized waves, they were not lasting very long so it was hard for the surfers to get much of a ride. The surf was not as impressive as I had expected.
We will see what tomorrow morning brings, but we might just have a nice weekend. I hope so since I love to wake up to those signature crystal coast skies.
