Full Giant Skink Moon

 Full Giant Skink Moon rises Thursday, 8-11-22 right after sunset. There are two other full moons on the 12th and 13. It will be a good month for moon watchers. P and I plan to be there, welcoming the event with wine poured and good wishes in our hearts for you our friends.

Why Full Giant Skink Moon, you ask? Because in our personal outdoor space seem to be overrun with them this spring and early summer. Little ones with red heads, Little ones with blue tails. Medium ones with big heads and giant ones with bigger heads. They are quite a trill when one decides to surprise us. The largest ones have heads the size of my big toe, which has been described as a water moccasin head sized big toe. I believe they are Five-Lined Skinks??

Oh, BTW, I skipped a couple of FMAs, life got in the way. I hope you forgive me/enjoyed the break from this swill (whichever fits).

5-15-22 First Locust vocalization of this season in my yard today. yesterday I thought I heard the birthing yelp of one but today's had his/her full voice.

5-17-22 We journey to Dutch Town Middle for Matthew's 8th grade concert band affair. He and three buddies, all Sax players formed a quartet on their own and the teacher allowed them to perform at one point during the concert. Each one on a different kind of Sax. They had fun, we had fun! They played some really cool old style music.

5-18-22 Breakfast at Amy's, we spent the night after Matthew's concert. We got to meet Richard! Richard positive, saved, father of six, washes windows as a side job when off shift at one of the plants along the River. BTW custom washes the windows in LSU Tiger Stadium, now how many guys can brag about that? Richard washes all of Amy's windows one time per year. Amy's  mom couldn't wait to grill Richard on his methods. Master cleaners are always looking for new techniques.

Doyle Melancon Rd, Breaux Bridge, 3pm, Swallow Tailed Kite! What a beauty, what a treat.

5-24-22 Howard who helps Loraine run Books Along the Teche called to report a White Tailed Kite to me over the prairie near his homestead, along the western edge of New Iberia.

5-30-22 Stepped onto the patio from the kitchen and was nearly run over by a Monarch! "Grandpa got run over by a Monarch" isn't that the title of a country song? Good to see her. Sightings pretty rare these days.

5-31-22 P and I walking in City Park in front of the Old Fire Station/Yoga Center when I noted the Wild Cherry Tree in that front lawn was full of ripe fruit. I stood there stripping off cherries 4 and 5 at a time feeding them to Ms. P and me. I returned the next day in my pickup so I could stand in the bed and harvest more. I guess I managed to reach1.5 cups of fruit that I placed in a mason jar at home added a tablespoon or two of sugar and poured a yet to be measured amount of excellent bourbon, enough to cover the fruit and just let them sit until. Report to follow.

When P's dad, Ollie died, she bagged up all the ties from his years of working in the Gulf Oil and Chevron front offices saying "I'm going to do something cool with these, I cannot just throw them away". So, the last Friday in April, we decided to visit Festival International in Lafayette. Our friends 'Spoon Man Mike Bonin' and his wife Joy Bonin have a craft booth there and we searched them out before we left for the evening. Mike makes beautiful Cherry Wood Spoons and Joy sews various clever things. She showed us her latest effort, she sewed together two silk ties in some clever configuration resulting in a colorful small over the shoulder bag. Wowser! With this as her answer P hauled that bag of dad's castoffs to Joy to work her magic on. She color coordinated and matched up seams producing six spectacular bags, none the same. P has secret plans for them! Shhhhhhh....

By Myself
after Eloise Greenfield

When I'm by myself
and I close my eyes,
I'm a running river
everchanging, yet steady in its way to go.
I'm a scent of yellow.
I'm a half-filled cup of tea.
I like to sit alone with me.
I grip myself in
I'm a string of violin,
time unfolding, worth gentle holding.
I'm a space for filling up again.
I open my eyes,
and find myself in me.

Margaret Simon, draft

Here it sits
covered from the rain a chess board
broken into pieces.
I allow access to
the board.
He has found a new home. 
I glue it,
I wash it,
I rinse it,
I dry it,
I wrap it up
and drive along a bumpy road
the perfect gift 
to my daughter
She asks, " Where did you dig this up from?"
"One man's trash is another mans treasure
Maybe you can do the same
Like with a blanket?"

Chloe, 6th grade

I wrote alongside Chloe. A poem about my sister's plan to create a quilt from my father's shirts. I left the last line blank so I could make it a prequel to Chloe's. We enjoyed this playful poem making. Thanks, Amy and Emily!

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”

The girl sees patterns,
pictures in her father’s shirts,
gathered,
sorted,
cut,
stitched
into a quilt of many colors,
into a memory of many hugs,
into a dream of everlasting rest.
She sees more than anyone
a life lived as a husband, a father,
a doctor, an artist, a friend.
She touches every day what he wore,
a treasure in her hands.
Maybe you could do the same.
Maybe with a chess board.

Margaret Simon, draft

 

6-20-22 Happy Summer Solstice y'all. Just drove into Degray Lake Resort SP, Arkansas after four days in Tishominga, Miss. SP. Tishominga is on the Natchez Trace, the Trace runs right through it. Ran into an excellent SP naturalist at Degray, she reminded me of the crew at Chicot SP, Arboretum, excellent. We have the best at the Arboretum.

6-24-22 Return home, close your eyes, imagine, driving Ruby and the Land Sub down Evangeline Throughway, Lafayette, 530pm on a Friday...this is as rough and busy a stretch of road I can think of. We are bouncing along in the middle lane and decided to switch to the right lane. Strange, there were no cars around, where are they all? So I moved over and folks began catching up with us gesticulating wildly that something was bad wrong. We pulled over and it was bad wrong, our bike rack and bikes which were on the back of the camper were gone! Shoots! We backtracked and found them chained together in a pile on the sidewalk. The bikes were fine, minor stuff so we unchained put them in the camper and drove home. Blind beginners luck y'all!

7-3-22 Jon Himel upon returning from Lafayette International Airport called in a Swallow-Tailed Kite at the La 182/US 90 interchange. Ol Jon and Ol Eddie are like having extra eyes out there, especially when mine are not as sharp as they once were.

7-23-22 We attended Don Tauzin's funeral, he was a friend, a part of our family. He always made us feel we were part of his. We loved him, he loved us and he was loved by so many. What more can a guy ask for than that at the end of his life? Don is our Son-in-Law Chuck's dad. Our eldest child Rachel's Father-in-Law. Don was lucky enough to be intimately invested in our grandchildren's lives, every day, he and Jean were there for them growing up. We are all so lucky.

7-24-22 Coffee on patio/side porch watched a medium Five-Fined Skink wrestle with good sized Click Beetle on the brick deck. Beetle, with its rounded corners, slippery shell and constant movement and erratic clicking pops was challenging for the Skink with his clumsy mouth parts and short to no arms and hands. We never did see how this battle resolved itself.

Note from Ol Eddie. Swallow-Tailed Kite visited his tree line again. Ha! You go Eddie.

Wine time on side porch. Watched a bright yellow smallish bird at a distance fly along tree line bathed in the evening sunshine, Prothonotary Warbler?

7-27-22 Brother's Second Wednesday Breakfast at Edies. We have had a busy July, but here we sit with 8 week old Cherry Bounce waiting for Jeff, Jeff a no show. What are we to do, we crack the seal and pour a round, the cops who are normally here are gone already, pretty tasty stuff. Glad I made it, I'll try for more next round.

8-2-22 Amy, number three child and very reliable MIKI keeper/warden in her wild garden/neighborhood is sitting in a meeting in NO, 41st floor some fancy office building watching MIKI aerial acrobatics out the window. Sent photo-documentation too!

8-7-22 Sigh. Mowing grass after too much rain, observed "several" monarchs sipping nectar, laying eggs on my large Milk Weed potted plants and acting like they might want to mate with each other??!!! Dang but they are hard to count, such fast moving color in my garden.

8-8-22 I'm on the streets of Old Lafayette, fighting off heart disease on  my trusty bike, a birthday gift from my kids on my 60th birthday. Yes it is the same bike I dropped on the thruway (don't remind me). I crossed University Ave. onto Gordon St. when I hear a soft "Jim" from behind a sidewalk shrub. To my surprise it was Kate Durio a Horticulture graduate of note and to my surprise bundled in a sling across her chest was her newborn, 5 weeks I believe, Charles Ellis. What a beauty, a fine baby. Kate is a great and wonderful person. Good things come to good people. I am so pleased to run into her and meet Ellis as they plan to call him. Kate and I shared the same Horticulture professor, Dr. Ellis Fletcher for whom CE is named. How cool is that? Paula's mom was a Durio and I call Kate her cousin. Kates people are a long line of horticulturally significant folk, generations of them.

Speaking of Joy, neck ties, Prothonotary Warblers and Margaret. I found this Margaret poem that sort of makes it all better; after she, recovering from a scary ride in the COVID bus:

Joy

after George Bilgere

Today I sit in the kitchen
with a glass of Gatorade, on ice,
my daily cocktail.
The door is open
to let in cool morning air.
I sit with my body, just the two of us
for a change. Covid has left us
and moved on to someone else,
with its knife well-sharpened
to gut and leave behind
loose limp skin.

I am sitting in amazement
that I am able to be here breathing.
Amazed at a body’s will to survive
even in the deepest dark cave of fear.

For a while I thought I would never get better.
That I would dissolve into dust in a hotel room alone,
not discovered for days. 

But every day there are miracles.
We wake up. We taste and smell the air.
Tiny eggs in a nest hatch into finches that will fly.

Today I sit watching a prothonotary flutter at the window,
make a mental note to refill the feeders.
The desert rose at my front door
welcomes me home with a fireworks show.

The tomb is empty.

Margaret Simon, 2022

poem, 6-22 

Went looking for David Lee's Rusty Barbed Wire to place one of his in here, but could not find it. I'm not saying I lost it, but I loaned it to one of my students, a veteran, a wounded warrior, who had a pretty awful jaw surgery this summer and I believed the poetry would distract and engage him. I'll find it.

here is an oldie but goodie from David:

Ode to the Robber Barons

                               On open pit mining

May you live

In greed and gluttony

May you die

alone and unmournded

May your memory

vanish from the earth

                                for want of an epitaph

Thanks Dave, I'll find that book soon, promise.

Enjoy the Full Giant Skink Moon risings. I will and we will raise a glass of tart red to you our buds. Errrr, maybe two.

And look don't forget the old people and the unplugged youngsters, this is family business.

peace love and possumhugs

BT