Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler

I LOVED my hat! Thanks Ann!

     I probably need to add to my list of things to give up for Lent today. The Mardi Gras Parade in Gulf shores yesterday was just too much fun!

    

     Last year we stood in a parking lot with elderly snowbirds and enjoyed the music and the crowd, but had to fight an old guy for our beads. He ran over and stabbed any trinket that landed nearby with his cane, even if it landed on our feet!

    

     This year I joined some friends at Avery’s home on the canal and walked down to the parade after a Cajun breakfast and Bloody Marys.

    

     The locals take Mardi Gras seriously and they don’t carry canes.

    

       Avery is usually very quiet and reserved, so I was surprise to find a wild assortment of costumes and hats for those of us who arrived ignorant and underdressed. “Why, Ah’ve been dressing for Mardi Gras since Ah was a small child,” she said.

   

 But I’ll bet she didn’t dress like she dressed yesterday!  

  

     The traditional way of begging, “Boobs for Beads” doesn’t work so well at our age (or at morning parades, or when you are sober) so Avery had a gimmick.

Florence helps Avery strap on the bodacious ta-tas

She wore a lovely, vintage cocktail dress with high-heeled sneakers and amazing plastic ta-tas.    

     

     She didn’t need to flash anyone on those floats to get a MoonPie or necklace.  She just shimmied to the music and everyone laughed and tossed trinkets.

Patti Hall on the Gulf Coast Zoo float

    

     Our gimmick was to stand behind her and catch everything she missed (or that missed her – it was a lot like the ‘ring-toss game’ at a carnival.

The parade was slow enough that some of those old guys made several tries to hit the ‘targets’)  

Avery in action!

    

      The parade of floats, vintage cars, costumed dogs, bands and wagons lasted over an hour and we were absolutely laden with beads, pies, and trinkets…. thanks to Avery and her amazing ta-tas!

Ann welcomes the Holy Spirit float!

    

     Last year my church, Holy Spirit Episcopal, was the only church in the parade (And they had two floats). 

This year several other churches joined the procession, which pretty much discounted what Fr. Chris said about us last Sunday. We are not the only ‘decadents’ on the island!

     So now I’m off to Ash Wednesday services and 40 days of repentance.

But Fat Tuesday rolls around again February 16, 2010 so y’all come on down!

Chicken Turtle??

Who thought that was a good name for a beautiful turtle?

On the way back to the lagoon

I was looking out my window yesterday while I waited for my coffee to warm up and, as the sun came up, I could see something dark just outside the area I had fenced for Sophie, about 10 feet from the house.

It took several minutes for me to realize it was a large turtle digging in the sand!

My photos from the deck were useless, so I stood guard by the window, watching.

She gave up digging after about an hour, and I don’t think she actually laid any eggs because she left the little pit uncovered. The ground was wet after our second rain this week, but maybe not soft enough yet for a nest?

Unfinished turtle nest?

When she started back to the lagoon, I went down to get a closer look. She is about 3 X the size of a Kentucky Box Turtle (her shell was probably 8 – 10 inches long), and not terribly happy about being photographed.

I didn’t bother the nest, in the hope she would return and finish if the weather improves, and I could see she had started another pit a little closer to the house. The grass was thicker there and probably even more difficult to dig.

I came back in and tried to identify her, and have come to the conclusion she is probably a Chicken Turtle. What?

How humiliating!   According to a turtle website, “No, it’s not a cross between a chicken and a turtle, though the image is hilarious (imagine a sort of flat chicken with a shell). Actually, the common name comes from the taste of the turtle’s flesh. It is, obviously, edible, and was once quite popular in southern US markets. Unsurprisingly, it was thought to taste like chicken. What unidentified white meat doesn’t? A Chicken Turtle’s neck fully extended has also been compared to a chicken’s.”

http://everything2.com/e2node/chicken%2520turtle

 

 

 

Chicken Turtle?

She was much too regal to be called a chicken turtle, so I think I’ll stick to her genus name, Deirochelys reticularia.  The name comes from the Greek, deire for neck and chelys for tortoise in honor of her long and graceful neck.

My video is short and choppy because I was hesitant about annoying her and my close-up focus was ‘windblown’.

 

“Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral”

I have just finished a wonderfully funny book I received at Christmas from my friend, (and fellow Fort Morgan Militiaman) Sam.

It should be required reading for all Southern Episcopalians. (Be honest now, the Parsnip Brownies and Lard & Fishpaste Pancakes featured on our beloved ‘The Vicar of Dibley’ aren’t really appropriate funeral food in the South)

To start, there is a photo of stuffed eggs on the cover! I lost my stuffed egg dish in the divorce, but my dear friend, Melinda, came to my rescue and gave me one of her dishes. Thanks again, Melinda.  (pg 77)

The authors, Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays, dare to snicker at what they call our,  “Vatican for Southern Episcopalians,”  Sewanee, the University of the South.  they maintain, “It is the be-all and end-all, located on a mountain in Tennessee, where some undergraduates, known as ‘gownsmen,’ wear academic robes around campus all day. This helps feed the fantasy that they’re really in Oxford, England, which Episcopalians like.”

I’m choking on my RC Cola, even Sophie is laughing.

This book is also appropriate for Methodists in the South, as evidently they are the competing church in Greenville, Mississippi for ‘Best in Show’ for funerals. Gayden and Charlotte claim, “Historically. Methodists are better behaved than Episcopalians.”  Really!!  But are they as much fun as we are at a funeral?

Some of the chapters are: “Who Died? Stuffed Eggs, Etiquette, and Delta Pate” (that’s pimiento cheese), “Comfort Foods: There Is a Balm in Campbell’s Soup (sung to the tune of “There is a Balm in Gilead” – now I can’t even finish my “Restorative Cocktail’  because I am laughing again), and even the definitive, “Suitably Boxed: Meringue Shells, Pecan Tassies… and You”  is too funny to read while drinking.  I think it’s been 25 years since I’ve made a meringue.

The ladies offer valuable advice on everything from the appropriate coffin to acceptable music, “Sweet Beulah Land,” written by a Methodist layman at a campground meeting, is rarely heard outside of the Deep South, and is the musical equivalent of Methodist cooking.”     I’m choking again.

I will be sending copies of this valuable  book to all of my friends for their birthdays because, as Gayden and Charlotte assert, we must start planning our funerals when we reach the age of 30…. and all of my own friends are past 30…  hell, my own son is almost 30!

This is an unsolicited testimonial, so I will attempt to add a few paragraphs from the chapter “Methodist Ladies vs. the Episcopal Ladies” chapter before I put this book on my revered shelf of Southern Authors.

<<Anyone in our neck of the woods who is not counting on immortality might want to give serious  thought to taking the appropriate steps to become a communicate of St. James Episcopal Church, before it is too late.  No, belonging to St. James won’t necessarily get you into heaven. But it will ensure that you have a tasteful sendoff. Great vestments. No tacky hymns…  St. James feels it has achieved liturgical perfection on earth… You won’t be at risk for the nudge-producing eulogy… Attention to detail and borrowed silver are the keys to its success. The committee rolls “big brown,” the table, out into the parish hall, drapes it with a damask tablecloth, and puts a large silver coffee urn and tea service at one end and a large silver tray of goodies at the other…..”

Sooooo.  This book is the answer for anyone who moved north and previously discounted advice from their elderly relatives, anyone who thought funeral ceremonies were boring and is now facing the task of planning a Southern funeral, or anyone who has ever attended a Southern Funeral.

The recipes are fabulous and I am happy to admit I recognize more than half of them from funerals in my past.

Here is the website for this entertaining book… enjoy!

http://www.beingdead.com/

But when I die, (or am lost… the authors’ description of ‘loss’ is too funny) I hope my friends and family adhere to SOUTHERN TRADITION .

Water, Water Everywhere…

Finally! After watching the storm clouds pass over Fort Morgan for months, we finally got the soaking rain we so desperately needed.

The lagoons bordering my little house had dried into muddy breeding grounds for those nasty ’sand fleas’ and my poor chlorine-sensitive gardenias and jasmine were suffering terribly from the necessary, weekly dousing with ‘city’ water.

It is my prayer that the 3+ inches of rain has drowned those nasty gnats, and the chorus of frogs last night means the predators have returned to the ponds to feast on the mosquitoes that will follow in the heels of this wonderful rain.

My little green frogs were out last night (on the deck, on the sides of the house, and on the screens) and they were loud and joyous.  

My Kermit

I snapped a photo of this little guy before he made it back to the safety of the pot of rosemary on the deck.  He is a hyla cinerea, or green tree frog, and his relatives inhabit the cracks and crevices of my little house.

I didn’t have any way to record the music last night, but I found a website with a sound file of green tree frogs.

If you go to this site and click on the ‘listen’ icon you will hear the chorus I heard last night. And if you close your eyes, stand in front of a heater vent and hold a pot of petunias in each hand (they’re blooming after the rain, and they’re incredibly fragrant) you will experience what it is like to be in Lower Alabama after a thunderstorm!

http://www.enature.com/fieldguides/detail.asp?recnum=AR0015

Two Turtle-Doves and an Osprey in a pine tree

I bustled out the front door headed for the trash can last weekend with the newspapers I had used for drop cloths (more on the painting project to come) and startled a pair of white birds sitting on the deck  in the sun.

Actually, they weren’t terribly startled, they circled the yard and then came to roost in the scrub oak 10 feet away.  I went back in for the binoculars, camera,  and the books. 

They weren’t pictured in my Roger Tory Peterson guide, so I grabbed my ‘Florida’s Birds’ and found them listed as an ‘exotic’, either  Ringed Turtle-Doves or Eurasian Collared-Doves.

The latest  Bird List from Bon Secour has both species and they are much paler than the Collared -Dove illustration in the book,  but have the white-bordered collar, so they could be either… or a hybrid (the Cornell Ornithology Lab says that happens )

 

And then this morning I saw the osprey in the top of the old pine tree. When he first arrived a couple weeks ago, he was very shy. But today he flew almost directly over my house then sailed across the dunes to the large lagoon that still holds water (and presumably fish) in spite of the drought. 

I’ve been told they don’t nest in Surfside now that the larger trees have succumbed to damage from Ivan & Katrina, but at least one nest is readily visible on the tower on Fort Morgan Road.

The Cornell website is an excellent resource. 

But if you love the fauna of the coast, either coast, this website will nourish your soul…  http://www.grahamowengallery.com/index.html

http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/683/articles/introduction

Thank you Frank Meyer!

For my smart-aleck friends who voted, “leave it on the tree longer, you dummy, and it will turn orange,” when I posted my confusion over my little lemon/lime citrus tree in October….. you were right!   

Golden Meyer limon compared to yellow legal pad!

The fruit was so smooth and lime-like we were happily picking and slicing it for Margaritas in September, but by October the fruit was turning yellow and it was much sweeter. And the last fruit I picked before the big freeze last week was golden. 

But, thanks to my generous children, I have now identified this remarkable tree. They gave me a gift certificate for a wonderful catalog called ‘Logee’s Tropical Plants’ and, my little tree is right on page 24!

It is described as “Citrus limon ‘Meyer’
An heirloom dwarf lemon with delicious golden yellow fruit. It is the hardiest lemon for cool temperatures and makes a fine potted plant. The fruit is more flavorful than store bought lemons and it bears heavily at a young age.”

Wikipedia says: “The Meyer lemon (Citrus × meyeri) is a citrus fruit, native to China, thought to be a cross between a true lemon and a mandarin orange or sweet orange. The Meyer lemon was introduced to the United States in 1908 as S.P.I. #23028, by the agricultural explorer Frank Meyer, an employee of the United States Department of Agriculture who collected a sample of the plant on a trip to China. It is commonly grown in China potted as an ornamental plant. It became popular as a food item in the United States after being rediscovered by chefs, such as Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, during the California Cuisine revolution. The Meyer lemon is also known as the Valley lemon in southern Texas due to its popularity in the Rio Grande Valley region.^“

^{My fabulous tree is thriving in spite of Ivan, Katrina, and my ignorance and I will slice one this afternoon for tea when my dinner guests arrive. The Logee Catalog is wonderful and I thumb through the pages almost daily trying to decide how to spend the Christmas Gift Certifcate from my boys. The Arabica Coffee Tree is tempting, as is the idea of growing my own peppercorns from a Piper Nigrum. Sam actually ordered the gift certificate after seeing a hardy kiwi (Anna) that can be eaten like a grape, skin and all, on Martha Stewart (he swears he is not a fan of Martha Stewart, he was only channel surfing)}

^{But as I look at all the buds on my little Meyer limon today, I’m looking around the yard for the perfect place to plant a companion for Mr. Meyer!}

^{Happy browsing!  http://logees.com/}

 

Snuggled under a down comforter last week