New book, The Gecko in the Bathtub: Encounters with Marvelous Creatures, available now!
Blue birds, so many blue birds! Eastern bluebirds, Western bluebirds, Common blue jays, Great blue herons, Lazuli buntings, Stellar’s jays, Indigo buntings, Blue grosbeaks and Belted kingfishers to name just a few, and these are just from North America. Head to Central or South America or to Africa and the list of birds with blue…
Our little dome house on the bayou has been through a lot. When Tom first moved here in November 2005, more than twenty years after the house was built, the place was heavy with bad juju. The yard was overgrown, there were cracks in the plaster, the popcorn ceiling was shedding years of old dust,…
“It’s a party! For you!” smiled my mom, something about her a bit nervous and perturbed but her trying to make the best of things in spite of some upset in the background that I couldn’t identify. It turned out later on that this was supposed to have been a surprise party for me – – the only surprise party I believe my mother ever threw for anyone in her life – – but something in her planning went awry such that I was actually there, kneeling on the sofa and looking out the window as my friends and their mothers pulled up to the curb, exited their cars and came into the house.
The folks on the Weather Channel keep saying that today’s blizzard in South Louisiana – – yes, that’s correct, I said “blizzard in South Louisiana” – – is a “once in a lifetime event.” Of course, every single thing that happens is a once in a lifetime event . . . until it happens again…
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” What is essential? What rightness can the heart see? For nearly a month now my dreams and my waking are underlain with an existential terror – – and I don’t use this word lightly – –…
A. J. Foyt was a multiple-year winner of the Indy 500 and I remember one year when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old watching on TV as he went into the winner’s circle and someone handed him a glass bottle of milk, of which he took a swig and poured the rest over his head. This made no sense to me at all. I turned to my dad and asked him, “Why is he drinking milk? If I’d just driven that race and I was really thirsty at the end of it I wouldn’t want to drink milk! I’d want a Coke!”
My dad’s reply? “I don’t know, why don’t you ask him?”
These days my applesauce is better than ever. I’ve not added any kind of sugar or syrup to my applesauce (other than the red-hots) since I first started making my own in college, because the apples I use are plenty sweet enough. The simplest applesauce is merely a combination of apples and water – – what kind of apples depends on what’s available and personal tastes. My own favorite varieties are Fuji, Jonathan and Honeycrisp, but Gala and Red Delicious make perfectly good applesauce or you can add some green apples for a finish that’s more tart.
No doubt the trees have been more relieved than usual to release their leafy burdens this year, and the leaves even moreso to relinquish their duties on behalf of their woody parental stems and trunks. As the truck moved along the road in front of me this morning, keeping to the 20-mile-per-hour speed limit, the leaves covering the road it crossed were ecstatic in the dance that they danced for my eyes only.
The birth of my daughter meant that I got to celebrate Mother’s Day, also in May, but then May got really and truly crowded when my son was born on May 10th. So now we had mom and dad’s anniversary on May 8th, Robbie’s birthday on May 10th, my and my ex’s anniversary on May 12, and Mother’s Day tended to get lost in the shuffle, even falling some years on the same day as Robbie’s birthday and so I often had to swallow my chops and take a back seat while my ex would smile and say, “Every day is Mother’s Day!” and I didn’t slap him.
You haven’t truly had good lemonade until you’ve had lemonade made from Meyer lemons. One of the great good fortunes of living in South Louisiana is that I get to have Meyer lemonade all year long.
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