Butte La Rose et Les Entourage

Bonjour!

A few times yearly the Arbor Day Foundation sends me seedling trees for the few-dollar donations I give them. I plant those around the yard. That is a good trade. Last week I received ten bald cypresses. We don’t know about flooding for this year. If planted in the ground and one comes, the baby trees will not survive if flood waters stay long. So Vielle Femme mixed dirt and old potting soil I save to reuse. Waste not, want not!

Voila! Monday Vielle planted in containers while I dug holes for setting the containers in the ground. Everything looked good after the work was done. Feeling very good about it next afternoon I went out to check our work. I noticed one looked different. Coming up above the soil looked like little skinny branches. What she’d done was plant the tree upside down. How do you like that? You gotta keep the roots wet until planting. So the roots were exposed to two days of sunshine. I’ll know soon if it dies. So aging is what I have to look forward to. Pooyie!

We’ve all heard the cackling chickens and crowing roosters during our growing years. Someone is bravely raising some in our neighborhood. Maybe the neighbor is trying his hand at going back to nature. He’s taking a chance because of the fresh live chickens, coons and possums live for being able to reach into a cage with their long skinny paws and pull from the wires for feasting. True, they won’t find any loose chickens running wild in the woods behind our camps. Like one of these varmints had done to neighbor Shelby’s caged chicken some years ago. And how about the snake that crawled into the bird cage on my porch one night and ate two newly hatched doves?

Apparently my neighbor has more roosters then chickens. And when a chicken lays her egg, alleluia, they all together come to life at the same time. It is a matter of who will be the loudest to make the first announcement and celebrate, chicken or rooster. All the chickens cackle at the same time yet only one egg was laid.

Can you read a rooster’s crow? I can! They come to life in competition of each other and all are insisting and each one saying uh, uh fellows, get back now, “I be that baby daddy this time!”

My granddaughter Maria recently got married at the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. A popular chosen place where many unite in marriage. It was a beautiful ceremony. Her husband, Ronny, is from Illinois. Her family is from Florida. And our family is from this area. Her dad, my son, could not be there due to his illness. All families traveled many miles to witness as they vowed to love each other forever and ever before God, amen!

Maria posted pictures on Facebook. It was amazing that several weddings happened there and on Bourbon Street that day.

I was ready for the road that morning but when I started up the van, I heard a pop and a whistle under the hood. Plus all the lights on the dash stayed on. I thought well that takes care of my party. I called my family already in New Orleans to tell them about it. As it turned out grandsons Justin and Chris heading that way was over the Whiskey Bay Bridge, turned around and came for me. Justin later fixed the belt.

A depressing word to the wise: a cowboy’s life is a rough one when he ain’t got a horse!

Happy day, hope your garden grows!

–Cousine Hélène
337-228-1714
helenboudreaux@uno.com