DauphinIsland,AL

The weekend started off with a severe storm system that wandered east, letting it's warm, humid tail drag slowly across Saturday. The weather did make for a good day to clean inside, so that is what happened.

Sunday was bright and crisp. Sarah and I wanted a little escape from Biloxi so drove over to Dauphin Island for a day hiking through the bird sanctuaries and around the beaches located on the island's west end. What is now the island's west end used to be the middle until hurricane Katrina chopped the island in half. you should look at it on google earth; as you're zooming in you see the island as one long strand, then once you zoom in closer the updated aerials show it broken in half. You can see where the western tip is slowly elongating; like a finger nail or a claw. It will be many years before the island reconnects, if even at all. Whether it reconnects or not, it was a beautiful day and I'm sure there are many more to come.

Controlled Burn

Saturday morning I received a text from my ecologist friend 'It's a burn day - check your email for directions'. I drove out to an area called Black Creek Swamp where they were burning a pine savanna. By the time I got there the fire had already swept through a majority of the site leaving the ground chard, logs smoldering and a dry heat surrounded every step I made. The tops of black titi and inkberry were left green and shiny; spring blooms still hanging on. While it looks like something awful may have just occurred, burning is part of the natural cycle for pine savannas. Within weeks new vegetation, bright green, will be popping out of the ground - being fed by the new surge of nutrients and space available to them.

The pictures only tell part of the story. Being there, feeling the heat and breathing in the smoldering ground is a more powerful experience than the sight of it.

zomBEES

I'd like to give a shout out to the clever kids that live around these parts.

Hand Painted Biloxi Street Signs

I just like them...

Matchbook

As many know, I am a collector of matchbooks. This is one I found a while back, stuck in my bag and forgot about it. I'm not sure where I got it from. Yesterday I was digging through my bag and found it lying open and saw that something was inscribed... I hope that who ever this was written to got the message and that I didn't just swipe it on the way out the door; therefore, the receiver not receiving such a caring message from such a caring friend about some other obviously caring person.

Fresh Food for a Fresh Year

After being gone for a few weeks to Alabama for Christmas and then to Minneapolis for New Years I arrived home in Biloxi. While it was so good to see both my and Sarah's families again it is always nice to return home. Its so good to wake up and walk Pounder down to the beach, look out at the ocean and start the day; so good. Speaking of fresh starts, we have a new year. This year I'm looking to grow and prepare more foods than before - learn more about my soil, what does and doesn't grow - how to prepare the foods I grow, what does and doesn't taste... and so on. So far the radishes are what have been ringing in the new year. They are delightfully spicy.

Nostalgic Line

For the past week it has rained and rained with an accompaniment of fog. It is an interesting thing when no matter where you go, for an extended time, you can never see more that a few hundred feet, if that. It makes you focus more on what is right in front of you, the present; not what is beyond, the future. On Sunday morning the rain broke for a bit so i went down to the beach where there is no horizon. I feel like the birds were even slightly nostalgic for that magic line.