WHY Spring is the perfect time to visit Charleston, as azaleas, dogwoods and sweet bay magnolias bloom throughout April.
Each summer, the council runs a gardening competition, "Herne Bay in Bloom", which encourages residents and businesses to keep the town looking well presented.
Warm spring light is flooding through the bay window; a magnolia tree blooms in the front garden outside.
The algae that blooms in the bay each summer is what blocks the sunlight, and what seems to be feeding the algae is too much nitrogen getting into the water — all the fertilizer spread on all those lawns in the densely developed watershed, washing eastward and fertilizing the bay, too.
Those two plant nutrients foul the bay by feeding massive algae blooms, which subsequently rob the water of oxygen that fish, crabs and shellfish need to breathe.
Algal blooms flourish in the bay.
Almost any spot on the Bulb commands a world-class spectacle: city, bridges, and mountains shimmering across a silver bay; hummingbirds nuzzling wildflowers and the blooms of domesticated plants whose ancestors arrived here when this place was a dump.
However, during summer, short periods of atmospheric instability (storms) may act as modulation factors of this bloom decay in the SE Bay of Biscay.
A brown tide organism that has devastated commercial fisheries from Rhode Island to New Jersey was discovered in Maryland's coastal bays in 1999 and bloomed heavily in two places last year.
That amount is far more than the bay can naturally absorb, and leads to algal blooms that starve other plants and animals of oxygen.
And now, having skirted bed after bed of blue ageratum in full late August bloom and tub after tub of clipped bay, I was standing before one of the strangest fountains I had ever seen.
