Inept or indifferent?

The rest of the nation has turned attention to other issues, but along the gulf coast we are confronted daily with the ongoing nightmare of BP’s disastrous oil spill.

The cars and trucks roll through our sleepy neighborhoods before sunup every morning, the noisy machinery relentlessly tears up the beach ’till sunset every day, and there is no respite. Except for one week at Christmas and three days at Thanksgiving we’ve had these intruders in our world for nine months, day into night, seven days a week.

We’ve had no glorious sunrises or peaceful sunsets, and the clang and roar of the tractors, harrows and sifters drown out the gentle surf and songs of the visiting birds. No quiet walks on the beach, or Sunday afternoons with a book or fishing pole.

Our local television stations and newspapers are filled with BP ads loudly claiming they’re ‘making it right’…  and I’m sure it looks that way to our northern neighbors reading about the time and money spent on equipment and crews.  Even our friends on the bay side believe the ‘sand sharks’ and sweepers are busy cleaning the remnants of the oil and tar from our sugar-white beaches.

But they’re not.

I don’t know what Betsy thought about the ‘cleanup’ before she came for a visit, but I know she was angry when she left Sunday because of what she witnessed. This is what she saw…

On Sunday night, January 9th, a wicked storm churned the gulf and pushed the surf high on the beach. The next morning we walked from the old governor’s mansion, the entire length of the Surfside beach, to the western edge at the little yellow GRITS house. We passed the usual BP equipment and tar ball pickers, but the only significant oil we saw was at the edge of Morgantown….

Oily tide pool at the edge of Surfside Shores and Morgantown left after the storm

and the BP crews were driving through it. Honestly, they appeared to be driving out of their way to drive through the middle of what had been a little tide pool.

BP tracks through the oil on January 10, 2011

Abandoned beach January 10, 2011...BP tracks headed to the oil

And obviously the BP tar ball pickers were somewhat concerned about this accumulation on the beach, there is evidence they stopped with their buckets and attempted to sweep the goo….

Oily residue on the beach

                                                                                                

 

Yes, it looks, feels, and smells like oil

 

 

But as we walked away, we noted that the BP crew continued to drive through the oily mess..

An attempt to clean up the oil?

 

By January 12, the north wind was beginning to cover the tar pool with sand, and the BP tar ball pickers were busy working at the edge of the surf, maybe 20 yards away…

Still driving through the goo

 

Blowing sand covers the tar pit on Wednesday

 

 

 

 By Friday, January 14, the clean sand from the northern dunes had almost completely covered all evidence of the oily residue deposited on Sunday night, and the BP tar ball pickers continued to walk along the surf, netting tar balls.

 On Saturday, January 15, heavy equipment was in use on the beach just beyond the disappearing tar pit.

 By Monday, January 17, the giant ‘sand sharks’ were at work on the beach between the GRITS house and Million Dollar Vies, 30 yards from the tar pit. The beach had been sifted, harrowed, and raked by Tuesday afternoon, and the tar pit was marked, but otherwise untouched.

 The machinery moved down to Morgantown on Tuesday evening.  

 

 

BP crew picks at tar balls on Wednesday near the goo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heavy machinery moves down to Morgantown on Tuesday

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The tar pit is undisturbed Tuesday afternoon, but the markers have been removed

 

 

And this weekend, the tractors and sharks are back, again, on the beach, sifting and raking the same sand in front of the GRITS house, over and over, and over…. for nine long months

 

And the tar pit nearby, created by the storm January 9,  is now completely covered by blowing sand. 

Heavy equipment back on the beach January 23, only yards from the tar pit that was never cleaned

 

Are they blind? Are they stupid? Or are they arrogant because they’re winning the PR war and they know there’s nothing we can do about it…. no one is watching anymore.

New post from Simone Lipscomb

Gulf Coast–January 2011 Summary Simone Lipscomb | January 19, 2011 at 10:43 pm

My first day out, January 10th, yielded major oil at the surf zone. But this time in the form of a hardened shelf of crude. Recent winter storm waves had exposed the shelf and deposited oil from the bottom of the Gulf, according to a supervisor on one of the clean-up crews, on the beach. It was as bad as I’ve seen the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge since I begin documenting this disaster in May 2010. The only difference was it was 60 degrees cooler than the July and August temperatures that made it a living hell on the beaches with horrible smells; thick, gooey, melted petroleum coated sand and mats of oil floated in the Gulf then. Now at least it is hardened. It seems reasonable that NOW would be the time to remove the oil from the beach…right? But the clean-up crews are understaffed and sometimes not even present.

Two days later and sand, from a hefty north wind, had nearly covered the oil shelf. People might be tempted, in looking at this sight, to say, “It’s not so bad.” They just need to see what lies just beneath the surface to fully comprehend the amount of oil still present on the beach at the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge.

Ft Morgan beach had some small tar balls but nothing else evident. But understand this: It depends on the day you visit, the way the wind is blowing, and the strength of the waves to see the truth about the amount of oil on the beach. My two visits to the national wildlife refuge clearly proved that.

The day I visited Ft. Morgan the wind was out of the north at 35mph and the temperature was 41 degrees coming across Mobile Bay. Thank goodness the North Carolina mountain winters have taught me how to stay warm in such conditions. There was a fair amount of shore birds on the Gulf beach including sanderlings, brown pelicans, willets, ruddy turnstones, and gulls. It was heartening to see a nice-size bird flock at Ft. Morgan, especially since the oil-laden beaches at the wildlife refuge, 10 miles east, were nearly vacant of birdlife.

Gulf State Park Pier beaches had been, or were in the process of being, deep-cleaned. There was some light oiling washing up on the beach but not many noticeable tar balls. There were birds present, although not in the typical winters numbers I would expect.

The foot ‘issues’ I have been documenting were evident in one gull in the flock there at Gulf State Park.

On this trip I was able to spend one day enjoying the coastal treasures I grew up with. Romar beach had been deep-cleaned and looked pretty good. Very few birds were present but the water appeared quite nice.

Alabama Point and the Gulf Islands National Seashore provided me with delightful hours that nurtured my weary spirit. I thought, as I wandered along the beaches, how strange it was that an ecosystem still struggling to recover and heal could provide me with such healing. It was nice to spend time connecting with the raw, intense beauty of the Gulf Coast.

My visit was a study in contrasts. One beach was heavily covered in oil while another might look okay. There was bird life on some beaches while it was absent on others. It’s difficult to form much of an opinion from four days of beach visits but it was very telling to see so much oil exposed one day and almost completely covered two days later. The summary for my January visit is this: There is much that remains hidden about the oil spill and recovery…and I mean that on many levels.

Toilet frog

The frog who moved into my toilet this summer was always an interesting surprise for guests who visited the downstairs bathroom. My little house has 2 1/2 bathrooms, so the half bath in the laundry room was only used on rare occasions…. a hurried trip back from the beach or a morning walk after coffee.

Hyla cinerea in his winter home

He was usually discovered when the lid was lifted, but occasionally he was under the seat and not found by my visiting friends until they were comfortably seated and he jumped for safety.

It was a symbiotic relationship. I think he spent the summer crouched above the toilet bowl, zapping the mosquitoes headed for a pool to lay eggs. So we lived in harmony, I never used caustic cleaners and he continued to keep the toilet bowl mosquito free.

But we had a cold snap in November and when it warmed I took the opportunity to relocate him to the garden so he could hibernate in the mud with his kin. He wasn’t happy. He peed copious amounts of toilet water on my hand and reappeared on the toilet the very next day. This happened again on another warm day in December, and again this week.

He’s back today and the forecast is frigid with 33 mph wind gusts, so I researched the care and feeding of this stubborn little  Hyla Cinerea. He can be kept as a pet, but requires crickets and moths for food if he doesn’t hibernate.

http://allaboutfrogs.org/info/species/grntree.html

So, I have inadvertently adopted another pet. I already have an antique English Setter who requires a diet of chicken & rice after her years in a puppy mill, an ancient cat rescued from a culvert who binges & purges on a weekly basis, and a $2 WalMart fish who turned out to be an Asian brackish Green Spotted Puffer requiring a $40 bag of Instant Ocean and a $22 Hygrometer.

I guess I am now relegated to weekly trips to the pet store in Foley for crickets for my faithful frog. If y’all have an idea for a name, please let me know!

Beach Cover Up

The oil exposed by the storm last week has been almost completely recovered. Yesterday there were only a few visible tar balls in the surf line and the north wind had hidden the strata of oil below the surface of the beach.

Although I never saw any BP contractors marking the deposits, I do take some comfort in knowing the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, across the bay, is looking for the oil, and reporting it.

http://press.disl.org/11_8_10graham.htm

Storm Warning

We’ve had showers and squalls for the past two days. We got some much-needed rain, but as storms go, it wasn’t much… it didn’t even qualify as a tropical depression. 

We’ve been fortunate this year to have been spared any hurricanes and tropical storms since the oil spill, so we weren’t really sure what to expect.  But the north winds whipped up the surf  yesterday, giving us an ominous look at what is in store for our future.

The beaches aren’t clean and the gulf hasn’t been miraculously cured of the spilled oil by ‘natural degradation’.  The ugly damage from the BP oil spill was temporarily, but painfully, obvious after the storm.

Crumbs of tar balls

Yesterday the wind blew away the skiff of sand covering the ‘sifted’ tar balls from the summer uncovering billions of little brown crumbs littering the ‘sugar-white’ beach at the drift line.

The waves broke up the mats of tar photographed on the floor of the gulf by the Mobile Press-Register and WKRG this summer, and now big chunks are again rolling in the surf, breaking down into more tar balls and greasy brown sand.

New tar balls

And the wind and tide created sand shelves revealing strata of tar as deep as two feet below the surface of the beach.

strata of oil and tar

tar layer

18 inches below the surface

As I stood there at low tide this morning, watching the north wind blow clean sand from the dunes down to recover the blighted beach, I looked for any sign of the ubiquitous green-shirted BP workers. 

No PB in sight as sands sift over exposed oil

Common sense might dictate this would be the perfect time to net the chunks of tar, scoop the brown crumbs, and mark the buried oil patches…. but there wasn’t a four-wheeler or porta-potty in sight. Perhaps there is also an OSHA regulation prohibiting working in 60 degree weather if the wind is blowing?

North winds blow sand back over the tar and oil

 But now we have fair warning of what to expect when a tropical storm reaches our shore… and what to expect of BP in the aftermath.

Neighbor from Hell

The last of August brought much-needed rain, although few of us really needed the tropical monsoons that targeted Fort Morgan almost daily.  My neighbors, however, were delighted and celebrated loudly, much too loudly for their own good.

Hyla Cineria and Hyla Squirella partied late into the night, and Butorides Striatus and Ardea Herodias arrived early for brunch every morning. I wasn’t invited to the party, but I spied on them through my binoculars from my deck.

Then last week the party was over, the little pond next door was deadly quiet.

Sophie, my intrepid bird dog, was barking furiously last Tuesday morning and I walked towards the pond to look for the source of her excitement, usually a heron or rabbit… then I quickly walked back up the steps to the safety of my deck. A very large alligator was cruising toward US to find the source of all that racket!

Nosey Neighbor

For a week he/she would appear whenever I spent any time on the deck. I never saw it leave the water, but the ‘gator trail through the reeds to the edge of my driveway was unmistakable. 

Cruisin'

Sophie never leaves the deck without me and her leash, and I have a remote garage door opener, so we were never in danger. But I will admit I was a little uneasy about mowing my yard… this alligator didn’t show any fear of Sophie’s barking, my hammering on the deck, or my car in the driveway.

Too big for this pond!

But I think it has moved on, I haven’t seen those beady, prehistoric eyes in several days so I have cautiously began mowing the grass. And Sophie has agreed to temporarily act as my Gator Guard, on watch from the safety of the deck…. Wish me luck!

The Great White Hunter

Welcome to the Fort Morgan Historic Site & Tar Removal Station

If the residents of Mobile Bay still had delusions their state government was working to protect them from the insidious oil after local mayors fiddled and fought while the first big oil slick slid past the ‘vessels of opportunity’ yesterday, they’d better think again.      

Site of the Historic BP boat cleaning station

 

Early this morning contractors for BP rolled in with construction materials to construct a ‘decontamination unit’ for cleaning boats on the Historic Fort Morgan property, around the Mobile point and inside the bay. Not only will oil-drenched boats be churning into the ‘protected’ bay waters, but somebody will be washing these boats with something that will, presumably, end up in the bay.      

The contractors assured us they were layering fabric with absorbent material that would collect the toxic brew, but they had no answers to our questions about emptying or replacing the material daily, or any solution to our frequent summer squalls.      

And this afternoon more contractors roared in for a pre-bid meeting about dredging, constructing a seawall, and building boat slips for the soon-to-be finished ‘boat washing station’ .      

When this nightmare began we were promised any boat cleaning stations would be located outside the bay at a platform where skimmers could corral and remove the muck.  Who decided to abandon the bay and allow this decontamination unit to be located on the backside of the peninsula on the historic site owned by the state of Alabama?      

The people of Alabama have worked and paid to lovingly renovate and maintain this historic site since the army gave it to us in 1946. It is the highest grossing state park in Alabama. Has anyone asked us if we want to abandon the plans to save the bay and give Fort Morgan to BP?      

I would encourage anyone who has ever enjoyed Fort Morgan to visit soon before BP destroys our history. They have already blocked the Spanish-American batteries and within a week it will be difficult to visit the Civil War fort.      

file photo from 'State can't find rape kit in Thomas Arthur case' http://lethal-injection-florida.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html

 

The buck stops at Governor Riley’s office, so he evidently approved BP’s attack on Fort Morgan.  I guess he thinks we’ll all sleep just fine knowing he won the war today on bingo…

Skimming ?

The Captain of the Mobile Bay Ferry told me yesterday, June 30, he was suspending operations because oil was coming into the bay and he did not want to run his boat through it. That is the first time in this 72-day nightmare he closed the ferry because a slug of floating oil endangered his boat. 

View from the ferry in better times

 

He told me he would reevaluate at 3:00 pm and hoped to reopen once the oil slick floated through. 

Over at the little snack shop Pat packed up and went home, she would have even fewer customers than normal (and normal this summer isn’t good). 

We anxiously looked out at the bay for some sign the shrimp boats and tankers anchored there would burst into action and pull booms across the entrance to capture and skim the oil. 

You would need a camera with a panorama lens to capture the 'vessels of opportunity' anchored in the bay Wednesday, but you can 'zoom in' to see some of the shrimp boats & tankers

 

But nothing happened so I guess the oil passed ‘safely’ through into the bay? 

I learned later that afternoon, from one of the captains based at the marina, the infuriating reason for the lack of action to protect the Bay of Mobile. 

No, it wasn’t because the surf was up in the gulf – the water was calm in the bay. The boats could not respond because of a stupid political squabble. 

The crews had been released for the day so the boats could be moved to Orange Beach. Evidently the mayor there, Tony Kennon, had ‘persuaded’ the BP contractors to move their boats from Fort Morgan to Zeke’s in Orange Beach because of lost revenue. Fortunately, the Coast Guard vetoed the stupid plan before the flotilla could get underway yesterday, but too late to call the crews back to battle the oil slick. 

file photo from: http://blog.al.com/live/2008/08/baldwin_judge_to_orange_beach.html

 

So I guess we have the Mayor of Orange Beach to thank for the oil in Mobile Bay today? Hundreds of crewmen were affected by the proposed move yesterday, so this story would be easy to verify…. but it has not been reported in the local media. 

But to be honest, we haven’t seen the ‘vessels of opportunity’ move from their anchors in the bay for more than a week. There is a small fleet of ships rounding the point every morning and afternoon, but many, many more that never move. 

Again, my camera is not capable of taking a good panoramic view of the bay, but more detail can be seen by ‘zooming in’ on the photos. These pics were taken Monday and Tuesday when the surf was ‘light chop’ ( the download was time/date stamped by my computer). 

Tuesday, June 24

  

Monday, June 28

So while some of the country is celebrating the decision to waive the Jones Act and allow foreign boats to participate in the gulf cleanup, 

http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2010/07/01/experts-agree-jones-act-has-no-effect-on-gulf-oil-response/?cxntfid=blogs_jay_bookman_blog 

those of us with a view of Mobile Bay are asking why our own boats aren’t participating in the efforts. Maybe because they look good on camera for BP? 

Brian Williams ended the NBC news with an aerial shot of the bay and a comment on the boats idled by Hurricane Alex. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#38027394 

I’ve got a news flash for you, Mr Williams, it looked just the same on Tuesday night, Monday night, Sunday night….

Toxic tide pools

  

Tide pool on Wednesday, June 30. No sign of life

 

“Tide pools contain mysterious worlds, where all the beauty of the sea is subtly suggested and portrayed in miniature”

Rachel Carson

   

  

Tide pool on Wednesday, June 30. No sign of life.

 

 ”Friday, June 11th marks the 100th anniversary of my grandfather, Jacques-Yves Cousteau – the man who gave us our first real glimpse of the ocean,” she continued. “He encountered many challenges while sailing the seven seas and brought to light many issues. I wonder what he would say today about the Gulf Gush?” 

 

 Celine Cousteau

.

Tide pool on Wednesday, June 30. No coquina

 

“Waves fill the footprints
with coquina: bright seeds, next
season’s necklaces. “ 

Amy Watkins 

 

(from PlanetJose on YouTube, music: Lux Aeterna by Clint Mansell)
    

  

God help us …

  

A Star Fell on Alabama Last Night

The newscaster said it would look like a “slow-moving shooting star” and to use binoculars instead of a telescope to make tracking easier in the cloudless sky. 

So at 6:04 I went out on the deck at sunset and looked to the northwest. There were no visible stars over the fading horizon and when it first appeared I thought it was a distant airplane, but it was silent. 

Tried to catch it.... didn't succeed

 

It followed the trajectory on the International Space Station maps and, as it passed overhead, I could make out a horizontal structure reflecting light from the setting sun with my binoculars.  It ‘set’ in the southeast  about 3 minutes after it appeared. 

Photo of ISS taken with binoculars and a digital camera on Ethan Siegel's 'Lazy Astronomer' website

 

Orbiting at about 240 miles about the earth at speeds of 17,500 mph it seems incredible we can see this manned, man-made satellite with our naked eyes.  In fact, sightings this good aren’t commonplace. 

Although the ISS orbits the earth every 90 minutes it can best been seen at the moment of sunrise and sunset when the viewer is in the dark and the spacecraft is in the sun, when weather is perfect, and the path is directly overhead.  NASA has an excellent website that shows the ISS location on the globe in realtime                                                      http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/index.html 

And Spaceweather has an application to generate a chart of visible satellites based on zip codes        http://spaceweather.com/flybys/ 

The International Space Station as seen by the departing Space Shuttle Atlantis on 25 November 2009

 

According to the scientists at NASA we will have another opportunity to see the ISS on February 1 at 6:26 in the morning, if the weather cooperates. 

And for those of you who think the International Space Station has little to do with your everyday life, think again if you are a football fan. According to MSNBC,  “The crew of space shuttle Atlantis plans to deliver to the Pro Football Hall of Fame a coin that traveled into space for use in the official coin toss at Super Bowl XLIV.” 

So, Thumbs Up from New Orleans at 06:25:44 am on February 1 from all the Saints fans!  

Update: There were no stars or space stations in view this morning at 6:25 because of thick clouds. Maybe Punxsutawney Phil won’t be able to see his shadow tomorrow either!

Oh no she didn’t!

Oh yes she did!

Katy-Did move right into my house with my tortured basil and rosemary plants.  In addition to the insects, I also have at least one frog and two or three lizards (you’d have to ask Isabelle for an exact count – she has been keeping vigil ) hiding in the pots I dragged inside.

We are all huddled together in defense of the awful north wind blasting all my tenderly loved outdoor kiwi, lantana, kumquats, Meyer lemons, etc., etc….

We have 25 mph gusts of arctic winds and are anticipating breaking a 20 year record this weekend – not a record anyone wants to break.

I have been a ‘nanny’ this week for a 13-year-old and I’m in awe of her ability to sleep through anything. When Kermit, the little green Hyla cinerea,  started singing I thought my fire alarm had been activated. Sophie, Isabelle and I cautiously approached the front door as we tracked the origin of the noise. We never saw Kermit, but when I realized the problem was an unhappy frog I relocated Isabelle to the bathroom and Sophie to the bedroom. My charge, Leah, never moved!

I’m pretty sure all my tropical plants are long-dead, and my attempts to keep the outside spigots from freezing have only constipated Sophie. She can’t get down to the yard now because of the solid sheet of ice on the steps beside the faucet…..

I want this to be over!

Gnome Home

With all the rain lately (no complaints) it is no surprise we’ve had sprouts of fungi. But we were stopped in our tracks when Sophie &  I walked to the beach yesterday.

Fort Morgan Fungi

How cute is this?

I have a passing familiarity with the Smurfs ( my boys are 30 and 25) so I looked carefully for inhabitants.  I honestly thought these could be the winter homes of Papa Smurf and Smurfette… it does get cold in Belgium in December .  But there were no signs of the traditional doors and windows.

smurf house

I researched the fancy mushrooms and discover they were probably Fly Agarics?

A mushroom website claims : <<The classic cartoon mushroom. Amanita muscaria or Fly Agaric which is said to be hallucinogenic in small quantities (but lethal in larger amounts)>>.

And the   Shroomery.org website     (is there really a non-profit shroom website???) has an interesting article with recipes and folklore. http://www.shroomery.org/10224/Hunting-Fly-Agarics-in-North-America.

We have an entire field of these fungi in Surfside, but I’m not harvesting any to sauté with my steak.

field of shrooms

If you decide to look for them,  look for the blue elves….

I am waayy to old to consider any kind of recipe with these mushrooms… and I caution anyone looking for these fungi, to look for inhabitants!

smurf house

Hurricane Ida

The Eye of the Storm

I turned on the news when I awoke this morning and watched as the local weatherman on Dauphin Island explained that Ida had crossed over the barrier islands and was in Mobile Bay with landfall expected around 7:00 AM.  The satellite radar showed the rain had moved northeast of us on Fort Morgan and it was foggy and quiet outside.

I fed the dog, walked around the yard (a limb from the pine tree had narrowly missed the boat parked in my back yard for safety!) and got ready to take Sophie for a walk.

Northwest wall

Then it hit!

A blast of cold air roared across from the bay and two blackened pine trees snapped half-way off on the edge of the pond.  Sophie changed her mind about a walk and I came back in and turned on the TV. This time the weatherman was hanging on to his coat and was yelling into the microphone, the temperature had dropped almost 10 degrees.

We had been in the eye of the storm! I didn’t realize that, and I’m pretty sure the weatherman on Dauphin Island didn’t know.

Sophie refused to go back outside, so I drove down to the beach to get a look at the Gulf.

Debris washed up under GRITS house

The only real damage I saw was an overturned porta-potty and debris blown from a dumpster that should have been emptied a month ago. ( We were picking up debris from this construction site during the Coastal Cleanup.)

too much trash

The surf had washed under the houses on the beach, and the end of the walkway at ‘Million Dollar View’ was gone, again… but that was the extent of the damage here from Ida.

So long, Ida!

Hurricane Ida

Day Two…

We walked to the beach, but couldn’t walk on the beach. Even at low tide the surf was under some of the houses on the beach.

Low tide this morning

I dragged the deck furniture into the garage and the plants into the house, then cooked a chicken and some snacks because Sharon and Leah were coming over to ‘ride out the storm’.

We watched Arrested Development and played Loaded Questions until Leah decided we should take a walk to the beach. At 9:00 pm, as the tropical storm approached Fort Morgan, we set out. Sharon and I wore conventional rain coats, but Leah was sheathed in a commercial trash bag.

Leah's hurricane fashion

She stayed dry but Sharon and I were soaked to the bone. Too funny!

Storm chasers

And now we’re cooking pizza and settling in for landfall.

My first hurricane party has been great fun, so far…..

Hurricane Ida

Day One…

It looks like Ida is drawing a bead on Surfside Shores on the Fort Morgan Peninsula!  She is a category two now with winds over 75 mph.

The weather here is breezy but still beautiful.  Sophie and I were alone on the beach, but that’s not unusual.

The local experts predict the cool water in the gulf will slow the winds and it will probably deteriorate to a tropical storm before it hits land.

But I’m sure the ‘talking heads’ on morning TV will blow it all out of proportion and the entire Gulf Coast will take a real financial hit this week. Thanks Dianne, Harry & Matt!

Sunday morning

However, this might be a good time to check on my hurricane shutters, I’ve been meaning to do that all summer…

It’s a BEAUTIFUL day in the neighborhood…

Full moon, startlingly beautiful sunrise, and no one on the beach this morning…

and, finally some shells on the beach at low tide.

The water in the Gulf was endlessly clear and calm.

And the sunset was spectacular, again!    

Storm damage

Alberta's iconic butterflies

There was little storm damage to the homes in Surfside. A strip of roofing on one house, a screen door on another, and one of Alberta’s butterflies was unhinged.  But we noticed very little damage from the high winds on our first walk in three days… until we reached the beach.

I’d seen the story in the Mobile Press-Register about the beach invasion but didn’t realize it affected Fort Morgan. 

http://blog.al.com/live/2009/03/millions_of_bythewind_sailors.html

 http://www.al.com/press-register/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/123814536599410.xml&coll=3

But, when we reached Beach Shore Drive we found it covered in sand and littered with Portuguese man-o-war, not a good sign. We walked down to the beach beside the Governor’s House and I could see that water and debris was under some of the homes, and tidal pools made walking on the beach dangerous. I’ve stepped in quicksand after a storm once, and that was enough for my lifetime. (Mr. Bradt’s sculpture was intact and spinning lazily in the breeze)

As we made our way back to the safety of the road I could see that the debris high on the beach and under the homes was irridescent and quivering.  And, honestly, it smelled.

Surfside debris - just nasty

My photo, Saturday, was a dried up version of the photo posted by Ryan&nbsp Dezember on the Press-Register site Thursday.

photo posted by Ryan Dezember on Mobile Press-Register

But the storms raised the water level in the lagoons and prompted an immediate turtle migration. 

As we were walking back to the house we came upon a turtle parade, three of Alberta’s pets were moving to the pond west of the Surfside lagoon.                                                                               

Parade of turtles after storm

And some of them were migrating north to my lagoon.

cutting through the front yard

 One  liked the bottle tree and one was craving veggies (and I had blamed the rabbits for that damage)

I absolutely, positively have to do a water change in the aquarium today, poor Blue has just molted and is in hiding.

out of reach?

I may need a ‘restorative cocktail’  before I wade into the surf with my bucket…

Water, Water Everywhere…

Finally! After watching the storm clouds pass over Fort Morgan for months, we finally got the soaking rain we so desperately needed.

The lagoons bordering my little house had dried into muddy breeding grounds for those nasty ‘sand fleas’ and my poor chlorine-sensitive gardenias and jasmine were suffering terribly from the necessary, weekly dousing with ‘city’ water.

It is my prayer that the 3+ inches of rain has drowned those nasty gnats, and the chorus of frogs last night means the predators have returned to the ponds to feast on the mosquitoes that will follow in the heels of this wonderful rain.

My little green frogs were out last night (on the deck, on the sides of the house, and on the screens) and they were loud and joyous.  

My Kermit

I snapped a photo of this little guy before he made it back to the safety of the pot of rosemary on the deck.  He is a hyla cinerea, or green tree frog, and his relatives inhabit the cracks and crevices of my little house.

I didn’t have any way to record the music last night, but I found a website with a sound file of green tree frogs.

If you go to this site and click on the ‘listen’ icon you will hear the chorus I heard last night. And if you close your eyes, stand in front of a heater vent and hold a pot of petunias in each hand (they’re blooming after the rain, and they’re incredibly fragrant) you will experience what it is like to be in Lower Alabama after a thunderstorm!

http://www.enature.com/fieldguides/detail.asp?recnum=AR0015

A Skiff of Ice

It’s cold here. 

I asked one of my elderly patients about the unusually tall ant hills and he said it was a sign of a ‘bad winter’.

I think he was right. 

On the surface...

Last nite we broke some 6-year records and I was sleeping with my tomato and basil plants.

If you look closely at this photo you can see a thin skiff of ice on the little pond west of my house.

Maybe I’m being acclimated for my trip home?

 

Editor’s note: this post was also delayed because CenturyTel’s service was unreliable the day before I left for Kentucky. Will they acknowledge their failures and credit my account? 

Don’t hold your collective breaths!