May
16
2015
In the week I was gone my goldfinch stopped coming to my feeders. That happens every year. The goldfinch come in a steady stream to my feeders in the early spring. Then they stop. I sometimes wonder what they feed on later on but, obviously, it is something other the sunflower seed I put out for them. It is always a mystery to me.
May
16
2015
I appreciated my home better after I was gone a week. All my music at my fingertips. My wife, of course. And all my pets–all seven cats and three dogs. Now I am usually in charge of meals. There is nothing like being gone and back and realizing all your amenities are near by. Now I made my own coffee and drank out of my special cup. My coffee now tasted like I remembered it to. I did not have to listen to too many lectures when I did something wrong. My friend was a bit opinionated and overbearing, which is not to say my wife can’t be–she can. All in all I was glad to be home and grateful I had one to return to.
May
15
2015
We had a new visitor in our yard last night–an adult cottontail, which we viewed from our living room window. Sometimes we see rabbits from our kitchen window but we have not seen one from there in months. There are raspberry thickets in back, I believe, they hide under. The new visitor was there a few minutes and disappeared into the bush. I have lived here for over ten years and this is the first time I remember seeing a cottontail from my living room window. Once my wife actually saw a turkey in our front yard. I have never seen a turkey in our yard. A few days ago she saw a three foot black snake on our lawn from the bathroom window. You never know exactly what you are going to see from our living window or in our yard.
May
14
2015
I was shaking after this close call. I was driving on the road that goes into mine when out of nowhere a pickup appeared in the opposite direction. The only way I avoided an head on collision was by immediately hugging the bank. It was only by inches I avoided an accident. Not only was that driver going too fast but was at least three feet over the center line. I could have been killed. Sometimes your life could change in a split second. It was a reality check.
May
14
2015
In the week I was gone the two tomato plants grew quickly. There were quite a few little green tomatoes while a week ago there was almost none. My wife had splurged and bought quite a few plants while I was on vacation–many still in their original containers and needed to be planted. She bought two beautiful budding fuchsia plants one of which I hung from the white pine tree in view from our large living room window. Every year we put one up there and the plant does well there as long as we keep it watered.
The weather finally became seasonal–sixties and seventies. I thought we went straight from winter into summer for a short time. At least it seemed that way. Today I was thrilled I noticed a flower that had little white snow bells. My wife said it was a perennial. The grass was also cut when I got home. All these things happened in the week I was gone.
May
14
2015
We all live downstream. This was a sign I read on a stream. I thought of several things in, particularly, of global warming and how interrelated the world is. Everything is connected. And countries can’t agree and(???) how to attack this problem.
More locally when some one (or a company) pollutes a stream its(???) effects the body of water downstream. We all have one earth and each person (and each company) has to do its part to preserve it. No one lives in a void.
May
11
2015
The captain of “Therapy Charters” quickly put his boat on the hitch to his truck and then started cleaning the fish. I was amazed how quickly he cleaned the speckled trout and after he filleted them how little the fillets were. He would throw the entrails in the air. The swirling gulls by the cleaning station grabbed them right away.
I questioned him before and found out he was an electrician for eighteen years and has been running his charter for eight years. Oddly enough his wife was a therapist working in schools and private practice. She had several degrees.
He did use live shrimp for bait and there are times the bait is harder to get. He had me pose in front of the almost twenty speckled trout. I also took a picture of his truck which had the the name of his charter on the side. This was his second trip today. We were out in the sun over four hours and I felt “washed out” and he did this twice today. It can’t be an easy job. His face was deeply tanned.
May
11
2015
The last full day was the highlight of my trip. My friend rented a charter boat to fish on Lake Pontchartrain. Unexpectedly the boat ride to and back our fishing spot was just as exciting as the fishing.
We hung on for dear life as the wind and spray hit us. It was exhilarating! The captain said he was only traveling twenty-seven mile per hour but it seemed faster. I was never in a boat that small. The fishing was almost anticlimactic.
I lost track how many of speckled trout I caught. As my friend said in his sardonic way–I caught ‘my world record’ for speckled trout. The guide was good and patient with us. He talked slowly with a southern drawl. I also caught two sting rays, two small croakers and the only flounder. It was fun although I did get tired standing up to fish.
I did not catch any sheephead. The guide caught two and my friend one. They were bigger than any of the other fish–four to six pounds. My only disappointment there was no time to eat any of the speckled trout. I was leaving the next day.
The guide and captain was good and if you are ever in the New Orleans area I would recommend this charter. He called his charter “Therapy Charters”. When I questioned him how he got his name, he simply said ‘fishing is therapy.’ If you ever want to look up his web site it is www.therapycharters.net.
May
11
2015
Spring went straight into summer. I was gone a week. I know summer still has five weeks to go but that is the way it seemed. The big lilac bush bloomed while I was gone. There was new growth all over the place. All this in a week. I noticed the two patio tomato plants grew quite a bit. I still have not carefully inspected the garden. I am sure there are other changes. It has become the time of year I just wear tee shirts and shorts. Pretty soon I will be putting back the air conditioner in the bedroom. We discarded the thick blanket and the fan ran all night.
May
10
2015
Air travel is amazing. As I write this, there are thousands of airplanes in the air, all over the world, cruising at 35,000 feet and other altitudes, landing and taking off, taxiing, boarding and discharging passengers at countless airports. Flight Aware (www.flightaware.com) is one website that tracks these flights. It has a lot of information about each flight, and you can watch a visual graphic of each plane as it travels along its flight path between airports. Check it out ! I was amazed at how many planes are up there, day and night, all over the globe. I had no idea. As they travel, they are passed between various flight control centers, like Houston, or Atlanta. The air traffic controllers guide the pilots through the skies and have an extremely important job, coordinating all the different flights. It really is amazing how many airplanes are up there !
This is my first guest blog on Siggy’s Blurbs. Thank-you, Siggy, for inviting me to contribute.
May
9
2015
I saw a new bird today. Chuck spotted it at one of his feeders. He thought, at first, it was an albino (of a pigeon or mourning dove but then he brought out his bird book. It was a type of dove he had never seen before. It was white and had a ring around its neck. I will give you its precise name when I look it up in my bird book. It is always exciting when you see a new species of bird. I might try to photograph the red headed woodpecker for my wife later. It is a common species here but not so in Pennsylvania.
May
9
2015
Vacations always end. Today Chuck and I will go on that fishing trip we talked about for, at least, a year. Unless, it is cancelled, again. We were supposed to go fishing on Lake Pontchartrain on Wednesday but the waves were too choppy and the bottom of the lake was stirred up.
The fishing would have been lousy that day. This is my last chance this visit to go fishing. I have never caught a fish that weighed several pounds. I might catch a speckled trout or if I am lucky a redfish that weighs even more. Chuck has never fished in this area.
Maybe, next year we will go camping again. We will see. In any case it was fun and I am looking forward now to flying home and sleeping in the same bed with my wife and seeing all my critters (I especially miss Tilla, my favorite dog) and being in familiar surrounding. It was nice to go away but thank God I have a place to go home to. And a wife to return to. This is the longest we been apart–one week.
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