Clint & Corky
Enjoying New Experiences
Greetings from the island everyone. I hope all of you are doing well and had a most wonderful Mothers Day with your mom on Sunday. Corky and I scooted across the bay early in the morning and went to church in Victoria with mom and the siblings, and then we all went out for a nice lunch. It was a great day. I love you, Mom.
I am now starting my 12th year living full time on this barrier island, and nearly 18 years overall. In the beginning of my full time residency, and after nearly 25 years dealing with the public as a police officer, I had no desires to be in the company of or associate with people. I was very much content with occasionally talking to a few fellow islanders, writing my articles and keeping to my private self, with Barnacle, my boxer, being my only needed companionship.
In the past year, however, I have come to realize that there are great people out there to develop wonderful friendships with. It has been a fun time having friends out to the island and then venturing across the bay to spend time with them. Heck, I even went to the POC Crawfish Festival a few weeks ago, something I would never have done before. I had a great time there and then went out and enjoyed a few drinks with friends.
I also want to thank Earl and Carla for inviting me to their BBQ, where Don served up some delicious pork loin steaks. Later that night, it was a first for me to walk out on the front beach pier and then visit Boggy, where the sky was beautiful and filled with amazing stars.
My best friend, Susan, and I have been beach combing lately in an effort to find different “stuff” to add to our collections. We visited with Mike Burnett and his wife, Sam, both of whom are avid and experienced beach find and sea-bean collecting enthusiasts. After seeing Mike’s wonderful and huge displayed collection, we are very much motivated to achieve the same type of beach find collection, even if it’s on a much smaller scale. I set up a large shelf unit on my covered front deck to help display the assorted beach finds that are collected, and Susan has a very nice display area set up in town. It is so enjoyable walking the beach and finding such an assortment of washed up goodies, you just never know what you might find.
While on the beach, we are also keeping watch for sea turtle tracks, indicating that a turtle has crawled onto the beach searching for a spot to lay eggs. That would be such a wonderful joy to find a sea turtle nest. If a sea turtle is ever located laying eggs, please contact Padre Island NS Division of Sea Turtle Science & Recovery, 866-887-8535, immediately. This organization is highly experienced in responding and collecting the eggs so that they can be incubated for a much higher success rate of survival.
My tomato plants are doing fairly well, having survived the strong winds from recent northers blowing across the island. Some of the smaller cherry tomatoes are ripening and have a wonderful taste. I am very late this year on getting my melons started, but the raised beds are cleaned out and ready for seed planting now.
Well that’s it from the island for now, everyone take care and have a wonderful day.
Clint Bennetsen resides full time on Matagorda Peninsula Island and writes a monthly article for the Dolphin Talk newspaper. For comments or questions, Clint can be contacted at ccbennetsen@yahoo.com, or dolphin1@tisd.net.
Clint’s Island Beach Finds
