Oh, this heavenly cool weather. Just wish it would last forever. And we are so lucky to have had no bad storms this year—not even moderate ones. We could certainly use a little rain. My grass is brown and even the weeds are not growing much.
My Confederate Rose is blooming and my Golden Rain Tree is loaded with beautiful blooms or bracts as they might be called. Other than a Coleus and one or two Pentas, I have nothing flowering. Oh, and a Butterfly Bush. My Bauhinia or Orchid tree has grown to more than head height and I’m hoping it blooms before any cold weather. And speaking of that, my Blood Orange tree is loaded with fruit, not yet ripe. And my Satsuma is also loaded. My Meyer Lemon may be developing some growth near the ground level, but if so, it will be a long time before it’s producing any lemons. Its strange how some things are appearing in my flower beds while others are not. My Allemanda is thriving but my Iochroma is not. The Knockout Roses are kind of bare right now but alive. Two Azaleas are struggling. And I noticed one Crinum blooming in a flower bed even though I don’t think I put it there and all the others are nowhere to be seen. One of three Gazanias shows life.
Had an interesting chat with a man at the Belle River boat landing. I think he just stopped when he saw me, a lone woman, sitting on one of the concrete benches. He was very nice and I wasn’t worried. Anyway, the conversation got around to fishing and this guy said he had noticed a “lot” of small sharks at the landing. And something else but I can’t remember what. Still, I told you some time ago a fisherman had told me he caught a shark and I figured the man didn’t know what he’d caught. Now, it seems, sharks are more common in the spillway. This guy was exchanging a recipe for shark with a woman loading her kids in her vehicle. So, I guess there really are sharks in the spillway. Maybe in Belle River.
And along those lines, a camper friend recently caught half a dozen nice, big blue crabs in the river in front of my house. The water isn’t especially low but something is different. Also, the quantity of alligators in the river is increasing. And in the spillway at the landing. I spoke to a man who had his big dog there and I mentioned to the man that there were alligators right at the launch ramps. He bragged that his dog was tough and could handle an alligator. I just hope he never has to find out. It was a pretty dog.
On another note, a small bird got inside my house the other night and I found that out when my cat went wild, racing up and down the stairs, skidding across the counter all in pursuit of the little bird which stayed up high. I couldn’t catch it and when I went to bed I figured I’d find a dead bird somewhere in the house in the morning. But a neighbor came for coffee and spotted the little bird on the window sill, inside. Now there were two dogs, a cat and a man all chasing this little guy. Fortunately, the man won and caught the little bird putting it out on a hanging basket in the yard. After a while, we looked and the bird was gone, hopefully flown away.
Yoga classes are going well, by the way. Pretty much settling into the same people each session. We “graduated” to a DVD lesson which required standing beside our chair at times. It was different. The instructor said to hold the chair back gently but I had a death grip on mine. I am not going to fall!
Teche News’ Lower St. Martin correspondent, Linda Cooke, can be emailed at lindacooke1939@ gmail.com.
