High Tides and Windy Days
Greetings from the island everyone. I hope that all of you are doing well, and enjoying this breezy and very cool first real norther of the Fall season. I sit at my little kitchen table on Saturday afternoon, Oct 13, knowing that the forecast shows a hard blowing norther coming down in about 36 hours. The winds today are blowing very briskly from the south, easily 25 mph, and strong south winds this time of year are typical of a soon approaching norther.
I’m hoping these north winds will blow those winged demon mosquitoes out of here! In total, the island received 27” of rain for the month of September, so the ground is very saturated. Any small amounts of rain since then cannot soak in quickly, causing a continuous hatching of mosquitoes. I sure wish that Noah would have swatted those two suckers before boarding that ark!
I’ve had a bad string of luck lately with having to replace mechanical things, the outcome of living in a harsh saltwater environment. Last month I had to replace both of my Dish receiver boxes and my older outside porch TV. Well the NEW 39 day old TV on the porch went out as well, but luckily Best Buy agreed to give me a new one. And then just two weeks ago, my generator stopped working! When I found my Harbor Freight receipt, I noticed that it was still under the 2 year replacement warranty for 12 more days. Yay! So after hauling it to Victoria, I walked out with a brand new generator.
The tides, up until this writing anyway, have been extremely high. Strong east winds and then the development of Hurricane Michael in the Gulf of Mexico, caused the tides to rise very high, covering my pier with water. The tides also pushed all the way up to the dunes, making it impossible to drive along the beach. I’m hoping these strong north winds will bring those tides back down to normal.
About three weeks ago I received an email from the producer of the television show, Texas Country Reporter. I’m not familiar with this program, but apparently they travel Texas and do filming segments of unusual and unique people and places. Somehow they had heard of my years of living full time on this barrier island and wanted to come out and conduct an interview and film about my life out here. I was hesitant about doing it at first, but finally decided to go forward with it. On Wed, Oct 10, a crew of three from Texas Country Reporter came out to the island for 4 hours and did the filming and interviewing. Thank you to POC resident Otto Haardt for providing boat transportation for the TV crew. I will let my Island Life readers know when the program will air, but it will be several more months.
Of course prior to the TV people arriving, I did my best to clean up around the place, inside and out. While picking up debris in the yard area before mowing, I came across a 40” rattlesnake that was none too happy to be disturbed. That was the first rattlesnake I have seen in over a year in my yard. I hate those things! I think that my guineas have been doing a great job of keeping them away.
With Fall in full swing on the island, I’ll be using my crockpot much more to prepare meals. Please email me any good and simple crockpot recipes that you might have, I would certainly appreciate it. You can reach me at ccbennetsen@yahoo.com.
That’s it from the island for now, everyone take care and enjoy this nice cool Fall weather.
