May in Hampton Roads

Late March & April are really the glory months around here - the azaleas are in full bloom, the Bradford pears are full of blossoms, redbuds cast a purple haze. Flowers are everywhere.

Then comes May. Just the word 'May' conjures up images of children frolicking in a field of blossoms. Ladies swinging on swings with flowers in their hair (thank you 'Camelot'). It's a lie, I tell you, a lie! Not here anyway. Aside from roses, May isn't very colorful in these parts. All of the early spring bulbs have long since disappeared, most of the spring blooms have withered away, and most yards are devoid of any color except green.

Don't get me wrong - green is a beautiful color. One of my favorites, in fact. And the greens of May are bright and vivid. Intense greens that glow in the sun before the heat of summer dries & dulls them.

But you have to avert your eyes to avoid seeing the poor azaleas after they are finished with their color. Sorry azaleas, but you are pretty dang ugly without your blooms. Look at these before & afters:

Pretty sad. There is one unexpected jewel, though. If you lift your face and breathe deeply, you will catch whiffs of a sweet scent. Weeds. Delicious, fragrant weeds! I am referring, specifically, to honeysuckle and ligustrum.

Honeysuckle evokes powerful memories. We didn't have any in Illinois, where we lived until I was 7. But then we moved to Chapel Hill, NC, and there was honeysuckle everywhere. In both white & yellow. The vines covered the entire north side of the property our apartment was on. Is there anything that paints a picture of childhood freedom more than snapping off the bottom of the flower and pulling out that one precious drop of sweetness to fall on your tongue? Dining on honeysuckle is like turning back the clock for me. I love the stuff.

Ligustrum is a weed bush. Referred in old times as a privet hedge, modern developers use it to excess because it is cheap and grows fast. Both sides of my front yard are bordered by these bushes, and one of my neighbors takes particular glee in wielding his electric hedge trimmers and shearing them to within an inch of their lives, into smooth symmetrical shapes. He usually did this in early spring, just when the new growth started, so they rarely had a chance to bloom. But this year, he is feeling the years creep up on him (he is in his mid-eighties) and hasn't gotten out the shears yet. I'm glad, because now the bushes have had a chance to bloom, and ligustrum flowers have a sweet perfume that brings a smile to my face.

That little vase of sweetness is now in my living room. And look who I found in my front yard on this overcast & drizzly morning.

Bucket List #1 - Off-Season Surprises

When you live in a resort area, you often fail to appreciate the aspects of it that draw visitors from all over the country (people really pay to come here?!).

Virginia Beach bears the distinction of being the world's largest resort city, or at least that was one of its claims as recently as about 10 years ago. The city is very large, but most of it is not the resort area, but suburban residential, rural farmland, and WATER. Everywhere you go, water. Rivers, sounds, inlets, bays, harbors, swamps. You can't go down the stinkin' street without crossing water in one form or another. Crossing it both over & under. It's everywhere! I love that about here. And did you know that geographically, part of the Outer Banks lies in Virginia Beach? Yeah, yeah, really. See this picture and notice that the state line puts a bit of the barrier islands in Virginia Beach, in fact almost halfway up the east coast of the city. This link gives you a better view.
Take that, NC!

So, for the 1st item on my bucket list, I am going to explore some of the under-appreciated gems of my own city. I started this by accompanying BS, my niece & her husband down to the oceanfront on the bee-yoo-ti-ful last day of summer. The temps were in the 70's, there was a slight breeze blowing, the sun was shining, the sky was blue. Late September & early October is the very best time to go to the beach. The weather is perfect, and the mobs of tourists are gone.

Old joke - if it is tourist season, does that mean I can shoot them?

Here they are on the boardwalk, a misnomer if there ever was one, since it is not now nor was it ever made from boards. It is cement. When I see this picture, BS looks like a veritable giant next to his wee cousins.

We wandered up the 'boardwalk' for awhile and saw a few interesting sights you don't usually see during tourist season:

A steel-drum band playing for some outdoor diners. Well, they do have this kind of thing during tourist season, but they made a very pretty sound as we walked along, so I included them. In fact, during the summer, there are sidewalk musicians performing all up & down Atlantic Avenue - the main 'drag'.

The tail-end of a wedding on the beach.


Rent-A-Nag?
You NEVER see this during tourist season. In fact, I've never seen this before on the beach at all. We saw a couple of riders off in the distance, but they were too far away for a picture. I wonder if someone follows along behind them with a jumbo pooper scooper and a baggie?

I have to give props to our mayor. When I moved here in 1970, the oceanfront was kinda seedy. Not a place you would want to wander around alone after sunset. But after Mayor Meyera came in office, the resort strip has gradually morphed into a very nice place to visit and quite lovely.

Most of the hotels have very nice landscaping on the oceanfront facing side. It goes like this: hotel - strip of grassy area - bike path - boardwalk - beach - ocean - Spain... oops, I went too far.


A picture of the bike path from last year. The ocean is to the right .

The cut-throughs from the beach to Atlantic Avenue are located every block, and most of them have been decorated with pretty stuff, like these hermit crab sculptures. Other blocks have such beachy things as fish, sea shells, beach balls, dolphins, etc. Nice.

A view of the boardwalk with giant King Neptune in the distance.


The Virginia Beach (Seatack) Lifesaving Station

The United States Life Saving Service, the precursor of the Coast Guard, has a long and noble history of guardanship over the treacherous waters of the Atlantic coast. The waters off the Outer Banks of North Carolina, in particular, are especially dangerous. Known as the "Graveyard of the Atlantic", they have been the final resting place for many a ship. Even in Virginia, survivors of an early shipwreck created the lost town of Wash Woods using lumber which washed ashore. Bad weather eventually claimed the town. The fates of the other lifesaving stations of Virginia.

This is the Norwegian Lady, a memorial given to Virginia Beach by Norway after the heroic efforts of the Seatack Lifesaving crew on behalf of the ship "Dictator" after it foundered off the Virginia Beach coast in 1891. Its sister statue stands in Moss, Norway.

One of the newer things at the beach is a memorial to Naval Aviation. This part of Virginia is home to the largest Naval installation IN. THE. WORLD (thanks, in part, to the presence of Hampton Roads harbor). NAS Oceana, the Navy's East Coast Master Jet Base is in Virginia Beach. This memorial, I swear, wasn't here last year.

You can see the Norwegian Lady in the background.

Oh, and the beach is family friendly now too. They play muzak on Atlantic Avenue to calm the hoards and at 2:00 am (or is it 1:00 am?) the floodlights come on to discourage the scallywags from making mischief and bothering the slumbering (and well-paying) tourists...

The li'l cuties having one last pizza break at the front of the original Virginia Beach Post Office, and a lovely afternoon draws to a close...

Oh oh, ps - every year in October, Virginia Beach is the home to the North American Sand Sculpting Championship. These are from last year:

During construction


Finished sculpture

In conclusion, never take the gems of your own hometown for granted, and seize opportunities to explore & appreciate them.