Full Anniversary Waltz Moon

October 5, 2017

Full Anniversary Waltz Moon rises tonight, Thursday night, at about 707, just after the sun sets at about 647. We hope it is raining (cause it is dry folks) and moon rise is interfered with, but we do not care, one way or the other we will be out dancing naked in our yard-rain or moon shine!

9-3-17 Our Navy son Jake and his family (two adults and three teens/tween) landed in Houston this morning from Honolulu. Yes, that Houston. They rented a car and proceeded to deliver three luggage items for a sailor from the boat whose parents lost everything in the storm. Three duffel bags at 50# each of clothes and shoes and stuff lost. Then made their way HOME for a fish fry put on by big sister Rachel and Chuck. It was an amazing meal, four kinds of fish all caught by Rachel's family. So good, so good to see everyone, all together, so much love.
9-4-17 Labor Day, no work, Wooooo Hooooo! Amy and Matt are hosting us all in Prairieville. Nice big home, welcoming swimming pool, entire family there, great food, friends, lots of love all around. We made Maggie play her guitar and sing for us, Grannie B and Mimi joined in. A great time was had by all.
9-5-15 Full moon tonight. Mimi and i waked Ernest Freyou tonight then joined Ran and Jake at Aunt Marci's where they had been treated to a mini family reunion with great food and Jake's old aunts and uncles and cousins, lots of family. Today is Jake and Ran's anniversary. Nine of us wandered over to Randal's on a Tuesday night looking for live Cajun music and were not disappointed. The poor band was looking pretty sad when we walked onto the dance floor and livened up the place. For no one was there. We danced until it closed. We had so much fun, on a Tuesday night, no less! Mimi made a request of the band for and was granted an ANNIVERSARY WALTZ for the honorees. We all joined in on that last dance, what fun.
GHO (Great Horned Owl) on a kill, on the ground, in front of our house, as we pulled into the driveway! Is that cool or what?
The daily rains have ended, we do not know it yet but the great drought has begun (my ol Daddy always said two weeks without rain in south Louisiana is a drought, and I used to say naw, but you know what, he is right). We are sitting at about 60" for the year with several months to go, but it is a drought y'all, thanks Dad, for.

"All of the exciting stuff that happens is not in the normal center, but on the edge." 2-14, James Hitchmough, Horticulture Professor, University of Sheffield.
Hmmmmm, I think ol James stole that one from ol Poss. Let's see, I normally would say "If you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much space" Oh well, almost the same. Those Brits are sometimes a bit stiff in how they express themselves.

9-6-17 My favorite tree in our home yard is my Red Buckeye, Aesculus pavia, purchased from Bird Man Bill Fontenot back in the day. It is a grand bloomer and fruit producer. The only one better is Charles Allen's Monster, Charles' is a real hummingbird magnet, the best of the best. Charles gardens plants for birds and insects. If you have not visited him at Allen Acres you are missing out on a "wild Louisiana adventure".
Well anyway, my Buckeye has no seed production this year. I think I'll blame it on the rain...
9-7-17 The local paper, The Daily Iberian, ran a nice front page spread on Jake and his job in the Navy with photos. It is good to know that folks remember him and are interested.
9-8-17 My sister Marcelle made her camp on False River available to our family so that we can all gather up for a visit. We grilled up already seasoned hamburgers from "The Pig" in Cecelia. So good. lots of Swallows filling the sky but the Purple Martins seem to be gone for this year already. Lake edge is populated with many Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons and Snowy Egrets.

This short short story by Brian Doyle is for Prairiedog, not because of the Ground Squirrel but because of the dog dog...

                             A corner of the Cloak

You know how everything seems normal and usual and orthodox

But actually everything if you look at it closely with all four eyes

Is utterly confusing and puzzling and mysterious and astonishing?

For example this morning the world presents me a Redtailed Hawk,

All shoulders and muscle and glower and a bust like Dolly Parton,

And the hawk completes the life cycle of a young Ground Squirrel,

Spermophilus beecheyi for those of you scoring the game at home,

And carts his or her repast up to a massive Oak and carefully peels

The Squirrel like a Banana, keeping the protein and letting the skin

Fall to the grass below, where a Dog, Canis familiaris for you fans

At home, sniffs curiously and then looks as ecstatic as I have ever,

And I mean ever, seen a Dog, and they are generally a happy tribe, 

But when the young woman roped to the Dog, Homo sapiens girlius

For those of you scoring at home, yanks the leash and barks drop!

And the Dog with immense reluctance drops the most enticing pelt

He has ever even imagined in the redolent and wondrous universe,

And the girl picks it up and stares at it a moment and then drops it

With a strangled screech or swallowed scream of disgusted moan,

It's hard to explain exactly the nature of her horrified vocal sound,

And off she goes at a canter, dragging the rueful and reluctant Dog.

I stand thirty feet away, with my jaw hanging open like a window, 

Having witnessed the whole mad sequence from Hawk to horrified, 

And conclude, for the thousandth time, what a wild & blessed gift,

What a bloody and magical machine it is, what as slather of stories,

What an endless thicket! You really and truly could be issued fifty

Lifetimes, and spend each of them addled and muddled in wonder,

And never understand or even see more than a corner of the cloak.

Brian Doyle, A Shimmer of Something, Lean Stories of Spiritual Substance

9-9-17 Screaming kids pulled behind a big boat on a tube all day, oh wow, Jerked Chicken for dinner  then a pirate ship murder mystery game in costume birthday celebration for Maddie who is 16 in a few days. Exaustion!
Nice female Northern Harrier cruising the lake edge this morning.
9-10-17 Cowboy Church then pack up and head home. We are all so grateful for this time together.
I have been noticing the RTHB (ruby throated hummers) burying their faces in the cypress tree branch tips, they must be digging insects out of the foliage.
9-11-17 AIEA Forets packing to go home via a long drive to Houston, yes, that Houston, early Tuesday flight. But first Boiled crabs and shrimp at Janes, Vu Tran always takes such good care of his old 4th grade teacher Mrs Foret. Amazing good time and food. Jameson didn't think he would like boiled shrimp but boy was he wrong.

How about a little Billy Collins for our friends at Carpe' Deum Gelato/Espresso Bar on Jefferson-

I Am Not Italian

                                        

                                   I am not Italian, technically speaking,  yet here I am leaning on a zink bar   

                                   in Florence.

                                   on a sunny morning,

                                   my foot up on the smooth tin rail,

                                   just like the other men, who,

                                   it must be said, are officially and fully Italian.

                                   It's 840 and they are off to work, some in offices, 

                                   others sweeping the streets, while I am off to a museum

                                   or a church to see paintings, maybe light a candle in an alcove.

                                   Yet here we all are in our suits and work shirts

                                    joined in the brotherhood of espresso,

                                    or how is it said? La fratellanza del 'espresso

                                    draining our little white cups

                                    with a quick flourish of the wrist

                                    each of us tasting the same sweetness of life,

                                    if you take a little sugar, 

                                    and the bitterness

                                    of its brevity, whether you choose to take sugar or not.

9-12-16 We sadly, exausted said goodbye to Jake and gang!

9-13-17 I drove past Lake Martin today in an effort to dodge the snarl at the Broussard construction tangle. I look forward to that great feminine energy from all those golden webbed spiders that adorn the utility lines this time of year. Sadly I saw few.

9-14-17 I take the Lake Martin route again today. It is 8-10 minutes longer but so peaceful, this is a really fine gift to give yourselves y'all. The lack spiders may be due to Slemco spraying their ROW with a helicopter and well, just doing too good of a job this year. These beauties use the lower wire and the tallest weeds to attach their webs to so that they can seine the air currents of all of those insect herbivores.

9-15-17 My Native and other Interesting Plants Class, ENVS 360, was treated to a wonderful guest presenter today. Anne came in to teach us how to SEE. Well we called it a drawing class, but it is really a SEEING class. SEE, if you do not SEE it, you cannot draw it. So it was good, because today's student pays little attention to detail, I find, and this is an especially detail dense class. Thank you Annie D for teaching us to SEE! 

Did I tell you that Maggie Rose is my 14 year old granddaughter, she is great, i am so proud of her, tonight she sang the National Anthem at the opening ceremonies of the Cecelia High football game, so pretty!

9-16-17 Jon and I journeyed over to Eunice for the CPHPS 3 prairie field day and annual business meeting, that is Cajun Prairie Habitat Preservation Society y'all. It was a grand morning begun with Best Stop boudin for breakfast, we brought our own coffee. So good! Eunice Prairie was alive with Liatrus, Blaising Stars were the star attraction at this time of year, oh and so much more. So pretty, so fine. 

There was also much Praying Mantis action, we even saw a pair mating. A woman in the group dryly commented, to the amusement of the group, that they must not be finished because he still had his head. Haha, ha!

9-18-17 Impossibly thin razor edged fingernail in E this morning one half hour ahead of the sunrise. New Moon tomorrow! YeeeeeHaaaawwww!

9-21-17 WoooooHooooo! Autumnal Equinox today or tomorrow, smile! I almost forgot, where is my brain. Y'all, when I ask my students what today is, most will say Thursday, one or two will say first day of fall, but almost none have a feel for the amazing timekeeper our earth and moon and star are and how really cool it all is. Sorry, was I ranting again?

9-23-17 Temperature dropped a bit this afternoon. Fingernail moon in early evening sky. still many Hummers and Gulf Fritillary and Monarch butterflies about!

9-30-17 Early load-out to Rockefeller Wildlife Preserve. Purchased by McIlhenny in 1913 and sold a year later to the Fed as a wildlife preserve. Originally 86,000ac of mostly very flat salt-marshland. Now about 76,000ac due to land loss. We were there to collect data, learn how to ID wetland species of plants and explore and observe. So many fine wading birds y'all. The last thing we did is walk the last 1500 feet into the Gulf. Now that was so fine. Very exciting. It was also quite sad, there was no sand beach, the land was eroding out from under our feet as we watched. Needless to say there was a pregnant pause, for that normally happy, loud, raucous group, as the truth sunk in. What a day, what a lesson.

10-4-17 Must be time to finish that darned FMA, a nearly full setting moon woke me up this very early morning, say 2 sumpin or so.

This time of year makes me want to dig out a Hummingbird poem from David Lee and perhaps something about Monarchs from Jannise Ray, please bear with me:

Ode beneath a Hummingbird Feeder

Greenflash of lightning

and memory of a red scar

etched on the golden throat

of a still afternoon.

Whirr of tiny wings

like a small thunder

across the redwood porch.

Oh, arrogant little warrior,

if I had a naked weapon 

I could brandish like yours

I, too would suffer

no foolish rival suitors

sipping at my ruby fount.

David Lee, So Quietly The Earth

Fire-Wings II

Where does the fire go 

when a monarch dies?

Does it vanish

in smoke or turn

suddenly to rain? 

Does it lie dead

against a mountainside

transforming placidly

to dirt, which

will harbor in its richness

millions of small burning ships

sailing a deep-green forest,

never to be seen? Or

does the fire seep into the ground, 

running in rivulets

toward the blazing core

of the earth, 

one day to return, 

a volcano

spewing wings? 

Jannise Ray, A House of Branches

So get out there tonight, sunset is 647 and moonrise is 717, take your honey, your kids, grandkids, the old people, bring snacks and something to drink, a blanket, tell stories, laugh, listen, love on each other...

peace love possumhugs

bt