We are at the mid-point of summer, and it is time to get one of those delicious Bogue Sound watermelons.

Here along the Southern Outer Banks, eating one of those delicious melons is one of the special treats of summer.

On a hot summer evening while you are spending a week at the beach, eating a Bogue Sound watermelon is just one of the things you do while visiting Emerald Isle.

Yesterday I stopped by Winberry's produce stand and picked up a couple of the smaller melons.  As you can see from the picture, the melon I cut was picture perfect.

I talked to Sara, the owner, while I was paying for my produce.  She told me they have been growing watermelons for over 55 years.  She said that at this time of the year almost everything in their stand comes from right from their fields.
 read more »

I am back from a little break in writing, and yesterday was a great day to gather my thoughts before posting

Saturday evening we received seven tenths of an inch of rain which was a nice addition to the three inches of rain we received early in July.  With the latest rain came cooler temperatures and lower humidity.

An early morning bike ride was my first choice to take advantage of the great weather.  After a few miles on the bike, I retired to the swimming pool for some cooler exercise.  Then I decided to invite my friends, Gail and Dean, on a boat ride.  The invitation was quickly accepted.

Given this is still part of our busiest week of the year, we decided to head up the White Oak River instead of out the inlet.  That turned out to be a great decision.  We only saw a couple of boats, and we enjoyed some wonderful sights such Bald Cypress trees encroaching on the river.
 read more »

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.
 read more »

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.
 read more »

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.
 read more »

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.
 read more »