Two men in Space, Two Centuries Apart at Annapolis
During two recent regional hikes, Becky and I came across the graves of two American heroes, distinctive but also distinctively different. We stumbled across the first grave while wending our way through the US Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis. Cemeteries provide great windows into history. James Arthur Lovell, Jr., a captain in the US Navy […]
Dribs and Drabs: Oysters, Wisteria, Locusts and Crabs
GRACE CREEK ALMANAC – It’s been just about exactly a year since my writing about blooming locust trees and their relationship with crabs. Watermen here in the mid-Atlantic forever have equated locust blooms with the season’s first run of peeler crabs. The first shed. That means soft crabs are right behind. Some say it might […]
Move Over Horny Goat Weed, Here Comes Pollen
GRACE CREEK ALMANAC – So, this week’s hot news involves the unique, annual, and sublimely quiet spring storm sifting everywhere around us. No, not Stormy Daniels and the Trumpster. That situation’s neither sublime nor quiet. Rather, as you’ve probably guessed from the pictures, I’m writing about the pine pollen storm now in full fettle. The […]
March Rains Way Above Normal; April Likely Bringing More
“Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote …” GRACE CREEK ALMANAC – Even Geoffrey Chaucer, 600 years ago in the prologue to his Canterbury Tales, was writing about the rain. With another three inches this week, counting Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s downpours, soggy ground has grown even […]
Grace Creek Almanac: Bradford Scourge, Orion, Musk’s Starlink and Frost
Springtime, as this week clearly illustrates, is a dynamic time on the Eastern Shore. With temperatures fluctuating between the mid-70s and mid-30s, it makes me worry about the tender green sprouts of the Amish Snap Peas coming up in my garden. I count on the afternoon sun to keep warming the soil and encouraging the […]
Sanctuary Changes Inching Amidst Astounding Oyster Efforts
My recent article about pressure to change oyster sanctuary boundaries In Maryland quickly grew into a torrent of criticism, dialogue, and additional official comments, corrections, and clarification of issues discussed. I will present some of that information here while also thanking those who took the time to help me further understand the complexity of issues […]
Pressure Mounting for Oyster Sanctuary Changes
Maryland’s watermen – many of them – want to get back to cultivating some of the 250,000 acres of productive oyster beds off limits to them since the institution of the 2010 sanctuary program. The state’s aggressive oyster sanctuary program, aimed at restoring historic populations in Chesapeake Bay, has received considerable attention during the current […]
Maryland’s Oyster Industry Sees Record Harvest
On the strength of cooperating salinity levels driving “astounding, historic, phenomenal and miraculous” sets of oyster spat across wide swaths of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay waters, the state’s recovering oyster industry continues in a positive trend. Watermen harvested a 36-year record 722,850 bushels of oysters in the 2022-2023 wild harvest season with a dockside value of […]