Chincoteague, Virginia

We had a few days at the beach in early August. We all rode bikes, we walked, some of us went running at sunrise, we sat on the beach, played in the sand, ate and drank. Wore plenty of sunblock and needed lots of insect repellant for the wildlife refuge. No sunburn or shipwrecks and nobody drowned. We also saw a big NASA rocket launched (see separate page). Various photographers. You can hover on the edge of a photo to a show description and pause the slideshow — then un-hover to resume the slideshow.

Pawpaw

We hadn’t realized we had any pawpaw trees until yesterday, when I found these several fruits on the ground by the bench in the meditation garden. The leaves were familiar enough, although I had previously mistaken their trees for hickory saplings. Apparently both the skin and seeds are poisonous. Sandy cut two open for an inside photo, and we carefully tasted, spitting out the seeds. It’s somewhere between pineapple and banana. I went looking for more, and found the set on the left, below, at least long enough to snap the picture.