Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head

Weather seems to be the main topic around here lately.  If it is not record setting heat then it is big storms and torrential rain.  This is a picture taken about noon today just before the bottom dropped out.  It looks like it will be back to high heat/humidity and no rain within a couple of days.  I will be glad when this summer is over so I can start getting some things done outside again.

Shutter Therapy

It was a dark and stormy night (and day).  As Bill Beebe posted recently in his blog, I decided to get out and take advantage of the great even lighting on this rainy day and get in some 'shutter therapy', something I need to do a lot more of.  Most of my photos recently have just been 'snapshots' and are not what I would consider worth looking at more than once.  I really need to change that.  Today's first photo of a couple of Vinca flowers was taken in the rain with an Olympus OM-D camera with a Nikon 55mm Micro-Nikkor lens at f2.8.  The second photo was taken with the same camera but with the Panasonic/Leica 1.4/25mm lens at f8.

Now We Have Rain

After a week of near 100 degree weather with no rain the weather finally broke.  The last two days it has cooled down and we have had some torrential rain.  Last night local roads and highways were flooded and I had a steady stream of water coming down the fireplace inside the house. 

Yummy!

Just a little crab dip appetizer at the Dock House Restaurant in Beaufort, North Carolina.

Raise It Up

This is what folks around here do when they get tired of their homes being flooded by hurricanes. 

Coolness

Ice and refrigeration changed the face of the south.  I can't imagine living out here without air conditioning.

Happy Independence Day

Just a hot and lazy Independence Day out here on the coast of North Carolina.

 

Personalized

Folks around here like to personalize their homes.  I like it!

Hot, then Not!

It started out scorching hot again today.  I showed 99 degrees around 2pm and I was outside adjusting the fan in the chicken coop and misting things down.  Then around 3:30 the storms started to roll through.  This was taken out the front door just before the last line moved through at 5pm.  The good thing is that it cooled things down.  The thermometer shows 82 degrees now which is nice.

Oh God, it's Hot!

Egg Frying Hot

It got up to 98 degrees here today and it is supposed to be above 100 all weekend.  This heat is brutal with the high coastal humidity that we have.  I was worried about the chickens.  I sprayed down their sand with water and then hung a high volume fan above them.  They made it through the day but they looked stressed by sundown.  They dig down into the sand, sit in the hole, spread their wings out and pant when they get real hot. 

Pacific on the Atlantic

I took this shot down by the beach last night.  It is one of those 'beach junk' stores and I loved the colors of both the lit store and the sunset lit sky.  This is the shot straight out of the camera with no enhancement.  We have been having some spectacular sunsets lately.

Forest Fire

This was a shot I took on my one hour drive home from work this morning.  It looks like fog but it is not.  It is dense smoke from a 21,000 acre forest fire in the Croatan National Forest which is just down the road.  It has been burning for about 10 days now and has been drifting smoke over our area on and off depending on the winds.

Hot!

Oh my God it was hot today.  I showed 93 degrees in the shade on the back porch with high humidity and light winds.  This is the time of year here that I don't like and which kicks off hurricane season.  I took this picture this evening after sunset just before dark.  It was actually later than I wanted.  I had driven by this creek about 10 minutes earlier and it was much better with a brilliant sky but after racing home, getting my camera, then racing back the light had completely faded.  Of course it had to be one of the few times that I didn't have my camera with me.  The magnificent light on clouds at sunset frequently lasts only minutes.

Paul's Produce

Paul's Produce is just a few miles down the road.  This is where I go for some of the best corn around.  Unfortunately, I was just a little bit late to catch them open today.

Garage Time

I finished with the concrete coating and now I am getting ready to tackle the garage.  Today I worked on replacing water damaged lower panels in the garage door.  I hope to get the whole garage door painted tomorrow.  Next I will be repairing/replacing the lower areas of the siding all the way around the garage which were also water damaged during last years hurricane and will follow that up with a fresh coat of paint. 

Dinner

I just picked these veggies for my dinner.  There are yellow beans, onions, cherry tomatoes, sage, purple bell pepper, banana pepper, anaheim pepper and jalapeno peppers (I love peppers).  I will cut these up along with a little chicken breast then saute in a skillet and serve it all over rice.  I have a LOT more veggies coming in right now from just 8 Earth Boxes than we can all eat so the freezer is filling up.  It is amazing how many vegetables you can get off of just one plant.

Happy Father's Day Dad!

My dad on my bike a few years ago.  He's 81 now and still going strong.

Painting Concrete

Today's chore was to paint the concrete in the back of the house.  It was looking pretty bad and the rough texture of the concrete was a magnet for dirt and the growth of mildew.  It required power washing about twice a year to get all the gunk off of it.  It should be much easier to maintain now.  I painted this concrete 12 years ago but it pretty much wore off after about 8 years.

Lady Helen

This area of coastal North Carolina used to have a huge, vibrant fishing community.  It is now just a ghost of its former self with just a few boats left, many of which are poorly maintained and barely hanging on.  I have been here for 15 years and have seen many of the changes.  Most of the boats are gone.  All the small bayside villages have processing plants, ice plants, boat yards and supply shops that are all closed now.   It's sad and it is the same situation that has played out across this country in one industry after another.  This picture was taken today just after sunset as it was getting dark.

Paint Prep

I spent all day power washing the concrete outdoors.  It was slow going as I had to get in close to remove all the mildew growing on the surface.   I will be applying concrete paint to all of this concrete in the back of the house, around the garage, in the next few days when all threat of rain has passed.  My next project is to repaint the garage and chicken coop.

At Anchor

Just a quiet evening at anchor near Oriental, NC.

More Veggies

This is the average daily harvest right now, not including an onion and some herbs.  Here are some squash, green and yellow beans, banana peppers, a jalapeno pepper and some cherry tomatoes.  I get a bell pepper also every few days but it is not quite hot enough to get the peppers and tomatoes cranking yet.  I am also growing habanero, anaheim and chili peppers as I am a real pepper fan.

Oh my God!  I can't believe I haven't posted anything in over a week.  I just started a new hospital job and orientation has been a bear.  I am off of orientation now and have started working my regular schedule (which is not full time as I want to have time to enjoy life a little).  The pic attached is the 2002 Pontiac Grand Am which we found for my stepdaughter this week for the princely sum of $2,500.  This car replaces the car that she wrecked and totalled almost 2 weeks ago. 

Out With the Old, In With the New

I felt like a kid in a candy store today.  I replaced my 15 year old Murray mower with a John Deere D130 mower with a 20hp V-twin engine.  After mowing I felt like I had moved from an economy car up to a luxury sedan.  The first thing I did was to disable the seat safety cut-off switch which cuts off the mower if you get up off the seat.  I then disabled the RIO switch which requires you to step on the brake and push a button before you can mow in reverse.  For web searchers on the subject just check out the pictures below (I don't recommend you do this for safety reasons, I'm just documenting what I did).  To disable the seat switch which is on the bottom of the seat I just cut the three wires leading to the plug.  You can't use jumpers to do the trick, just cut all three wires and it's good to go.  As for the RIO switch I just lifted up the engine cover, reached underneath and pushed the RIO switch out of the dash before making a small wire jumper to permanently connect the two pins at the switch.  After that I just popped the switch back into the dash.  After this I removed all the stupid safety warning stickers placed all over the mower such as the one on the blade deck which stated 'Warning, do not place hands under the deck while the blade is engaged or severe injury will result'.  Oh really?  I didn't realize that!!!  Fear of liability and warning crap all over everything drives me absolutely crazy.  I guess we are just a country of morons that don't have any common sense.  Anybody that reaches under a mower deck with the blades engaged deserves to loose their fingers.

Rain!!!

I don't even have a picture for today.  I left the house at 5:30 to make it to work by 7am.  Just before getting there the rain from Tropical Storm Beryl had started.  There was TORRENTIAL rain all day with some tornadoes wiping out some houses.  When I left work at 7:30pm the sky was clearing and the rain was gone.  I guess I lucked out not having to drive through any of it.  There was water, water everywhere though.

Beryl

Tropical storm Beryl is supposed to slide up the coast and will be impacting us tonight and tomorrow.  The boaters were all securing their boats today.  I'm sure the torrential rains will probably be at their worst for my hour drive to work in the morning.

Memorial Day Crash

My stepdaughter ran a red light this afternoon and got broadsided by another car.  Thankfully nobody was hurt but I'm sure her car was totalled as it was a mess.  I didn't get a picture until all the cars had been towed.  This was the last thing left on the roadside.

First Harvest

My veggies planted in the Earth Boxes are starting to come in.  Everything is growing like mad and there are probably 20 squash almost ready to pick in just one of the two squash boxes.  In the first pic I have two boxes of squash on the left, 2 boxes of tomatoes in the back in front of the windows, then bell and hot peppers and green beans on the right.  Just out of the pic to the left up on the porch are onions and multiple herbs.  The tomato plants are full of little green tomatoes,  pepper plants full of peppers and of course the squash which are going crazy.  Only the green beans haven't starting producing fruit yet.  The second pic is my first little harvest of three squash and a couple of jalapeno peppers.

Ocean Moisture

Just a shot this afternoon of moisture laden clouds rolling in off of the ocean ahead of tropical storm Beryl.  It's actually moving towards northern Florida today but is supposed to swing up this way in a couple of days so the rain will be picking up.  This picture is actually a bit of a cheat as I was playing with the Dynamic Tone setting on my Olympus OM-D which creates some wild contrast extremes.  The bottom of the clouds were not that dark.

Reduced Visibility

I had this heavy fog to contend with on the entire 55 mile drive to work today.  Needless to say it slowed everybody down so I was almost, but not quite, late to work.  Thankfully I left the house about 15 minutes early.

Tractors R Us

This is my new job.  I am a used tractor salesman.

Which Way Should We Go

First Tropical Storm Alberto was forecast to hit here.  Then it wasn't.  Then they said maybe.  Now it looks like it will move off into the Atlantic.  I was kind of looking forward to it as the rain is good this time of year.  Today was my first day of 14 days of orientation at my new job in a regional hospital 50 miles down the road.  Seems like a great place with good management so we will see.   It will be nice to have some cash flowing in again:o)

Not My Favorite Place to Spend the Night

I spent a good part of last night in the emergency room with my stepson.  He started moaning at the house then continuously throwing up.  When he started saying "Oh God, Oh God, get me to the emergency room and drive as fast as you can"  I figured it was time to go as it is a long 30 minute drive to the hospital.  It turned out to be a kidney stone which we knew as he had one the year before last.  They pumped him up with IV Dilaudid and some other stuff then sent him home with more pain meds to wait for the stone to pass.

The Calm Before the Storm?

We just finished 3 days of rain caused by a little area of low pressure that just sat off of the NC coast.  Today it moved south and we had beautiful weather.  I spent some time this afternoon just sitting and pondering life while looking out over the Neuse River in Oriental, NC.  Now that area of low pressure has intensified into Tropical Storm Alberto and is supposed to drift back this way over the next 3 days.  This is the earliest in the year that I can ever remember having a tropical storm out here.  I guess it will be back to rain and wind for the first part of the week. 

Nothing but Rain

It has rained constantly for two days now.  Wave after wave of thunderstorms rolling in off of the ocean has kept outdoor work to a minimum.

Eggs and Veggies

I installed a small solar panel on the chicken coop roof today.  It charges a battery in the orange box.  At sunset it automatically turns on an LED light in the coop, energizes the electric fence around their coop and their outdoor area and turns on a baby monitor inside the coop which I can listen to from inside the house.  My veggies are doing great.  Tomatoes are starting to form.  Bell peppers are budding and the squash plants are getting huge.  The last pic is of baby squashes starting to form.  There are also green beans and onions along with multiple herbs in the mix.

Floors

It's nothing but projects around here.  After finishing the chicken coop and run I have moved to the inside.   I have started work on hurricane flood damaged floors which have dried without warping but which grew a funk on the surface.  Throw rugs have been down since removing the carpet after the flood.  I managed to scrub, lightly sand then wax the floors throughout most of the house this weekend.  Molding replacement and painting is next on the agenda.   I start a new job next week so I am trying to get as much accomplished as possible before then. 

Flew the Coop

This is my last chicken post for a while.  Today I officially opened the coop into the new run.  The chickens just stood at the door looking out for about 15 minutes until one finally got the courage to hop out.  Once one jumped down the rest came piling out.  They loved it out there and when it started to get dark they all piled back into the coop.  Tomorrow I put a solar panel on their roof to power a light and an electric poultry fence which I will be putting completely around the coop and run then extending out into the yard.  This will give them extra room to roam around when I am here to watch plus it will create another layer of defense against predators.

Finally Finished

I finally finished my chicken run.  You can't see it in the picture but the sides are all heavy wire screen (hardware cloth) to keep the chickens in and the predators out.  I will be letting the chickens out tomorrow.  I still have about 1,000 pounds of sand to put inside the run but that's no biggie.

Chicken Run

All I have been doing for several days now is building the chicken run off the side of the chicken coop (garden shed).  I am almost done.  All I have to do is finish putting the screen on the front then extend the bottom below ground level all the way around.  A lot of time and money for a bunch of chickens but I am enjoying it and I am sure they will too. 

Olympus OM-D

Well, I finally received my Olympus OM-D which I pre-ordered back in early February.  I have been so busy building a chicken run the last few days that I haven't even had a chance to give the new camera a real day out.  My preliminary assessment is that this is a gem of a camera.  Using it a bit around the house shows that the image stabilization is the finest that I have ever used.  The stabilized image in the viewfinder just seems to float.  Image detail at 100% is superb.  The camera is solid and substantial.   All control dials and buttons are solid and decisive.  There is nothing so far that I don't like.  This really is the Micro 4/3 camera that I have been waiting for.