We have Chicks

 

First, let me tell you how my day has gone.  For the last two weeks I have been fighting back pain.   Not incapacitating, but enough to make one wary of much physical activity.  Yesterday, I went to the doctor for an injection to help speed the healing process.  Lots of hiking planned for May and June.  Can’t be down with a bad back.  The plan was to really rest for the next few days while everything healed up. 

Wanda usually beats me up in the mornings by thirty to forty five minutes.  While she’s enjoying her quiet time, I’m working on my beauty sleep.  I need lots of that.  This morning she came back into the bedroom with the words every husband loves to hear.  “I hate to tell you this, BUT….” 

There’s water on the utility room floor.

Yep, water heater has sprung a leak.  I jump up, go turn off water, and try to figure my next move.  The back is feeling better, but still tender.  How am I going to manage this?

Thankfully, a call to my brother had him on his way down to help.  I went into town and purchased a new water heater and all other fittings we would need.  We got the old one out and the new one in pretty quick.  The only problem was we had one little drip at a connection.  We would tighten a little and check it.  Still a drip.  Tighten a little more, still a drip.  Short story long, we finally removed all the existing plumbing, and replaced it with new.  Problem solved, but much more work than we originally planned.

After all that, I went to sit on the porch and rest a while.  Noticed our hawk was coming and going more than usual, so I walked down for a better view but saw nothing.   Later this afternoon I decided to take another look.  Thought I could see something white.  Went back to the house and got the camera.  It was getting late and the light was going, but…

Definitely two chicks in the nest, but one seems much more active.  Hope they both make it.  Will try for better pictures in the coming days.  Here’s another pic of mom/dad taken a few days ago.

Other than that, nothing worth blogging about at present. Fourteen days, and a wakeup.

We have a Visitor

 

Though it has been almost eleven years since we lived in a residential neighborhood of our small city, we still get asked why we moved, and do we really like living out “there”.  Now, “there” isn’t but about five miles from Walmart, Lowe’s, and everything else one associates with city living; but one wouldn’t know that if they just “dropped” in.  We see more livestock; cows, goats, chickens, etc. each day than we do people.

This is one of the reasons we enjoy our “country living”.

I had noticed a hawk of some kind frequenting the area the last few days.  The neighbor was even keeping his chickens in their coop.  After seeing it leave from a tree in our yard a couple of times, I went to investigate. 

Here she is.

Proudly sitting in her nest.  I don’t have a clue as to the species.  She isn’t one of the larger ones, more medium size I would say.  Maybe Judy can tell from what little is shown, and will enlighten us. 

I’ve been spotted.

We’re hoping her eggs soon hatch, and we get a chance to see the young ones before we leave home for our next journey.  I think it would be great to watch her feeding her young, as well as seeing them fledge.  (intransitive verb:  to acquire the feathers necessary for flight or independent activity; also: to leave the nest after acquiring such feathers.)

……jc

Crawfish, Crayfish, Mudbugs, etc….

 

There’s nothing in South Mississippi, and all of Louisiana, that signals Spring better than a crawfish boil.  It is as much a ritual as Mardi Gras.  Though the little creatures become available shortly after New Years, It usually isn’t until after Easter that the prices get low enough that a couple hundred pounds become realistic. 

This is how they arrive.  Trapped wild from rivers and bayous, or raised on crawfish farms, they are rinsed, bagged, and refrigerated.  They arrive alive in sacks such as these. A sack will weigh anywhere from 30-40 pounds.  I forgot to take a picture of ours and grabbed this shot from the internet.  We actually had six sacks.  Around 200 pounds.

The first thing is to dump a sack into a tub, and give them a good rinsing to remove any trash, as well as pick out any that may be dead.  You don’t want to cook the dead ones.  The kids always have to play with one or two.

 

A few of the ingredients used to make a great boil.

The brew.

Bring it to a rolling boil, add the crawfish and other stuff, and sit back.  After it returns to a boil, time it for seven minutes and turn off the burner. Wait a bit while all the flavors merge.

 

Dump them out and enjoy. We wound up cooking seven pots.  This was the first one dumped.  Apparently, no complaints.

Some got lucky and had theirs delivered, already peeled.  She said they were better than the hamburger.  Starting them young.

Just a Saturday afternoon in the South.  Good food, along with good friends and family.  it’s what we do…..jc

Just Piddling

 

For those of you not familiar with the phrase “just piddling”, it means rambling from one project to another, one thing to the next, with little or no defining finish line for any of it. 

Shortly after returning from the GE&H rally, we had a family fishing trip to Guntersville, AL.  It was a family affair with my brother, both SIL’s, and one daughter.  The only problem was that the Crappie didn’t get the word we were coming.  We departed there for home a day early to avoid a bad weather system moving in.

This past week found me putting the finishing touch on the fence in Natchez, and helping my brother build a closet in his daughters home.  Cutting grass and planting azaleas has completed the week. Sounds exciting, right?

I did stumble upon one bright spot last week.  There’s a plant here in the Southeast that was a staple at everyone’s home back in the early days.  It didn’t matter if you were rich or poor; seems your yard would have at least one.  If you were to walk around the Homochitto National Forest on a Spring day, you be surprised at the number of old homesteds which are defined by the presence of this plant. Without it blooming from the tops of the pine trees, you would have no idea that someone once had a home nearby.  The Forest Service actually considers it an invasive species, and has attempted to erradicate it with little success.  Do you have a guess?

How about Wisteria?

I spotted this overgrown shed last week.  It is located in the yard of an old friend that passed away a few years ago.  This shed was once his shop.  Thought it was worth a quick picture.

As I mentioned earlier, not much to blog about.  No large catch’s or exciting travels.  Hope that begins to change within the next month, or so……jc