Hello, October! Melbourne Beach is the perfect place to be this time of year with surf contests, live music, local theater, great food, art festivals, Halloween parties, rocket launches and the oldest marathon in the State of Florida!
Just this week it seems that the leaves have become a little greener, the morning sun on the water extra sparkly and the sea air… well, it just smells so clean and beachy!
Then too, there‘s that special sense of October camaraderie in the air. The cheery triathletes ride by on their bikes with the sunrise behind them, as they get ready for the big Battle of the Bridges Race happening this Sunday. Neighbors are out walking their dogs and stopping to chat while the surfers are all catching those great October swells, and there seems to be an unusually large number of cute pregnant people wandering around this fall looking happy and full of life. In fact, last weekend all but one of the couples staying here at Port d’Hiver is expecting a baby this season. I’ve always thought that autumn babies were extra smart!
One of our favorite events is our very own Iceman’s Ball next weekend, Sunday, October 9th right here on Ocean Avenue. This fall festival is old-fashioned small town fun with family activities all day. Guests can take a short walk down to the river and join the festivities which begin at 9 a.m. with the Huck Finn Fishing Derby and end at 8:30 p.m. with dancing under the stars. This year promises to be extra fun with our Melbourne Beach Inn sponsoring a pedicab to ferry folks back and forth and the 4th Annual Crazy Bed Race starting at 4:00.
Best of all, the weather is great and you can walk from the inn and the Iceman’s Ball is free. Unless of course you are brave enough to enter that Crazy Bed Race, but we might be willing to pay to see that!
Here is a guide to the monthly average temperatures at our Melbourne Beach Bed and Breakfast:
MONTH AV. HIGH AV. LOW
January 72 50
February 73 51
March 77 55
April 81 61
May 85 66
June 89 71
July 91 72
August 90 73
September 90 73
October 83 67
November 78 60
December 73 53
The other day I read that about 6 percent of our population, or about 18 million people, have 
Above the garden is the New Orleans-like balcony of 
They grew over the fence and around the porch rails and through the gaps in the house’s siding. As we took apart the bead board ceilings to update the old cloth wiring, inside we found vines and tendrils winding through the walls all the way to the second floor as though the house and plants were all one big organic structure growing up together from the ground. This, combined with all that we were learning about the Brown family and others who had lived in the house on Ocean Avenue throughout the years, made it seem as though the lines between inside and outside were blurring like Hughes’ dreamy depiction of 19th century British colonial island life: plantation, barefoot children, tabby cats, jungle palms, southern sun and sea whipped and shaken and spun together into a beautiful wild adventure.
“As they followed the lane toward the sea they came to a place where, yesterday, a fair sized spring had bubbled up by the roadside. Now it was dry. But even as they passed a kind of gout of water gushed forth: and then it was dry again, although gurgling inwardly to itself. But the cavalcade were hot, far too hot to speak to one another they sat their ponies as loosely as possible, longing for the sea.”
This photo shows my favorite part of this process. That large tripod thing is actually a vehicle with three large tires. Somebody climbs a ladder to the top and drives this along the beach and out several hundred yards into the ocean to move sections of pipe. I’ve asked the family for one for C
