Wordy Wednesday

It's nuts trying to maintain 4 blogs 

and prepare for a week's vacation. 

That doesn't mean I haven't been blogging at all,

it just means some suffer more than others. 

So, in a shameless promotion of myself, 

check out my other blogs to see what I might be up to.

The Wannabe Farm- All about life at home: chickens, horses, cats, gardens, preserving food, recipes... a real hodgepodge of stuff

Things The Brat Child Says- This is all about the funny stuff my son does. And he's pretty funny.

Gettysburg Ghosts - Like the title suggests, this is a blog about the paranormal: Stories, movie and book reviews, instructional information on investigations and whatever else I manage to blog about. 

Because It's Monday

 

Here's a picture of beach toys and swim shoes.

Vacation preparation is upon me and

I have 2 weeks to get everything caught up and organized.

That's all the blogging I have in me today.

It's Monday.

Anticipation

It's Friday, though with all the things I have going on, the weekend doesn't feel like a reprieve.  

I have vacation coming up and there's a lot to get ready for- 

meals to plan, food to buy, tie dye supplies to buy... 

And though I'm looking forward to vacation- 

specifically not working or 

dealing with people 

and being with my family

for a week, 

I'm really excited for this September.  

What's up in September you ask?

 This:

There is a video that goes with this photo. It's pretty hilarious.

 

DJ Jazzy J and the Fresh Princess

Basically, it's one hell of a hootenanny!

I CAN'T WAIT!

I-107

One of my favorite things to do in Deltaville

was going out with Pepop to get the crabpots.

The above photo shows (from l to r)

Sheba, Pepop's dog, me, my dad and Pepop.

Every chance I got, I'd go out to pull pots.

I think Pepop enjoyed the free child labor company every summer.

Even to this day, I remember his buoy number:

I-107.

I was trained to look for it so I could grab the right lines.

The perk of having someone in the family with crabpots

was having steamed crabs.

(yes, that's me in my underwear watching the crabs go in the pot)

My dad and I steaming crabs

It was always fun watching the crabs being put in the pot.

Barefoot, my cousin and I secretly liked when a crab escaped and ran around waving its claws 

sending us screaming and scrambling up onto the stool

out of the way.

Eventually I got old enough to torture and play with the crabs before they got cooked help.

This vacation, I'm hoping to catch enough crabs

in our measly 2 pots and 

with chicken necks on string to steam some ourselves like the good ole days.

Dogs

Dogs have always been a part of Deltaville.

Whether it was dogs of our own

or Pepop's dogs

or dogs from across the creek who swim over when they hear you splashing and having fun

there's always a dog around.

These are photos from the time before we had a pier.

When the yard wasn't graded

and there was a steep hill down to the water.

This is Lady the German Shepherd and Ben the Irish Setter/Weimeraner mix

who would gladly navigate the steep drop to catch sticks.

Stingray Point- The Final Years

These top photos are from later years at Stingray Point.

That's my oldest child in the photos.

Things have changed at Stingray.

Ownership changed hands and the beach is no longer available for public use.

You have to buy a lot in the wooded area behind the beach to gain access to a portion of the beach.

The other portion is now privately owned by someone who at one time complained about the trash.

I find this amusing because nowadays, 

the beach looks a little crappy what with the weeds and the falling down fence

and the million and 1 no trespassing signs everywhere.

These photos don't show most of that because who wants pictures of a million and 1 

no trespassing signs?

(Ok so I might have a few photos of myself and my cousin posing next to no trespassing signs but that's not important).

It's sad really.

So many years and

so many memories.

(I'd like to take a moment to mention a law that states no one can own a beach meaning if you enter a beach from the water via boat, you can be there up to the high tide line and not be trespassing.  The Kennedys tried to fight this law and lost. Just throwing that out there for ya)

Stingray Point- Childhood Years Addendum

It never fails.

When you're looking for specific photos, 

you never find them until the day after you needed them.

Here my cousin and I are being buried in the sand at Stingray Point.

Here we are looking like buried dead captains.

I said we've grown up to be eccentric adults we were odd children.

It wasn't just playing in the sand that we loved.

The water was the best part.

My cousin and I had a favorite raft.

The raft in this photo isn't that raft.

The one we liked was an owl.

This is just a turtle raft we used and worried about being swept out to sea in

every time we used it.

Me and my sister

My sister, brother and dad

I included this photo because I wanted to show the weirdness is obviously a genetic trait.

Why in the world are they lifting their leg??

Stingray Point- The Childhood Years

As kids, my cousin and I grew up hearing the story of how Stingray Point got its name.

The only thing was, we thought Captain John Smith had actually died 

and that his body was buried somewhere on the beach.

My cousin and I digging

We spent a lot of time digging holes 

hoping to find the Captain's skeleton. 

(we are were odd children).

A lot of our time was spent at Stingray Point during the summer.

It was the beach where all the locals swam.

All of my cousins went there.

We played silly games like pretending to be Clydesdales

running through the water

(this was years before Baywatch so we went with Clydesdales instead of Baywatch Babes, except I seriously doubt we would have pretended to be Baywatch Babes).

That's me in the striped bathing suit with my head cut off and my sister front and center

One year, a tank mysteriously appeared on the beach.

The adults determined it was probably something off a ship.

Of course, we decided it was off a ship that sank off the coast in a storm.

Probably a pirate ship.
Because, you know, pirate ships had oil tanks.

We loved using it as a dive platform
which means we jumped off of it into ankle or knee deep water
depending on the tide.
It was slippery and the parents were always worried we'd slip
and crack our head open.
Or maybe that was just our grandmother
(she was always cautioning us about doing things she was certain would crack our heads open).
As the tank rusted,
the worry was about slicing our leg open and getting tetanus.

 Really, it's a wonder we survived.

Stingray Point- The Beginning

This is Captain John Smith.

I'm sure you've heard some version of his story-

settled Jamestown, got in a fight with Powhatan and his Native American posse 

and was saved by Pocahontas Powhatan's daughter who was around 12-13 years old at the time.

Contrary to Disney, Capt John and Pocahontas were not in love.

She ended up marrying  John Rolf and dying of smallpox.

But that isn't the story I want to tell.

Replica of the Explorer at the Holly Point Nature Center

On July 17, 1608

Captain John Smith and his crew aboard the shallop Explorer

ran aground at the mouth of the Rappahannock River.

As they waited for the tide to come in, Smith and his men began fishing in the shallows

spearing fish with their swords.

Captain Smith speared a stingray and was struck in the wrist by the ray's barb.
It was a painful wound,
and John Smith, certain he had been mortally wounded
had his crew prepare his grave on the nearby island.
Captain Smith did not die.
He recovered and was able to eat the offending ray for dinner.
He named the nearby isle Stingray Point.
The name is still used today.

There are some who thought that the area in question was actually the nearby island called Gwynn's Island which can be seen from the shore of what is called Stingray Point.
However, after much research into Captain John Smith's logs,
 it has been determined that the area where this took place
was actually a small atoll near the area where the
 Stingray Point Lighthouse once stood.

Honor

This past Memorial Day Weekend,

the Brat Child wanted to place a flag on the grave of his great-great grandfather

(the Brat Child shares a name with him in some way).

Because we had extra flags, 

we visited other family graves 

and even placed flags on the graves of veterans who didn't have any.

This is something that the Brat Child's Cub Scout Pack does every year

and he really enjoys finding the veterans' graves 

and seeing what war they fought in.

I like that he's so gung-ho about honoring those who fought for our freedoms.

Come Back

 "The fish-hawk, too, is occasionally seen at this season sailing majestically over the water, and he who has once observed it will not soon forget the majesty of its flight. It sails the air like a ship of the line, worthy to struggle with the elements, falling back from time to time like a ship on its beam ends, and holding its talons up as if ready for the arrows, in the attitude of the national bird. It is a great presence, as of the master of river and forest.

Belle Isle State Park, VA

 Its eye would not quail before the owner of the soil, but make him feel like an intruder on its domains. And then its retreat, sailing so steadily away, is a kind of advance. I have by me one of a pair of ospreys, which have for some years fished in this vicinity, shot by a neighboring pond, measuring more than two feet in length, and six in the stretch of its wings.

Belle Isle State Park, VA

Bethel Beach Mathews, VA

Sturgeon Creek

Nuttall mentions that "The ancients, particularly Aristotle, pretended that the ospreys taught their young to gaze at the sun, and those who were unable to do so were destroyed. Linnaeus even believed, on ancient authority, that one of the feet of this bird had all the toes divided, while the other was partly webbed, so that it could swim with one foot, and grasp a fish with the other." But that educated eye is now dim, and those talons are nerveless. Its shrill scream seems yet to linger in its throat, and the roar of the sea in its wings. There is the tyranny of Jove in its claws, and his wrath in the erectile feathers of the head and neck. It reminds me of the Argonautic expedition, and would inspire the dullest to take flight over Parnassus."

Henry David Thoreau from "Natural History of Massachusetts"

Sturgeon Creek sometime in the 1980's

When I was a kid, one of the boat rides I liked to go on

 was to travel to the other side of Sturgeon Creek

 to see the ospreys' nest. 

 It sat atop a tree hanging over the water.

Back then, there weren't many osprey around.

Nests were scarce and seeing one was a treat.

It's a great thing to see the comeback they've made. 

The above nest isn't there anymore (the tree finally succumbed to gravity)

but there are several nests in the area.

And every day you can hear the distinct cry of a fish hawk. 

Because It's Friday

It's Friday and it's raining. 

So here's some shots from last Friday. Wish I was back there.

Heron outside Seabreeze restaurant. This was actually from Saturday

Last Friday- Good wine and a good book and a great view

Last Friday Smores after dinner

The Couch

For my entire life, this was the couch in our place in Deltaville.

I spent a lot of nights sleeping on that couch as did my cousin.

It always reminded me of the curtains Scarlett O'Hara made her dress out of.

Okay, so it reminds me more of the Carol Burnett version of the Scarlett O'Hara dress made out of curtains, though now I see it actually is the wallpaper it reminds me of.

Either way, it's ugly.

When the tornado hit, there was some hope that the couch had been sucked up and was halfway to Delaware,

but no such luck.

It was definitely on its way out,

and this past weekend was the time.

Last lounge before the dump

Despite the fact that the couch is indeed ugly,

it has been part of my life for, well, my whole life.

And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't slightly sad about it going

or that I didn't take a piece of fabric to remember it by.

 Or that I didn't video tape it being tossed into the dumpster and crushed.
The woman operating the dump laughed and laughed.
Asked if she should play Taps.