New Garden, New Critters

Thanks, caterpillar, for eating half the leaf and pooping on the other half

The "new" garden and yard are exploding in spring sunlight, fresh off of having three large trees removed last summer/fall.  The east-southeast facing back yard now gets solid morning sun and decent afternoon sun until the big orange ball goes over the roof of the house in the early evening and begins its nuclear assault on our front porch.

I was complacent with several shrubs just being "shrubs" and offering up a few meager flowers and even more meager berries.  No more, sir.  And with the increase in vegetative production has come....the critters. And even critters who eat critters.

Phidipus jumping spider crawling around in the shade, looking for pooping caterpillars...

Sweat bees!

Iron Man stopped by to plant some onions...

This ladybug was hunting pretty hard for aphids!

My spring project was to run rainwater irrigation to all five garden beds.  Three are done...and I'm done too.
Time to go fishing. 

Back to the Beach with Hank

Hank's first mole crab - uncommon on our MD and DE
beaches where sand dredging has occurred 

We recently got to make a trip back to my hometown of Virginia Beach for a weekend.  The weather was atrocious, and even though I brought my fishing tackle, the 35kt winds and gray, misting skies kept me off the water for any serious  pursuits.

But I did to partake of one of my other beach pasttimes, which is to get Hank to the beach.  I love the coast and the beach, and while we live just 200 feet from a stream and about 6 miles from the high tide line, we are 150 miles from the ocean.  It is too far, and it has been since I left the beach, then the mountains, and moved to the piedmont in late 1998.  I feel like I owe it to Hank to show him how great and wondrous the beach and the ocean are.  They are some of the most brilliant examples of nature - and God - at work.

These are the best times.

Hank sneaks up on Mommy with two ray egg cases

Forgot How Many Fish I Caught

I had fun fishing.  That's a rare thing these days.  Burnt out.  Tired.  Stressed.  But I had a little free time one evening between the end of work and the beginning of...more work...so I decided to wet a line.

It's not been a productive fishing season thus far, relative to past years.  This is largely attributable to weather patterns, but let's not forget my mental state - I've broken two rods this spring after having not broken one in about seven years.  Just thinking, in both cases, in two different swamps, that I could force that lure loose from that beaver dam with just one more...snap.

Weedless lures are the call here

It was good to get out this time and just fish.  I fished hard, and a bit nervously, but it worked.  I had fish on the line quickly, almost all bass, and they were chasing my lures all over the place.  Catch. Release. Catch. Release. Catch. Release.  It was so much fun.   Toward the end of my allotted time, I saw a six pound (or so) fish, somewhere close to 20 inches, following my lure as it passed by a log on each retrieve.  I switched up to a bigger lure (5 inch black floating pin minnow) and with a few twitches, the Big Boy was blowing up the water right behind it.  Suddenly, an 11 inch largemouth swooped in and grabbed the lure - on several other fishing days, I'd have been thrilled to land such a fish.  Even in the moment, that irony wasn't lost on me.  Nervous, actually shaking, I tried again and again.

Big lure, tiny bass

The big fish kept giving chase, short striking as if out of hesitation, before another smallish bass would fly in at top speed, grab the lure, and give me a fight.  After five bass in a row (some as small as six inches) while targeting a different fish, I gave up, and had to get out of the swamp and out to an evening meeting about a wetland restoration project.

It was great.  I tried to remember how many fish I caught, and I couldn't.  They all kind of melted together, along with the smell of the swamp, the sound of the tree frogs, the sight of big snapping turtles, and deep breaths during an evening afield.

Writing Inspiration vs. Life Inspiration

My writing has been...uninspiring...lately.  Maybe it's the lack of fishing and the focus on  uninteresting but critical parts of gardening, like half-inch compression fit irrigation valves.  Maybe it's finishing a semester of part-time teacher and looking forward to only having one job all summer.  I don't know.  This blog continues to do well...regardless....

I'm hoping on some inspiration soon.  Of course, being focused on doing "the good work," being a good parent, and trying to set up our new (hopefully) sustainable garden is all pretty inspiring.  But I'm understanding more and more that inspiring lives don't necessary make for inspiring writing.    And I'm understanding which of the two is more important. And hoping the bleed-through will give you all something fun to read.  AND STARTING LOTS OF SENTENCES WITH CONJUNCTIONS, but hopefully not ending them with prepositions. Some thoughts I've been keeping in mind:

And if you prefer to hear it: