We loved playing outside after dinner on school nights; we were told to come back when the streetlights came on. We had a great neighborhood; similar to this one, but a suburb of an urban area; not coastal, as I longed for in my dreams.  When I’m feeling down, I have to remind myself that some dreams do come true.  Look where I get to live: it’s the beach, y’all.   At least the grownups in the family appreciate it; someday the children will realize where they spent their childhood, and how fortunate they were to grow up in a community like the beaches.

How great it is to be able to go outside after dinner and walk to the beach, check out the  seascape, the deeper into autumn we progress.

Tonight I made my way to the 19th Street beach access. There was a breathtakingly saturated pink western sky but I simply wasn’t positioned to take advantage of it, so I turned my face eastward. I listened to some people playing acoustic guitars on the deck outside a modest oceanfront house.  I watched the moon in the still-blue sky.

I nodded to people come and go up and down the sandy path to the beach, some with their dogs.  I sat on the nice wooden bench that the 19th Street beach access offers, and stayed put until dusk became twilight and twilight became night.

Then, the streetlights came on and it was time to go home.

Today I finally stopped at the Wednesday afternoon Mid-Week Farmer’s Market hosted by the city of Atlantic Beach on the lawn at the Adele Grage Center.  A smaller version of The Beaches Green Market in Jarboe Park on Saturdays, the Atlantic Beach Mid-Week Farmer’s Market is worth coming out for: fresh produce, local vendors, a playground right there for your kids, so you can let them run about while you chat up the merchants.  There was a folksy guitarist entertaining a small group of kids enthralled before her on a blanket and the music added just the right touch of bohemian ambiance that a small farmer’s market really ought to have, to complete the experience.

Honestly? It’s small enough that you can walk through in just a few minutes’ time, but oh my gosh, it’s just so lovely out that you’ll want to linger.

The produce is so colorful, the growers are passionate about their products.

A few minutes’ respite of outdoor weather might just stretch into a half hour or more and why not?  Life’s hectic enough, and if you’re lucky enough to pass by the Adele Grage Center every day and haven’t yet stopped to check it out, now’s a great time to do it.   If you’ve got the time to walk or ride over, booyah for you but however you can, a visit to the mid-week Market in Atlantic Beach is just another reason to love where you live, spend some time outdoors, and come home with something good to eat.

Held Wednesdays from 4-7pm; Adele Grage Center, 7th St. between Ocean and East Coast Boulevard; Atlantic Beach.

It’s fine Fall weather; what we’ve all been waiting for, furthermore, it’s Friday.  It’s time do do a little exploring!

Sometimes we get so busy with our ordinary lives we don’t take the time to explore the lovely places close to home.  The ‘we’ I refer to would be me, so the other afternoon I took a detour on my way home, and stopped in at Dutton Island Park.

One of eleven parks maintained by the City of Atlantic Beach, Dutton Island Preserve is described by the city as a passive park, with walking trails, a canoe launch, picnic tables.  You can rent canoes and kayaks there (good to know, for those of us who don’t own ’em), but if all you want is a feeling of being away from home, this cooler autumn weather is the perfect time for walking in the woods, or going all the way to the edge of the island.  There, you’ll be rewarded with a spectacular view of the intracoastal waterway and a quiet dock to cast your line.

I’ve been there twice already this week: once during the afternoon, with the sunlight glinting through the tall trees in the woods,

and a second time at sunset, where the view was spectacular, and  the no-see-ums were swarming.  Well, it’s marshland, after all, and even if some small part of me was shrieking for pesticides, it was a picture perfect evening.  See?

I recorded a video that’s frankly unfit for public airing since the cameraman was laughing the entire time as I was a bit over the no-see-ums and was quite clear about that on the video.  I was just kidding about sending in pesticides too!  I love nature; I just don’t like bugs in my nose, hair, and lipgloss.

Still, I think we can agree that it was a chamber-of-commerce sort of sunset, wouldn’t you say?  I’m glad we were there to see it and I plan to take my out of town guests kayaking from Dutton Island, and explore the intracoastal waterway, a little bit of paradise, close to home.

And those are my offerings for the week.  I love macro photography, but it can be quite challenging as I am learning.  But I’m hooked, and I’m determined to improve.  I intended to make these photos as large as possible for macro photos must be viewed in a larger format in order to really be appreciated.  So if a particular photo strikes you, click on it to make it larger.  It makes a big viewing difference!