All Hail Azaleas!

It has been that time of the year! The beautiful azalea 🌺 plant has been in bloom bringing the South Carolina Lowcountry a late winter bounce. 

The azaleas in my yard started to sprout in late February. I took this photo on March 3. These buds were poised to pop!

I do love this time of year! It’s a harbinger of spring which began officially today, March 20. 

All the next pictures I took on or around our property. 

Landmark: 200,000 Pageviews!

 

A few weeks ago I noticed that the counter in the right column of my BirdsEyeViews blog was creepiing toward the 200,000 mark. I figured I would do a short post like this as I did in April 2017 when it hit 100,000. 

Well, a couple days ago during a class I was teaching (my feature writing class for a travel/destination piece assignment- I was showing a few of my travel posts) I was surprised to see the counter had suddenly surpassed 200K. Later, checking Blogger's "stats" feature I found out what happened. 

I'm calling it the Murdaugh Effect. For six weeks Alex Murdaugh was on trial in Walterboro, S.C. for the murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul at their vast Moselle hunting property that straddled Colleton and Hampton counties. 

On this blog in December 2021 I wrote a post titled "The Murdaughs of Magnolia Cemetery." I didn't really promote it that much after the cemetery's superintendent asked me not to share it on social media, which I took to mean Facebook and other platforms, particularly the popular Facebook site "Charleston History Before 1945." So I just put it on my blog and that was about it. 

Well, as you see in the graph above in March many people somehow, some way came across my "Murdaughs of Magnolia Cemetery" research. The graph shows a peak on March 3 with 1,090 pageviews of the post. The 6,740 figure represents the number of overall page views of my blog for the past one month period. 

As I look at the statistics today, March 16, the number of pageviews of this post since Dec. 10, 2021 is 5,771. 

What are pageviews, you ask? According to Google Analytics, a pageview (or pageview hit, or page tracking hit) is an instance of a page being loaded (or being reloaded) in a browser. Pageviews is a metric defined as the total number of pages viewed. 

What a splashy way to hit this landmark 200,000 figure. But, alas, it is so sad what happened to Maggie and Paul Murdaugh on June 7, 2021. The Walterboro jury did convict Alex of their murders and Judge Clifton Newman sentenced him to consecutive life sentences. Alex still faces some 100 financial crimes. State prosecutors have said they do plan to pursue these cases. 

Hilton Head island Weekend Getaway

 

“Spring Break” for college students (and their professors) is a bit of a misnomer. The weeklong midterm break comes when it’s still winter. Spring begins on March 20. My SC State Spring Break began March 6. 

For me, the break began even earlier on March 3 when we headed a couple hours south to Hilton Head Island. The proximity isn’t a “staycation” but it’s not far from it. 

The Westin Hilton Head Island Resort and Spa is a great for a weekend getaway any time of the year.

I woke up Sunday morning at 6:40, just in time to catch the sunrise from our third floor room (above).

The frame of our balcony made a nice composition for the dawn of a new day. We were blessed with nice weather all weekend! 

The oversized beach chair (left) welcomes visitors to the Westin Hotel and the beautiful Atlantic Ocean beckoning in the background.