Seventy seems to be something of a magical number. When the nights are consistently in the seventies, a lot of plants get very serious about their spring growth. Those warmer temperatures also bring some life to small creeks and guts which lead to the river and sound. Last night I heard lots of jumping in the water outside my office window. I know there are plenty of small fish swimming around the gut behind our house.
Warmer night temperatures are also favored by the palm trees and our centipede lawns. The only thing slowing down growth of everything has been the lack of rain. Even the Saturday that brought lots of tornadoes to North Carolina did not bring the Crystal Coast much rain. While our friends in Roanoke, Virginia reported over four inches of rain, we got one quarter inch or less in the area.
We have enjoyed blue skies since April 17, the day after the tornadoes. Fine weather has been with us since then. While we have had persistent wind, other than that it has been beautiful for most of April. Easter weekend was a great start to the beach season. However, the net result of all the wind and no rain is that we have been rather dry.
The line of thunderstorms that rolled through the area on April 26 helped greatly. While we didn't get a tremendous amount of precipitation, it was certainly enough to keep us going, and there are more showers in the forecast for later in the week. Once again we had beautiful blue skies this morning, but as the day moved along, it started to look more and more like rain was coming.
In the morning, after a morning run-in with a mother killdeer, I did my tomato plant maintenance, then mowed and trimmed the yard. When I went in for lunch, I turned on the sprinklers since the yard was so dry. I was well aware of the potential for rain on the evening of April 26, but I figured there was no danger of the yard getting too wet.
After lunch I cleaned our front deck, and then decided to tackle our skiff which is on a lift a few feet behind our home. I knew that I didn't have time to completely clean the boat, but I hoped the get some of the worst dirt off it. I was just finishing up when one of my fishing buddies showed up to visit. Of course having a visitor put an end to any serious cleaning.
After my friend left I was just getting ready to carry everything the few feet to our garage when I noticed some dust on the side of the boat. Likely it came from the construction site next to our home in Bluewater Cove. Hopefully they will be finished in a month. As I was spraying off the side of the boat, the rains came, and it was pouring before I could get everything disconnected and into the garage.
I got a little soaked, but it was a warm rain and a nice finish to a very productive day. The rains stopped in time for me to grill some hamburgers to go along with the fresh Florida corn on the cob that my wife had purchased on the weekend. The corn and the burgers were delicious. We even had a pretty good hothouse tomato to go with our burgers which were dressed with lettuce from our garden.
