Wednesday, September 14, 2011

South Jetty Harvest

Great morning today....Pete and I took Gracie Rose (that's her in the photo) down to the South Jetty on the spur of the moment.  While it was sunny here at the house, the inversion layer was in full force and we had foggy, overcast weather at the South Jetty.  While there were a few surfers arriving and one in the surf, nobody at all was walking the beach.  That's absolutely amazing to me, as was the beach and Amazing Gracie Rose (yes, that is her registered AKC name, smile).  

The last couple of trips to the Jetty, we found a few treasures, but nothing compared with the harvest the sea provided today!  We walked for nearly two hours today and both Pete and I came home with all of our pockets stuffed with sea treasures.   The biggest surprise was the sand dollar harvest, about 25 total (in one day!).  We collect them for the Membership Team at our church, the Presbyterian Church of the Siuslaw.  They are given to visitors and new members along with the story telling how the five marks of the flower on top of each sand dollar represents the five wounds Christ suffered at the cross.  I can never get the sand dollars home without breaking them, so Pete carries all of them.  This was good because it left my pockets free to hold a couple of "jingle" shells, a piece of brown beach glass, lots of orange and white stripped smoothed pieces of clam shell (I'm going to use them as fringe on a beachy beaded project one day), two big beautiful agates, and an assortment of other shells I couldn't resist bringing home.  Besides all the treasures we found, we had a seal swimming in the surf follow us down the beach for quite a ways.  No orcas, bald eagles or pelicans today, but there were a few ducks that I couldn't identify.  And, of course, there was Gracie and her antics.

After a couple of days of having to hang around the house while Pete and I repainted the backyard deck, Gracie was ready for a good beach outing.  True to form, she spent about half the time chasing her ball, and the rest of the time looking for her own treasures by the sand dunes, spinning in circles at our feet (a great means to get our attention), running away from the surf and visiting with two basset hounds, Frankie and Johnny, who also had the good fortune to spend some time in the sand. 

As for running away from the surf, Pete and I also got a couple of good sprints in today when some fast moving sneaker waves had us running to keep dry.   While they weren't the biggest of waves, the undertow is treacherous here and the water is cold year round (I know from personal experience from a previous beach walk when I tripped over Gracie and fell face first into about six inches of surf that did it's best to pull me out to sea.  Pete was my knight in shinning armour that day grabbing my belt and hanging onto me until the wave went out and I could get up, scary).  Anyway, we stayed dry today and got plenty of exercise.

I've got a couple of bead embroidery pieces finished and, as soon as I can figure out how, I will share pictures of them with you.  I'm anxious to add photos to my blogs.  

Vaya con Dios!

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