It was a beautiful Spring evening.... but what to do? A walk on the beach?? a bike ride???
I wound up driving to nearby Brookgreen Gardens then walking their entire formal botanical/sculpture gardens and several of the extensive trails through the old rice fields as well. The Gardens at Brookgreen focus upon Southeastern NA native plants…..iris and other bulbs, azalea 3 meters tall, wisteria, jasmine and honeysuckle vines, dogwood, crab-apple, redbud, magnolia, tees were all in bloom. The warm evening air was like perfume.
Combined with the lovely colors of the setting sun it was almost magical.
After that we stopped at a family run oyster house. Local oysters are available for harvesting in every month that has an ‘R’ in it, so this is the last month we will be able to get any local oysters until next September. During the summer they ship in Gulf coast oysters from Texas, but I don’t think they taste as good. We’d intended to just get an appetizer and go home for a supper of shrimp and grits, but after that long walk, we were famished. We rationalized, “It IS the LAST TIME we’ll have a chance to get local oysters for a long while”; so we wound up eating an entire oyster roast dinner. Salad, corn, boiled potatoes, and hush puppies (hp s are like deep-fried sweet cornmeal donut holes) were the sides that came with the meal. It was a wonderful meal. (I inserted this comment on 5/3/10… “obviously this was written before the gulf oil platform melt down. We are being told that the Gulf of Mexico oysters/shrimp may be oil tainted and unavailable for years, which will probably push the cost of our local SE Atlantic oysters and shrimp out of reach when they come back into season”.) I hope not. Eating whole pots of roasted local oysters are one of the true joys of living on the East Coast
I got home at about 8pm. I collapsed into a state of contentment on the couch and watched a PBS documentary on the life of Buddha. It seemed a perfect way to end a perfect evening.
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