Protecting our Wildlife 10 '16

It was an absolutely gorgeous day today. There were  massive numbers of  American Woodstork and Ibis resting along the pond by our 18th fairway.

I had just started photographing the birds when some jerk comes off the 15th fairway and starts  waving his arms  and trying to scare the flock off. 

BJ  started whistling, shouting at the guy that they are a protected species ,  and that  he should  back off and leave them alone.  Then BJ pointed to me and my very big Canon camera, which was pointed right at the jerk.  He made a crude gesture, but left.

Sheeessss.  Some people have no respect for anything.

Monday a.m. Status Update on Conditions in Pawleys Plantation 10 "15

Monday Morning status update from Pawleys Plantation!

Looking toward front gate on PP Way x Cameron Ct.

The good news is that our street is still complete clear of standing water and so far all of the rain water is running off our street as fast as it falls. ( Official estimates are 15.95" have fallen here since Thursday).

Looking towards the country club from Cameron Way

Taken from PP Way at  wetlands near Redwing Ct. - looking toward the  front gate.
Bruce donned his scuba gear and waded  in to take all three photos at about 10 am.
These three photos above are of the first of three large flooded areas along  PP way.The others are deeper so he didn't attempt to reach the other two, but  below is a photo someone else posted looking toward the front gate from Savannah Dr. this morning.

The bad news is that we are officially flooded in to the Pawleys Plantation Community and can't get out without a boat.. Bruce tried to drive out to work a few minutes ago and found that the main road in and out of the plantation from the front gate to the driving range was under water . (It is as deep as two feet near the speed signs .) Tanglewood also has a lot of water.

The good news is that we are both safe and dry at home. Bruce made it about half way up Pawleys Plantation Way before he decided that it was just getting too deep to drive and turned around and came home. I was scheduled to be at the gallery yesterday and today, but it is closed ( thank goodness) due to flooding at both of the highway 17 entrances to The Market Common complex.

The other good news is that there does not seem to be a lot of trees down ( at least none that I could see). Our sandy soil is saturated, and strong winds can often uproot our tall pines and send them toppling into houses. We had winds up to 25 MPH in the past couple of days, but we didn't see any downed trees when we drove around just before dark yesterday. There aren't even any major broken branches on our street. Keep your fingers crossed.

The storm is supposed to start dissipating tomorrow, then all South Carolina has to worry about are dams breaking and rivers overflowing. Thank goodness we are not really close to either, but I feel bad for all those who are and the roads closures are likely to continue for several days after the rain stops.

Status Update on Conditions in Pawleys Plantation 10 "15

Much ado is being made in the media about the amount of rainfall in the Carolinas this weekend.  Rainfall up to 18 " has been predicted for some areas along the coast, and indeed some areas are getting hammered  ( Charleston Airport got 5" last night, and one needs a kayak to get through some of downtown Charlestons streets).    With stories like that, we are getting panicked calls from friends and relatives alike.  Thank you all for your concern, but be reassured,  Pawleys Plantation is in no current danger of washing away. So far, all we have seen is what is called 'nuisance flooding' where standing water in the streets reaches ankle level.

Bruce and I took a little photo tour of the plantation this morning.  Hopefully it will ease the minds of our snow bird neighbors that their homes  and friends are safe. So starting from the entrance:

PP Way just past Guard House Entrance

We found flooding on Pawleys Plantation Way (PP Way)  just after passing the guard house .

PP Way just past Guard House Entrance

It looks kinda scary driving into it, 

PP Way looking toward the Guard House

but you can see looking at it from the other direction the water really isn't more that 4 inches deep and there is no flow at all. ( The splash does however makes a far better detector than the speed monitors for determining who is driving over the posted limit).

Turtle Creek  and PP Way

Turtle Creek has shallow flooding in the street and driveway entrances for the first few houses.

PP way near the 3rd Fairway cart path

PP then dries out until you reach the ponds between the 3rd Fairway and Savannah/Old Augusta ,

PP Way between  Savannah and Old Augusta 

where water again completely covers portions of the road.

3rd Fairway Pond run off

The problem here is that the street water would normally drain into the 3rd fairway pond, but the pond is full and there is no place for the water to go.

The 3rd fairway itself and its cart path did not have any standing water.

Form Old Savannah near PP Way

Portions of Old Savannah have minor standing water near the pond between Savannah and Old Augusta.  Again, this is due to the retention ponds being too full to accept runoff from the streets.

Savannah Street run off area

Old Augusta looking towards PP Way

Old Augusta did not have any standing water that we could see.  The banks of the pond are quite steep on the old Augusta side of the pond. The water was up to the bottom of the wood duck houses, bu still had a couple of feet to go before it would have overflown its banks.

Corner of Green teal and PP Way

There is shallow standing water all the way across PP way  from the Pond at the corner of Green Teal and PP way.  Same issue as all the rest... No place for the water to go until the tide recedes and some water from the retaining ponds can be pumped into the marsh.

PP way and pond at Green Teal

The next area we encountered water were the two wetland lots that border PP way just beyond Pintail and Grey Fox  The water didn't full flood the street but one can see that the wetland lots were completely saturated and the next rain would bring the water further onto the street.

PP way and wetland lots

The remainder of Pawleys Plantation way and all the other side streets  were free of standing water.

10th Fairway has new water hazard before the sand trap.

Last nights's rainfall did create some interesting new challenges on our golf course. Both the 10th and the 17th fairways have new water hazards.

17th Fairway  has new water hazard before the green.

Don't forget to watch out for the Ibis hanging out in their new pond.

Ibis on 17

Or the  Alligator  and  Wood-storks hanging out on the 18th fairway beside the pond

As I mentioned earlier, most of these problems are very short lived.  Street water  is supposed to drain into the retaining ponds.

Looking across the pond at 18th fairway  to natural creek end

If the ponds get too full, the golf course pumps the excess  into the fresh water marsh ( below) through a natural creek on the pond at the 18th fairway. 

From there the water empties into a larger Pawleys Island Salt Marsh on other other side of the causeway  to the 13th fairway( below)

If the tide is too high to push more water into the marsh, there is nothing to be done but wait for it to recede, and  in the meanwhile enjoy the wild life the rain and the tides bring with them.

Hurricane Joaquin will bring us a lot of rain. 9 '15

Weather Channel Rainfall Forecast 

Looks like we are in for a very wet week. Normal annual rainfall for this area is 60" per year, several models are predicting between 8'' and 10 " throughout the local area and some isolated spots might get as high as 15" rainfall between Thursday and Sunday. That's a lot of water coming down in a very short period of time. Businesses are canceling major events right and left. TBD whether my Guilds Fall Art show will be one of them. 

Amazing video of King Tide Flooding 9 '15

Ed Piotrowski, Chief Meteorologist at  WPDE - Myrtle Beach, SC posted this amazing drone video of king tide flooding this morning in Garden City and Murrells Inlet. This might make clearn why we are so nervous about the National Weather Service  issuing us warnings about a very wet winter. Thanks for sharing Chris Nichols

See:.

https://www.facebook.com/EdPiotrowskiWPDE/videos/vb.319804567715/10153618157022716/?type=2&theater

Super Tide rolls over PI 9 '15

Pawleys Island Church with a Super tide reaching its floorboards.

Everyone living in one of the coastal flood prone areas( such as;  Pawleys Island, Murrells Inlet, Cherry Grove and Garden City)   is being  advised by the  National Weather Service to be on alert for flood conditions caused by extra high tides due to the Super moon which isn't even at its fullest yet.  The moon will become full on September 28th - this Monday...which mean we can expect higher than normal high tides through the middle of next week.  Usually that means that waves rolls through the carports  of the Carolina houses  and the public beach parking on the South end of the Island.  At the same time the  tidal creek over-flows the one and only access road on the island. That may make for some spectacular photographs, but it also creates some dangerous driving conditions. The Pawleys Island Police Department is advising everyone who doesn't have to be on the Island to stay clear until the water subsides.  Not only is the salt water hard on your automobile, but it is very easy to misjudge where the road is  under the water, and drive into the marsh.

'Winterizing' our Garden 9 '15

Front yard  5_27_15

You might remember the photo I posted of  our front flower bed in early spring.  The area was filled with colorful annuals that were planted in pots tucked between the perennial green shrubs. The pots were hidden with pine straw leaving only the colorful foliage and flowers exposed.  Most were chosen because they have colorful foliage and attract and feed humming birds and butterflies ..  Some ( like the mustard, and  basil were even edible by humans.  But an annual is still limited to a one season life cycle. No matter how many birds and butterflies it feeds it will eventually die back and need to be removed and replaced.  September  is usually when we start to see the annuals in the front begin to fade and know it time to remove the past year's annuals and replace them with something appropriate to the upcoming  fall and winter.   The the photo below is what the front flower bed looks like  today with  potted chrysanthemums tucked into where where the blue flowering  basil had been.

Front yard 9 -26-15

Since the humming bird and butterfly migration won't be over until mid October, I have left the plants that were still blooming in place, but soon even those will be removed and replaced with something like pansies.

Deck  garden looking South

And here is what the upstairs deck looks like today.   During the spring and  summer it had lots of annual red flowering sage, tarragon and sun chokes in flower to feed the butterflies ( scattered in pots between the usual assortment of perennial low growing culinary herbs).

Deck garden looking SE

Over the course of the past month I have been taking the edible annuals from the front yard carrying them upstairs and harvesting what I could of the basil. (It's and annual ritual to make pesto from whatever basil I have left at the end of the season)  I then emptied the soil out of the pots, cleaned them and carried them back to the front  yard with new soil for the fall winter flowers.   The old soil was then used to fill in any areas along the driveway or backyard which had suffered soil erosion during the summer rainy season.  I then did the same thing with the all the regular pots  on the deck.  So now we are back to the  low growing  perennial culinary herbs with a few empty  spaces left for some winter ornamental plants.

Deck Garden Looking at NE corner

Of course there are still a few  things that are seasonal occupants.   The carpets are only put down When I am outside using the deck.  Too much chance of their getting wet.  Three tender perennial plants  like my dwarf banana tree and Kat's lemon grass reside in my bedroom in the winter, and move into the Carolina room in the early spring before coming back out onto the deck after all danger of frost is past.

Deck Garden looking west

Of course there are times that everything has to come inside.  All of the pots ( and the umbrella stand)  are on casters and have drip pots to keep them from coming in contact with the deck.  This not only makes it easy to move them around for cleaning, but also makes it possible to quickly roll them into the house for safety purposes should a hurricane or ice storm  comes roaring through.  (I've had to do this several times.)  Having everything on wheels makes it a much easier task. And getting  the gardens prepped for winter early makes for moving a lot more efficient.

Driveway Resurfacing 9 ' 15

Our driveway  after it was resurfaced, the gutter repaired and a pothole filled.

The national Weather Service is predicting a very wet winter for our area with a high probability of flooding. Our Home owners Associations are taking the warnings very seriously and are repairing all of the pot holes, broken gutters and damaged driveways before the winter storm descend upon us.  We couldn't be happier.  We and our next door neighbor and the people across the street from us all had broken gutters and large pot holes in front of our homes which got repaired. 

View from end of block of repaired gutters and potholes

Work commenced on our end of our street on Monday.  By Tuesday evening, half of the block was restored, and by Thursday evening all  of the remaining half was complete. It looks like this was done  just in the nick of time.  The first of a series of storms is due to hit us next week.

Painting of Sedona Golf Resort. 9 '15

In between marathon rounds of cooking, I've started oil painting  more scenes for the  Sedona series.  Bruce got so excited by my latest works that he handed me a box of golf balls and asked me to paint the scene on the side of the box of the Sedona Golf Resort..

Close up of photo on box

Hmmmmm.   There were several problems in the way of my painting the scene. First, it is not my photo and  in all probablibilty probably copyright protected.  but then again I am not painting it for sale to someone else, nor am I claiming that it is my original composition, so copyright is probably a mute question

Box photo relative to canvas

More importantly the box is only  4 inches by 5inches. and it wasn't in very good shape.  It''s hard enough to paint from a photo I have taken myself, where I've actually studied the scene, but from one that was so small I couldn't make out any detail . Hmmmmm.

Photo from the internet. porjected on my PC 's monitor

Fortunately, I was able to locate a photo on the internet that was taken from approximately the same vantage point.    It took me about five days but using the two sources together gave me enough information to get the job done.    

14"  x 11" Oil  Painting of  Sedona Golf Resort

Bruce is happy with his painting, and I can go back to working on scenes created  from my own photographs.

Carol's Korean BBQ Short Ribs; 9 '15

CC's niece, Carol recently sent us a  recipe for a Korean Barbecue Short Rib dinner. Sigh,  It's the South, and even the high end markets and butcher shops have never heard of such an 'exotic cut'. After searching  all over two counties, we were finally able to locate some appropriate cuts of beef  to make Carol's  Korean style BBQ short ribs .   The end result was well worth the effort.  The BBQ  marinade for this dish is destined to be one of our  all-time favorite. The simple recipe for Korean BBQ marinade makes the meat fall off the bone,and  lip smacking good! 

Korean BBQ Marinade

3 tablespoons Tamari Sauce
3 tablespoons sesame oil
2 tablespoon brown sugar

Mix all ingredients together and stir until the sugar is dissolved
Brush on meat, cover,  and let sit in the refrigerator.  The longer you can let the meat marinade the more flavorful and tender the meat will be,  but this marinade is  really tasty, even if you brush it on just before you start cooking the meat.

Grill the meat for 3 minutes on each side.  If there is any leftover marinade it can be put atop the meat when you are plating it.

What to do with left over whey? Make Ricotta Cheese! 8'15

Home made ricotta on home made bread

 A by-product of any form of cheese-making is whey.  Whey is the liquid which is squeezed from the milk curd.   Health food stores sell  small quantities of whey for a small fortune, so we knew it must be good stuff.  But what should we do with the three quarts of whey we had left over from our mozzarella making adventure?  Back to the internet.  We found lots of suggestions, but these were the ones we liked the most:

• Make ricotta cheese 
• Substitute whey in any baking recipe that calls for water (or even milk)
•  Use whey to soak grains
•  Use whey to cook pastas, potatoes, oatmeal, or rice. 
•  Add whey to soups and stews. 
• Freeze it for later. 

The first and most obvious use was to make some ricotta cheese from our left over whey. And it’s so incredibly easy! all you do is heat the whey to 200 degrees; let it sit for several hours until the heated curd is cool enough to handle, then strain the curd through some very fine mesh.  (We used coffee filters.)

We must have done a very good job of pulling all the milk solids out of the whey during the mozzarella making process, because we only got about a half cup of cheese from the ricotta strain, and that looks and tastes more like a rich cream cheese.  Not bad for a first attempt at cheese making. For a more complete list of ideas for using whey see:  http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2011/06/16-ways-to-use-your-whey.html

What to do with left over whey? Make Bread! 8'15

After making the Ricotta cheese, we were down to 2 quarts of whey.   Looking at our list of ideas we decided it was time to try using whey  in  bread making. We substituted 1.12 cups of whey for the 1.5 cups of water called for in a loaf of Bob's Red Mill GF Multi Grain bread. (We also used some to steam into a quinoa side dish).

OMG ! Both the bread and the grain tasted so cheesey ( is that a real word?) and good. We are definitely going to use left over whey to cook all our grains from now on.

Homemade Mozzarella Cheese: 8 '15

Last week BJ  watched a TV segment of 'Diners, Drive-ins and Dives' about an Italian pizzeria which makes all of its mozzarella cheese from scratch daily.    Hmmm!  I've made buttermilk,   and yogurt from scratch, but  I didn't know mozzarella could be made so quickly.  That's something to investigate.   

A quick search of the internet revealed that it is no more difficult than any of the other cultured milk products I had made, but it does require rennet and citric acid, neither of which I had in the house, or nor could I buy  them locally.   Bruce ordered them online.They came in yesterday.   ( We now have enough rennet tablets to last us a lifetime. Fortunately they should keep well in their sealed foil pouches).. 

The next challenge was finding a source for raw or lightly pasteurized milk.  That is not as easy as one would think.   In today's germaphobic world, most major brands of milk are ultra-pasteurized ( even some that are not labeled as ultra pasteurized are).   We finally located one grocery store (Lowes) that carries milk from a local dairy that is not homogenized and is only lightly pasteurized.

So today we made some mozzarella cheese from scratch using a standard recipe from the rennet package.  It is not difficult, and only takes about two hours start to finish.  The only catch is that you have to repeatedly heat the milk curd to specific temperatures to draw out the whey. Get it too hot and you cook the curd and kill that batch of cheese. If it is not heated enough, the curd doesn't develop.  Since our ceramic top stove tends to overheat things, I was forced to stand with a thermometer in hand monitoring the pot for the whole two hours to make sure the curd stayed at just the right temperature.

Our reward was 14 oz of the freshest mozzarella cheese we have ever eaten.

Melon Sorbet 8 '15

We have two very large  ripe melons in the fridge which needed to be used before they spoil.  It's hotter than Hades outside, so anything cool sounds refreshing.  The cooler the better.  So sorbet it is.

I'm making a quart each of watermelon mint ginger, and honeydew basil ginger sorbet.

Here's the basic recipe with my notes on  possible enhancements:

Melon Sorbet YIELD 4 cups, or so

INGREDIENTS

YIELD 4 cups, or so

• 1cup sugar
• ¹⁄₂cup water
• ¹⁄₄cup lemon juice
• opt.1 once thinly sliced fresh  ginger root
• opt. several springs of flavorful sweet herbs like spearmint, or basil chopped finely
• opt. t tbsp orange, lemon or lime zest
• 3 cups  sweet ripe melon (cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon)

DIRECTIONS

1.   Cook the sugar, water and lemon juice together, stirring occasionally until the sugar is dissolved.   ( If using ginger cook with the slices in the sugar and water for ten minutes then remove the ginger. 

2.   Remove from heat and chill.

3.   Cut up the melon and remove all seeds.

4.   Puree in a blender or food processor.

5.   Stir into chilled syrup ( and chopped herbs or zest)

6. Chill all the ingredients in freezer until slushy.

7.   Freeze in an ice-cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

8.   Pack into an airtight container and store in the freezer.