Hardware hooligans on the loose

Botany Bay Preserve at Edisto Island

We found something new at Edisto this year. Recently, the SC Department of Natural Resources opened Botany Bay, a former plantation on the island, for educational and low impact recreational activities. Botany Bay Road is on the left as you drive toward the beach, 8.5 miles past the bridge onto the island.
At the end of the road, there's a kiosk where you get a hang tag and a map of the 4630 acres of marshes, fields, woods, ponds, beaches, and remains of buildings. A bird list is also available. Only a few of the original buildings are still standing, but this gardener's shed is remarkably intact.

There's a path down to a beautiful beach-- which shows how the sands shift in the absence of human engineering.

Margot Rides a Wave

We spent last weekend at Edisto Bach, SC. on a brief get-away. Here, Margot demonstrates her special "otter" techniaque for riding waves, captured in slow motion.

Not an egg...

Woah! This is what Christopher Hodshon found in his chicken house the other day--a blacksnake attempting to swallow one of the golf balls he'd put in there to encourage the chickens to lay in the box. Thanks to Charlie Hodshon for sending over this picture.

Too cool at Poplar Grove

And so the harvest begins...

Turnips and radishes at Green Toe Ground.

Luscious

Tammy says we're having a "luscious" spring, and so far, nothing has been more luscious than the locusts.


Except maybe the Chinese fringe tree.

And we've still got laurels and rhododendrons to come.

(The poison ivy is also looking pretty righteous, but nobody wants to hear about that.)