First Day Off

I spent the first hour or so this morning, my first day in a four-week chunk of time off, making what will hopefully and thankfully be the last of my bill-paying rounds.

Upon returning home around 9:30, I grabbed a book and my ipod and sank into this chair

where I remained for the following hour and a half, contemplating this view

and watching these dogs

wear themselves out chasing anoles up and down the deck.

Now that my two obligations for the day (paying bills; posting here) are complete, if you will excuse me I am headed back to my chair for another hour and a half of limin'.

Preparing for Vacation

HB and I are getting ready to leave for Colorado on Friday. We'll be gone for two weeks.

In addition to normal preparations, I am also trying out some apps for my iPod so that I can keep this blog updated on a more regular basis while we're on vacation.

This is a test post using blogpress. I should have another post up later today.

Location:BVI

Tea Anyone?

An excess of rain on Friday night brought a few new plants to our yard.

Are these the type of mushrooms that go into the special tea brewed for full moon parties?

I have no idea, but there's more than one mycologist who reads this blog that might hazard a guess.

Surf Forecast

HB and I were so eager to snorkel yesterday, after several weeks of being away from the beach. We loaded up all our stuff and headed to Brewer's around 11:30, hoping to beat the crowds and get a few great hours in at the beach. When we arrived, though, we found that the waves were hitting the beach pretty hard, stirring up lots of silt and drastically reducing the visibility. We still snorkeled for about forty-five minutes, but it wasn't the quality snorkeling we're used to.

If we'd been thinking, we would've checked the surf forecast before we left the house, and maybe decided on a different beach, or not bothered with the snorkeling equipment.

A useful tool for anyone heading to the beach, the surf forecast provides details not only of surfing conditions, but also of tides and wave heights. Whether you want to play in the waves crashing on shore, or float easily in lake-style placid waters, the surf forecast is a great way to help ensure a good day at the beach.

Especially in the BVI, where conditions can differ widely from beach to beach, and where so many beaches are within easy reach, it's always a good move to check the surf forecast and find the beach offering the conditions most conducive to your desired activities before heading out. For snorkelers, ideal conditions include a low surf rating, small wave heights, small wave energies, and tide that is near low, but on its way back in (less silt being dragged out over the reef). Surfers, on the other hand, would look for opposite conditions, and pay more attention to the wave period, which can definitely affect surfing quality.

We like to use http://www.surf-forecast.com/, which provides details for thousands of beaches and surf breaks around the world.

Crabitty Crab

 Creature Feature Sunday is back!

While walking the dogs Friday morning, I came across this hermit crab hanging out in the garden. Roscoe smelled the crab, but lost interest when he couldn't figure out why that shell smelled so good. After I took the dogs inside and got the camera, I came back out to find the crab scampering along the garden path.

So maybe scampering isn't the right word.

At any rate, with his shell about 1.5 inches in diameter at the wide end, while this is one of the smaller examples of hermit crabs I've seen in the BVI, it is still  the only one I have pictures of.

View from Bed

Watching House Hunters and House Hunters International as often as I do, one of the things that often made me shake my head in ridicule was when people would talk about what a great view they would potentially have from their bed. I didn't get it. Did these people not realize that, lying down in bed, they'd be both at the wrong angle and too low to see anything other than the bottom two feet of their walls?

Well, yesterday morning I had to eat my words, as I woke up around 5:30, looked out the French doors at the foot of the bed, and saw the most beautiful streaks of color in the sky -- one of the best sunrises I've seen in the BVI. I woke HB up and we lay there and admired the view from our bed.

I was too captivated by the sunrise to go grab the camera, but last night I was with it enough to take a few snaps of the sunset. While the above angle is definitely not the view from our bed (in fact, you kind of have to lean over the railing on the deck to get this view at all), I thought it captured the same idea as the lovely sunrise we woke up to yesterday morning.

Amalgam of Animals

To my chagrin, I have missed two Sundays of creature features. This is in part because of circumstances (Irene) and in part because all the creatures on my list that I want to feature have disappeared with the hot weather. As a result, even though I have made efforts to photograph them, I have been unable to find them in their usual haunts.

One of these creatures is what HB and I call the "dinosaur lizard". Distinct from the anoles, like the one inhabiting my office, the dinosaur lizards are brownish grey in skin tone, and can be quite large. I've seen some that are two-three feet.

This is a small example of the lizards I am referring to. This one is about a foot long, and far less colorful than its larger kin, that often have rainbow-colored scales along their sides and near the sensory organs on their heads. When it's finally time to feature dinosaur lizards, you'll see what I'm talking about.

So while I wait for the various creatures on my list to return, I share with you a few small critters I found on the property this morning.

I see these leafbugs fairly often. They make me think of the rhinoceros beetle, although for no good reason.

These tiny snails abound, especially after rains. That's my pinkie in the bottom of the picture for a little bit of size perspective.

Hopefully as the weather cools off in late September, I'll be able to get some photos of the creatures on my list. In the meantime, my Sunday creature features will likely continue to be amalgams of a variety of animals.