Thanks to the efforts of the Stephensville Volunteer Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary, and in particular, Tanya Acosta. The organization called Second Harvest came to their fire station and registered nearly 200 people for commodities. Tanya was nice enough to include those of us in Belle River and Four-mile Bayou. I don’t think distribution dates have been set yet, so I guess, technically, it’s not all official, but sounds great. Second Harvest gives commodities to people of any age, not just seniors, so we’ll continue to receive our monthly boxes from Catholic Charities.
I really commend Tanya for arranging all this. She said she’s been working on getting Second Harvest to come here for some time. Just to make sure everyone understands, I didn’t have a thing to do with this. I wish I had, but Tanya is the one who has done everything to receive pretty serious commodities, I think it’s a small price to pay to drive to Stephensville once or even twice a month.
Hello, to the gentleman to whom I spoke about the Purple Martin situation. Wish I’d had more time to chat, but sir, call again some day.
His Purple Martins had not yet returned to his boxes. Mine arrived exactly on Feb. 1, checked out my two houses, spent a day chirping and flying about and then disappeared. Not sure where the rest of the bird family is, but I know these scouts come first, and not long after they’ve investigated, the whole bunch comes, so I’m expecting lots soon.
The gentleman (and I’m embarrassed to say I’ve forgotten his name) also said he’d been having trouble keeping the little wrens or sparrows out of the Martin house, that he’d even devised trap doors over the house openings to keep the unwanted birds out. Apparently that hadn’t worked well.
I have never had trouble with other birds and I completely forgot to tell him that after the Martins leave in the spring, I lower my two houses onto the dock and leave them there until December. Then I repair, repaint, empty out old nesting material and put them back up in time for the arrival of the next bunch of Martins.
I take the houses down because I don’t want to worry about them in the stormy winter weather, which we didn’t have this year, but sometimes we do. At least during stormy spring and summer weather I can cope with natural disasters, but see no reason to do so when I don’t have to.
Friday coming I’m going hiking with a class of 8th graders from my old school, Pierre Part Middle. Every year they go to a place over by Patterson and plant probably 500 to 600 saplings on property which had burned some years back.
Prof. Pam Blanchard from the LSU Coastal Roots program always comes, gives the kids instruction on proper planting technique and then comes along.
It’s so much fun to tramp along trails in the woods, and even more fun for me to listen to the giggling and joking, and then to watch these guys at times slog through mud and water up to their knees. They fall down, thrash about and generally get filthy but have a wonderful time.
This year they are using a GPS to locate and check the growth of trees they planted last year.
Their teacher, John Giambrone, is superb. Every school should have someone like John. He’s not an easy teacher at all, but so creative and innovative. The kids love him even when they have a tough time passing his course. Anyway, it will be loads of fun.
Teche News’ Lower St. Martin correspondent, Linda Cooke, can be e-mailed at lcooke9417@bellsouth.net.
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