Full Bluebird Moon

5-15-19 Eastern Bluebird to be exact. I decided that this should be the name of this yet unnamed FMA since one landed right in front of my truck on La 92 near WJ Bernard's this morning, wrestled with an uncooperative insect and took off just in time to live to talk about it and give me a little excitement on my drive in.

The Full Bluebird rises about 7 Friday and the sun sets about 8. Saturday the sunset/moonrise happen synchronously which is really cool, about 8, but there is a good chance of cloud cover with rain on Saturday/Sunday.

I had the privilege of meeting and orienting a group of Master Naturalists a couple of Saturdays back to our Cade Farm. The farm is perched on the left bank of the Mississippi River delta, Big Muddy delta, the "high bank" is the bank cut out of the old alluvial plain on the West. this western edge of the delta is also the begining of the Great Southwest Prairie, Cajun Prairie. Bayou Tortou may be the old Vermilion River from the days when Big Muddy flowed through Arnaudville and Cecelia and St Martinville and Loreauville and New Iberia, the Teche Valley days. These land forms occur together on our Cade Farm.
So, those of you that know me understand that I love to tell stories to a captive audience, that means these unsuspecting visitors had to endure many of my stories. Oh, I taught them about trees too. We did visit some big fine ones on our walk-about. One of my stories was about the meteor P and I viewed on  an earlier full moon evening at the Cade Farm, on the birding tower near the crawfish ponds. The narrative of this event goes as follows, from the Full Bolide Fireball Moon FMA from a few years back:


This (last) full moon had two moon rises Friday and Saturday either should be about equal. Friday was a bust, too cloudy. Now Saturday was really special y’all.  P and I spoke of packing up the canoe, driving to Lake Martin, unloading then launching, viewing from mid lake, returning in dark, loading, driving home. Whew! Sounds like way too much work. Our other option is home-viewing, boring! So we decide to drive to the birding tower at the farm in Cade, 5 minutes away. We arrived just before sundown (moonrise), enjoyed that spectacle, then waited for the moon, nothing???!! There was a band of low clouds to the east that masked our enjoyment of the event. Mimi and I were not worried since we had a bottle of Merlot, 14 Hands no less, two glasses and our folding chairs (and bug dope). Moonrise/sunset was scheduled for 815, we were already there a few minutes early just to get set, but moon viewing was delayed until 9 by the low clouds. By then the Merlot had been enjoyed to the max, if you know what I mean, we has saluted you all our good friends and the mosquitos were starting to patrol the elevated tower pretty regularly.
Come 9 we enjoyed a grand show as the old girl came out of cover and into her glory. As we sat there, empty wine glasses in hand, admiring the long awaited full moon. Suddenly out of the east, from behind the newly risen full moon, came a most spectacular meteor (AMS event 1483), with a low flat trajectory. It proceeded past us faster than most jets but slow when compared to our previous meteor encounters moving straight on into the last fading light of the recently set sun. As it passed, it looked like a giant sparkler, changing colors from blue/white to green/yellow, and it was almost like you could see pieces falling off of it as it screamed by, not nearly as neat and precise as previous meteors. When P and I looked into its tail as it disappeared into the dust and haze of the western horizon, we both noticed that the “head” of the meteor seemed to be a cluster of heads, not one. Needless to say we were, yes a little drunk, but absolutely speechless, dumbstruck. This was the most amazing experience. We took it as a good omen.

 What about some church bulletin literature, errr, quotes?

"The worst sin towards our fellow
creatures is not to hate them, but
to be indifferent to them. That's
the essence of inhumanity."
                            G. B. Shaw

"The best portion of a good person's
life is their little nameless,
unremembered acts of kindness
and of love."
                             W. Wordsworth

4-21-19 Modest family gathering for Easter, Joe and family and Ollie, P and I. We had fun. I saw my first MIKI of the year over my rectangle of lower upper St Martin Parish, on the day before Earth Day.
4-22-19 Happy Birthday Jake, Happy Earth Day y'all, ED oil train, whooHoo!
4-25-19 Ollie my 92 year old father in law called tonight to say he was out for a stroll at dusk and saw a big flight of geese and two flights of ducks. Ollie is an old duck hunter, but i called Bruce to fact check him. Bruce lives in Crowley and he said he doubts the Geese, kind of late, probably Ibis, I agree. Bruce said that the Blue Wing Teal were all over Crowley so that duck report is probably was legit.
4-28-19 MIKI again, only on Sundays as before, I have not seen them in Iberia yet Jon, but I'll bet they are all over New Iberia by now.



Here is an interesting quote from a soil physicist, Dr. Daniel Hillel:

"Those who were specialists studied more and more about less
and less until they would know everything about nothing.
And the generalists studied less and less about more and more
until presumably they would know nothing about everything."

Margaret had this new student Maddox, a forth grader. Margaret says that "sometimes kids walk into my classroom already knowing how to be a poet". Here is Maddox's first poem.

How to Be a Storm

rock the ships below
boom like a thundering drum
blasting the air with a gale
use your wrath in a tempestuous storm
then let the sun shine again

5-4-19 Ollie in hospital with a touch of pneumonia. So I'm headed over for a visit when I observed a fresh shiny, dark, mysterious, evil oil train, a harbinger of the end. I say, "Self, what are we doing to us?"
I just heard that one of the northern states has legislation in the mill to not allow passage of these dangerous cargoes unless the volatile components have been removed first. The Canadian oil people are howling.

I have begun reading, for the second or third time, an important work by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis, Teaming With Microbes, a simple book that gets down and dirty about life in the soil and how that applies to your life as a gardener. I recommend it to all of you. You know how I love quotes, here is one from that book:
Sung to the tune of "The Teddy Bear's Picnic"...
"If you go down in the dirt today you'd better not go alone! For today's the day the nematodes have their picnic."

5-13-19 Empty Oil Train sliding through "the Berry" today, two pulling engines, two box cars and 110 tankers, sigh.



More from Margaret:
Pi-ku follows the syllable count of pi, 3.14.
Some students challenged themselves to more digits, 3.14159...

Girls writing nature pi-ku.
A beautiful spring day on the shore of Bayou Teche with lily pads and duck families, draping oaks and cypress trees became the perfect setting for inspiring pi-ku.
Lilypads
Lilypads
are
in the water.
They're
absorbing sunlight
providing habitat for wildlife
such as
Louisiana bullfrogs
and other creatures.
The shadow
drops the temperature
providing a cool habitat
Nature has many examples--Pi!
Josie

Beautiful
blooms
rest peacefully
watch
as the calm wind blows.
The flowers dance to the soft music.
They stop
moving from side to side
surrounded by leaves
friends of vines
saying Hello to
multi-colored dragon flies and bees.
Jayden

Outside I
see
a tree with a
hole.
Could I make it a
home? A place warm, quiet, safe and dark.
--Izabella

Beth Erwin recommended Seaweed Chronicles by Susan Hand Shetterly as a good read. Beth it is better than I anticipated. I’m only on p. 45/271 and I’m loving it. Thank you. Here is an Aldo Leopold quote from that book: “To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” This quote kind of sets the tone for this fine environmental read so far.

I wanted to comment to Anne that those two bottles of tart red you gifted me with recently were much better fare than the normal 3/$20 we drink on our FMA celebrations, much better. Thank you Anne!


OK, so here we go, get out Friday or Saturday with your people and some form of refreshment. This should be quite the show, so do not miss it because it will happen with or without you. P and I will be doing our celebration and will raise a glass of tart red 3/$20 to you our friends.

peace love possumhugs
BT

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