Butte La Rose et Les Entourage

Bonjour!

Back on the subject of the levee road work and its progress: A pilot truck escorts local traffic back and forth from one end of where construction begins to where it turns around and will go on till the work is completed in the near future. So patience, mes cher! It’s an inconvenience and hardship on the fishermen especially. It is a long way around to detour via Butte La Rose to exit I-10 to Henderson and visa-versa. The price of gas has gone up again. It is an added expense for me. My neighbor lives by the pontoon bridge works every day in Henderson taking the long way around.

I was told that the logging company agreed they are responsible for the trucking company who used the levee to haul their logs in recent years which heavily damaged the road with their heavy loads and made arrangements with the parish and possibly the state also to pay their damage to the levee road. So who is going to compensate us for our hardship and gas expense? Come on!

It is not the grocer’s fault! Have you noticed after a couple weeks onions and potatoes spoil in your pantry? I recall during winter months running up to Wisconsin picking up 40,000-pound truckloads of these vegetables. We’d drive directly to the farms on head lands in snow and mud and from those farms the produce was delivered to our markets down here. Just remember the difference in freezing winter we just had and that’s where the problem is. Northern farmers build huge insulated warehouses to protect their produce from the freezing winter. The much more than usual freezing temperatures here this winter that maybe happens once every century messed us up. We don’t otherwise need insulated warehouses.

If I missed passing this along last month, please be reminded the students at the Beau Chene High School in Coteau plant a large variety of vegetable and flowering plants to sell to the public for spring planting every year. The money made from the sales is reinvested in more seeds. This is all grown in green houses there during school hours. Their number is (337) 662-5815. Great group of kids!

Spring gardens will be late in happening this year. I have not had time to till the garden yet. If I can’t get it on this year I’ll plan to buy okra from one who does. I’ll plant bell peppers if possible.

With family and friends gathered we celebrated my son Steven’s 55th birthday at Rapides Regional Hospital in Alexandria last month. That hospital takes good care of their patients. To be said with God leading, they saved my son’s life. We had cake and a few of his friends from Baldwin came. We all sang happy birthday and he loved it.
Talking about birthdays, mine was this month. I am three-quarters of a century old, or seven and a half decades, take your pick. My son’s Uncle Jackie Segura being a day older than me.

I’m trying not to cut my swamp yard too soon it is full of little violet flowers and the taller yellow ones plus other green vining plants. I know they all have names, but can’t remember. All my neighbors have beautifully kept yards like done in the city and I appreciate that. I’m still calling mine a swamp yard. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Coming through Breaux Bridge and Henderson Dimenche Gras I thought everyone in the world were at the La Poussiere, Atchafalaya Club and Whiskey River. Another reason to party to Mardi Gras time! Brings out the partiers from ici et la-bas et tout par-tout. Tonnerre m’écrase!

–Cousine Hélène

337-228-1714
helenboudreaux@uno.com