While I Was On Vacation

Author: siggy

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.

The snowy egret was perched on top of a nesting box. There was, maybe, half a dozen such boxes on the perimeter of the marsh. Every time I pass this marsh by car I quickly glance up and down the waters top(???) see what I could spot. Sometimes there are deer drinking water on its edge. I have seen an occasional great egret or snowy egret on its perimeter. That was an odd place to see an egret perched on a nesting box.

We All Live Downstream

Author: siggy

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.

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.

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.

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.

Air Travel

Author: L

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.

I Saw A New Bird Today

Author: siggy

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.

Vacations Always End

Author: siggy

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.

‘Every family has baggage’ in the words of my friend’s wife.  I never gave it a whole lot of thought but she considered my two sisters to be successful.  Both graduated from college (one with a Master’s) and held good jobs for decades.  In contrast, my friend’s two sisters are struggling supporting themselves and alcoholism.  I always criticized my family and saw their shortcomings and was blind to their successes.  It made me think a little harder about the word success.

This morning while we were waiting for my friend’s wife to finish her medical appointments we were in search of the perfect eclair.  Chuck had four addresses of bakeries and a map of New Orleans to guide him.  He has lived here almost a decade and had not found a bakery that makes a really good eclair.  The ones found in the supermarkets were always inferior so we were in search of the perfect eclair.  We found three bakeries and bought their eclairs plus one Neapolitan.  I told one clerk that we were going to critique her eclairs.  She just laughed and said, “Go right ahead.”  Tonight the eclairs will be our deserts.  We will split them three ways and then make our judgments.

Vacations are always interesting, especially, when you go to another part of the country.  Chuck and I were in Buluxi, Mississippi and I was looking at the Gulf waters and saw two large birds flying over the water, one tailing another.  I asked my friend what they were and he said the birds were brown pelicans.  It is their state bird and almost disappeared in that state and they had to import them from Florida so you could still find them in Mississippi.