Baja St. Martin

I’m a bit afraid to say this in case it brings bad luck, but the weather this past week has been gorgeous. I can hear lawnmowers and weedeaters buzzing away every day and all the neighborhood yards look so fresh and neat. I think rain is forecast for one day, but that should be just in time to water my garden veggies and newly planted flowers, assuming it isn’t 5 or 6 inches at one time.
Crawfish continues. The price is still 70 or 75 cents per pound to the fishermen. Loaded boats pass in Belle River daily. Some are barely above water. The Gator Tail motors make a lot of noise especially at 4 or 5 a.m. No worse, however, than the huge drilling rig that passed the other early morning. Usually I don’t even hear or see them despite the proximity but this one was flashing its lights all over and I had the doors and windows open.
We purchased 10 pounds of boiled crawfish for Mother’s Day and they were super although a little smaller than previous ones. Maybe it was just that batch. A few were dark, dark red and a bit hard to shell, but most were tender and soft.
My Hummingbird feeder is mobbed every day lately. It’s hard to count the little creatures since they move so fast, but my newest feeder has a plastic ring around on which the birds sometimes perch while they’re feeding. If I count fast I can catch them sitting relatively still now and then. Once there were at least 10! I do have quite a few flowers in bloom in the yard and I have seen hummers out there but they seem to prefer the feeder.
Next bingo in Belle River is May 17 at 10 a.m. Humana will also be bringing a birthday cake. Recreation president Charlotte Ratcliff is working to get someone to fix the acoustics in the meeting room. Although the bond money won’t be available until fall, the recreation treasury has enough to cover the cost of installing a dropped acoustic ceiling if that’s what the contractor suggests. The meeting room is so very nice but it’s hard to hear what anyone says with the terrible echo. Once that problem is fixed, the next on the list is dirt work to extend the parking lot and hopefully create a place for a playground. We do have two, maybe three brand new lights now to illuminate the parking lot and part of the walking trail.
After all these years of frustration, I know Charlotte is happy to see things happening. Me, too. I figured I’d be gone of old age before the Belle River recreation site would even be started. Now, I’m getting pretty old, but I think I’ll be around for a while.
I know I told you last week that we had a power failure on the day of our bingo and potluck. That one lasted about four hours, a shorter period of time than predicted. Today, the power failed again, this time for about two hours in the evening. The text message that came on my cell phone said damage to Entergy equipment and I have no idea what that means but by morning you can bet everyone in town will know what happened.
The longer failure on bingo day resulted when someone ran their truck into a pole and broke it. Power failures are getting pretty common around here these days. With a generator I’m not inconvenienced much except I lose my cable TV and internet and I’ve been watching “House of Cards” on Netflix and I was ready to catch another episode. Alas!

Teche News’ Lower St. Martin correspondent, Linda Cooke, can be e-mailed at lindacooke1939@gmail.com.