Historically, October tends to have some high tides in the coastal Carolinas; this past October certainly attempted, thanks to the excessive rains, to outpace its past outpourings (apologies!). Social media in these here parts was flooded (apologies again!) with pictures of people wading and kayaking across driveways, streets, and yards.
Once day when I arrived home from teaching, for instance, LCB entertained me with a list of all the items that came floating through our backyard during the morning’s high tide, including a soccer ball, all the logs from our wood pile, and the neighbor’s large flower pot. I don’t have pictures of these highest high tides, but here are some of the other high tides we experienced during October.
I don’t know if it’s related, but the birds seemed to have been more frequent visitors this last month,
landing far more often on our marsh bird house
and in this case, my neighbor’s roof.
When I lived in the Midwest, November was my least favorite month; it lacked the beauty of the October colors and the brightness of the fresh December snows. The clouded skies seemed endless, the cold seemed like it was just settling in for the long haul, and the damp brownness of nature seemed to stretch everywhere. So, one of the things I now love about Novembers on the Carolina coast is that they don’t feel like the Novembers of the majority of my life. Some of the colors and growth is subdued, and the temperatures cool a bit, but there are still the lush greens of the live oaks and the palm trees, warm breezes still come sweeping across the island, and the sunsets on the salt marsh are seared with gold.
And of course, there are still the afternoons that bring with them the remnants of summer.
A girl could get used to this.
I can’t resist leaving you with a flashback to another November, one four years ago, and an afternoon where Baby-Girl renamed the egrets and discussed the odds of someday going potty in heaven.
Having now doubled in age since that earlier November, she’s made her peace with the bird nomenclature, but the jury’s still out on the later subject.