Blue Button

This is a Blue-Button Jellyfish, another casualty of the on-shore winds. Hundreds on the beach this morning.  It’s called a jellyfish, but it is actually a Chrondrophore, a colony of polyps living symbiotically.  Everybody has a job. Some form the central disc, some the tentacles.  A small creature, 1.5 inches across at best, they are a beautiful deep blue and turquoise, with occasional yellow thrown in.  Normally a floating resident of the Gulf Stream, and like the Portuguese Man of War, lacking an independent means of mobility, they are at the mercy of wind and current, but then, who isn’t, really. No turtle nests noted yet within my small (1.5 mile) world of beach, but it is still early.  The season runs from May 1 to October 31.  They usually start showing up pretty regularly in June, with a few scouts coming ashore in May.

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Moody grey skies this morning, with a moderate south wind.  Sunrise obscured by rain several miles out, but clouds took on amazing array of color for a moment before turning back to grey.  Regular walkers out, the few, ones I’ve been seeing for fifteen years.  Others come and go.  The hard-core daily crew, like me, like it all, the sun, the clouds, the wind, hot or cold.  I wonder what they do with the rest of their day, as I’m sure they wonder about mine.  Maybe not.

Now, ‘splain this to me.  April was warm and dry, too warm and dry, very unseasonable.  So far, May feels like April should have.  Cooler, windy.  It’s all flip-flopped.  Good surf in

A Long Time in the Water

April; so far, in the month we usually start getting good waves, nothing but junk.  I was thinking about that as I finished the walk this morning, and came upon this flip-flop all encrusted with sea stuff.  Good punctuation, I’d say.  Visual aide, perhaps.  Concrete imagery. Sometimes the universe whispers; sometimes it hollers.