Over Labor Day weekend, Nancy and I travelled to Bath, NC, about 40 miles south of Greenville, home of East Carolina University. We would spend the weekend with my daughter, Angelin’s family, and drive up to see our grandson, Ben, a cheerleader for the ECU Pirates. We attended the Saturday night football game, or tried to. Somebody saw a flash of lightning and the game was delayed a half-hour. … [Read more...]
Road Trip: Eastern, North Carolina
(View from the Heron House) I spent the weekend in Eastern North Carolina over Labor Day. I would define that area as east of Raleigh, south of Rocky Mount, west from the Pamlico Sound and north of Jacksonville. This is tobacco country – hot, sandy and flat. A pile of mulch in somebody’s yard qualifies as a genuine hill. It is really flat. Pecan trees grow here and moss slithers along … [Read more...]
Ham, Cheese and Noodles
I was poking around in the meat department at Kroger’s and saw a pack of Hormel Diced Ham. I thought at the time I might use it in a breakfast omelet, but I never got around to it. One night for dinner, with nothing in particular in mind, I saw the pack of ham in the fridge and decided to use it. So I created a concoction of Ham, Noodles and Cheese and it was scrumptious – the ultimate in comfort … [Read more...]
Topwater Tides on the Potomac
Capt. Chaconas says that low tides around late morning into early afternoon will allow for a genuine topwater bite this week. Topwaters like poppers and walkers are all good bets. Fish over grass or along marsh or pad edges. Try them with 12-pound Gamma Copoly line. Vary retrieves from continuous movement to adding a few pauses. Hollow frogs on braid will work over thick grass at the lowest … [Read more...]
Sight Fishing Report
Capt. Alan Caine The weather this year has been the most inconsistent I’ve ever seen in 14 years of living in Wilmington, NC. Between 21 straight days of rain at one point and some very windy days it made the water really dirty. This made for some very challenging weeks of sight fishing and fly-fishing trips, and made us resort to bait fishing many days to make the trip successful. … [Read more...]
More About the FBI
As I mentioned last week, my dad was a Special Agent for the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover in the 1950’s and 60’s. Daddy never killed anybody as an agent, but that’s only because he never shot at anybody. If he had, they would be dead. Daddy carried a Smith & Wesson, 38-revolver with a 5-inch barrel. At work, he carried it in a simple leather holster on his right hip. At home, it was on the … [Read more...]
Too Much Rain at Tanyard
Most golf course suffer from a lack of rain in the summer resulting in burned out greens and tee boxes. Tanyard, in Louisa, had the opposite problem – too much rain in a short period of time. About two weeks ago, it rained cats and dogs in Louisa. It rained so much on the golf course that water actually boiled up beneath the greens and dislodged many tender shoots of grass. We had played … [Read more...]
Fall is For Beets
We had such a successful garden this spring that we decided to extend our growing season with a few beets. Nancy scattered some in her patio boxes and they sprouted immediately. We are now in the process of thinning. Beets prefer cool weather to brutally hot summers, yet if you plant too early in the spring, they just sit there and sulk. Some years, I have sewn beet seeds with phenomenal luck … [Read more...]
Blue Collar Sparrows
I went out to the shed last evening – where I usually scatter some seeds– and the birds had all left, except for a small band of house sparrows. They were scratching away, happy to find a few seeds that the other birds ignored. I watched as they filled their little craws with millet and then flew away. I love my sparrows – the Blue Collar birds of my back yard. Sparrows are the Rodney … [Read more...]
The County Seat Restaurant
By Sherman Shifflett Ava and I enjoy eating at new restaurants (plus old restaurants), and we don't mind driving a distance. We travel to Tappahannock two or three times a year to Lowery's Seafood Restaurant. That's a two-hour haul each way. And, once a year, we drive three hours to Palisades Restaurant in the little village of Eggleston, VA (Giles County), west of Blacksburg. On that … [Read more...]
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