Flowers and Veggies!

  I have a bad habit of planting flowers in the vegetable gardens and veggies in the flower gardens.  Here on the Bayou, the gardens are one big mishmash of whatever!  Anything goes.  If it grows, then it grows wherever it wants.  I have morning glories and moonflowers in the tomato patch.  I have squash in front of the moonflower fence row.  There are nasturtiums in with the radishes and bell peppers in between the tea olives.  Chives blend right in with the roses and zinnias!  Marigolds are everywhere!  Wherever there is an empty spot, there is a plant of some sort.  That suits me to a capital T!  Perhaps the gardens are fine and it is me that is discombobulated!

  It is this habit that caused one good thing and yet one bad thing.  Bad thing first.  After I put in the new garden fence, a bright idea struck. On one side, tomatoes were planted and on the opposite side, four o'clocks lined the fence.  Wow!  That looked nice! All was well until some moth decided to lay her eggs on the four o'clock leaves.  About a week later, caterpillars were turning the leaves into a lace!  Holes were everywhere!  Not good as these caterpillars simply took the jaunt across the fence to attack the tomatoes.  Oh, no you don't!!!  While I do not mind spraying flowers with insecticides, I am a stickler about keeping the veggies pure.  I do not want to eat a bunch of chemically laden garbage.  It took a while before the answer came.  Wasps! Yep, those same critters that make the nests up under the eaves of the house seem to love caterpillars. Paper wasps were feasting on the tiny leaf-munchers. That was good enough for me!  Wasps are now off the bad list and onto the good guys of the garden list.

  The good thing about my four o'clock/tomato arrangement is the early morning/late afternoon blooms sure make the place smell delightful regardless of the copious amounts of cow poop lying around under the tomato plants.  The sweet-scented blooms fill the air and mask the stench quite nicely.  If you do not know, cow poop stinks when wet.  The nighttime hours on the Bayou are rather humid which gives the manure the idea that it is ok to start reeking.  Thankfully, the four o'clock blooms have that covered.  Four o'clock blooms are stronger than poop!  Their scent completely blocks the otherwise stinky garden smells.  Four o'clocks for the win!

  I am sure Pop looks down from Heaven and cringes when he sees my patchwork gardening style.  His fields were impeccable and his flower gardens were to perfection.  He probably wonders where he went wrong when raising me!  Nah, Pop was easy going and would certainly agree about the four o'clocks.  He may have something to say about the morning glories that have their own tomato crates in the garden but, all in all, he would enjoy seeing the plants regardless.

Just a bit of observation...

  This afternoon, a short hike was in order.  Son and I worked all day in the yard ripping out yet more fencing and arbors.  In fact, the place looks quite different now.  Once we completed our tasks for the day, I headed down to the pier.  Along the way, a pungent odor stopped me in my tracks.  Always alert for sounds and smells, I needed to find what was the source.  Critters and plants all have distinctive odors and it is best to know what lies in the path ahead.  It is my habit to never fully depend on sight since my eyesight has been waning somewhat in recent years.  This was more of a stench than the flowery aroma of most plants.  Watch the step!  Once the source was found, it caused a fit of giggles.  Under a tall pine tree, two mushrooms grew side by side.  One was a a red-capped beauty and the other was a type of stinkhorn.  That stinkhorn, of course, was the culprit that was making the lower yard a stinky place.  It is surprising just how large of an area can be affected by such a small thing.  

  This is a Column Stinkhorn meaning it burst out of its egg-like sac with columns or fingers.  Some folks call them Devil's Toadstools while others refer to them as Devil's Fingers.  Both names seem accurate especially due to the color and smell.  The Column Stinkhorns are usually red, pink or orange and the smell is akin to a mountain of smelly socks combined with rotting flesh.  I was fortunate that only one of the mushrooms had "hatched".  

  There is one thing that confuses me with these mushrooms.  Granted, the stinkhorn "eggs" (before they burst out with their orange "fingers") resemble some sort of critter egg, it surprises me just how many folks confuse the two.  Countless times, I have been asked "Are these snake eggs or duck eggs?"  Neither!  Critter eggs are not attached to the ground by root like structures called mycelium.  It takes a good bit of talk to convince some folks that their "find" is going to hatch into stinky mushrooms and not a bundle of fluffy ducklings or a clutch of highly venomous snakes.  Oh, people.  Observe!  Notice things!  Investigate!  Be aware!  Whatever...whatever.

Out of Control!

  Ok, enough with the throwing out of perfectly good.....pets!  What in the world are people thinking?  Our road seems to have become the dumping ground for unwanted, throwaway pets.  It makes me sick.  Those poor animals have no clue as to what has happened and have no clue about survival.  If they are not hit by cars, coyotes attack them.  The few that do survive the first week usually wind up at the Bayou.  I feed what I can but some become so feral that there is no helping them.  Then they become ill through malnutrition.  Come on, people, use a little commonsense!  This is getting out of control!  If you get a pet, feed it, water it, give it shelter and, by all means, get it fixed!  Neutering the critter can only help.

  Speaking of neutering and unwanted pets, we have been bombarded with tomcats, as of late.  It seems that folks throw these cats out thinking all will be well with them.  Once they become feral, not only are they in danger, they present problems for those of us with pets and gardens.  These tomcats can become quite fierce and attack any smaller animal.  Tomcats, also, mark their territories (and even territories that are not theirs) with some pretty foul smelling urine.  There is nothing worse that taking that first deep breath of "fresh" morning air and inhaling the vomit-inducing stench left by a tomcat.  Now, multiply that acrid smell by 5 or more tomcats and it truly ruins the morn.  

The chrysthanemums are the latest plants to be killed by the feral tomcats.

  The spray from a tomcat messes up paint on doors, ruins deck floors and kills plants.  Yep,...kills plants.  My poor garden is catching it!  Each day for the past week, another perfectly healthy plant is literally "fried" by the spray.  The urine is basically nitrogen that can burn a plant all the way to the roots.  Pop used to occasionally use ammonium nitrate fertilizer pellets in the garden but would always warn us that "...a little goes a long way".   We were instructed to place the fertilizer a good ways away from the plant and then the rain would dilute it before it reached the roots.  AND we were to NEVER get it on the leaves!   But when the cat sprays a plant, the nitrogen is not diluted and it burns the poor plant to a crisp.  So far, two cyclamens, three lavenders and a chrysanthemum have been killed.  

  So, between the garden-killing, foul-smelling spray from the tomcats and the nightly cat fights in the yard, I am ready to set a few traps and call animal control.  This is getting out of hand!  It sure makes me glad that Ms, Nycto, the Bayou Princess, stays inside at night!  Even though she is spayed, she does not need to be harassed by the feral cats tossed out by thoughtless people.

Of all times....

  Mr. PJ, the old dog that has come to live with us, has been a perfect jewel the entire time I have been ill.  I think he understands that I am under the weather and has not wanted to aggravate me in any way.  I can open the door and let him go do his business far down the hillside without worry.  He has not tried to leave the Bayou.  Actually, that would be nigh on impossible with his aging legs and arthritis anyway because of the sheer distance but it is a relief that he has not ventured far off his given track....until today.  Today...today, of all days, he decided to raid the compost pile which is far down behind the house near the canebrake in the opposite direction of his usual roaming spots. 

  While this would have been aggravating enough, he would not return when called.  Ugh!  This meant that I had to don a jacket and head out to retrieve the dog.  Still not bad except for the fact that there was pea-soup thick fog and a fine mist falling.  Still...not the end of the world...except that I have the flu.  Added together, the events deemed troublesome enough to rile me a bit.  As I traipsed through the drizzle to fetch the dog, I kept calling.  He was not even paying one iota of attention to my yells.  As I rounded the corner of the shed and he was in view, he darted under the small deck on the back of the storeroom.  Now what??  It was all I could do to control the temper that was welling up inside of me.  Two things....one...he knows the compost pile is off limits.  Has been ever since he first started to visit the Bayou some ten years ago.  Second....he should know that going under decks, sheds and the house are a no-no.  He has been reprimanded enough to know better.  So, his infractions kept piling up.  

  After I finally persuaded the runaway dog to reenter the Little Bayou House, a foul odor hit me.  Ugh.  Yep, he reeked to High Heaven!  Obviously, he had not gone for the fresh orange peels, mushy banana or anything recent.  HE had to wallow in something that had been there for a while!  By this time, I did not even have the energy to fight him into the tub. The bath would have to wait for another day.  Darling Daughter had given me a bottle of "doggy perfume" back when Ms. Ez was with us so that came into play.  A few spritzes later and I could breathe.  I looked at the old dog and his tail started thumping on the floor.  Big, sad, puppy dog eyes glistened up at me as if to apologize for his misdeeds.  Oh, geez, Pup! You were grounded...were...ok, I still love you.  Now to get the wet clothes off, brew a mug of herb tea and try to stop the shakes.  Of all the times in the world for you to choose to go on an escapade, this was probably the worst.

Learn Something New Each Day!

  It is a goal of mine to learn at least one new thing daily.  Whether it be the correct spelling or meaning of a word, the position of a country on the globe or a new crochet stitch.  One new bit of knowledge will be added to the old brain.  My daughter tells me that this is a good thing. She claims that keeping the brain active will help me in my "later years". (Sorry, Darling Daughter, I am already in those later years but I appreciate your loving concern!)  Today, however, I gained TWO bits of information of undisputed accuracy.  

  First, even though it is probably a wise idea when building a house on a bayou to raise it up a few feet, sometimes it has adverse effects. There are folks go so far as to put their houses on stilts far above the waterline but, here since we have such a high hill, a few feet of "security" was all that was necessary.  The Little Bayou House sits up on pillars that are several feet tall.  This helps during storms or when piping needs repairs.  No problem.  BUT...but there is a downside to having those few feet of space between the ground and the underside of the house.  The downside is that critters can (and often do) decide that our floor should be their roof.  Some enterprising critters take to calling the area home and build lovely nests under our house.  Others come for other reasons that are not so sweet and honey-dripping homey.  So, the first bit of info that was instilled in the brain, today, is that building the house up off the ground can be as detrimental as helpful.

  The other bit of knowledge gained has been long suspected but never confirmed until today.  Humans of the male sort cannot smell. Nope.  It just does not happen.  While we have all been taught that there are five senses, men only have four.  Their capabilities stop after vision, hearing, touch and taste.  Nowhere in the history of mankind has there ever been a man who could smell!  Oh, sure!  They have a keen sense of smell for delightful aromas just not for stenches.  A pan of lasagna draws them like a magnet.  Pineapple upside down cake can be detected from the distance of two miles.  Even coffee is on their list of "smells".  It can wake them from a deep slumber.  Good smells are where it stops though.  Let the garbage can reek?  Have sweaty socks on the floor?  Let an apple go bad?  Nope...they cannot smell it.  I have figured that good smells are usually associated with eating so it is all good.  Bad smells yell work so "I don't smell anything" is a common answer to the question "Does something stink in here?"

Hopefully, it was not this possum that died under the house today!

  That said, I learned two things today.  Both are tied together with one simple, albeit nasty, incident.  A critter did, indeed, waltz himself under our house sometime in the past few days.  This critter did not come to nest but did come to stay....forever.  I kept smelling something.  I cleaned the trash cans, mopped the floors, did laundry, scrubbed the bathroom and checked the apples.  Nope.  None of those.  The smell got worse.  What started as a mild, odor soon became a gagging stench.  Alright.....SOMETHING had to be done!  "Son, do you smell anything bad?"  was met with "Well, it does not smell good."  Which was an evasive answer if I ever heard one.  So I took it upon myself to check outside.  While Son dug out some shrubs, I searched for a stench.  I found it.  When I rounded the northwest corner of the house, bottle flies swarmed out from under the house.  Yep.  Those are a clear indicator of something putrid.  SON!!!!  

  The poor fellow had to stop what he was doing, grab a flashlight, crawl part way under the house and remove a dead critter.  For the second time this year, a possum had decided that the space under our house was the perfect place to  give up the ghost.  Ugh!  The heat of the Deep South did not do us any favors with this critter.  

  So my advice to you is to learn something new each day.  Learn two things or even three if possible.  We have to exercise that brain!  I have just taught you two all important facts.  Do not forget them!  They may just come in handy some day.

The Silver Lining...Maybe?

  Early this morning, Mark and I headed to the pier to do a bit of fishing. He was actually going to use the small skiff but I was staying behind on the pier.  I want to be able to head to the house if the fish are not biting. There is just far too much to do in the garden to sit lollygagging about if I am not catching lunch.  All was well with the morn.  It was a beautiful day opening and I was enjoying the slight northeast breeze...until...Mark opened the live-well of the boat and found that he had inadvertently left a few menhaden there overnight.  Not good...in fact, bad or even terrible!  The things had died and had become quite rank in the humid air.  Ugh!  It was bad enough that the boat smelled like a garbage heap but, then, he scooped said little dead fishies and tossed them into the water.  UGH to a greater extent!  Now the whole place smelled like a city dump!  STOP!  I called to him.  Move on away from the pier before you toss any more dead things!  He did and I thought all would return to normal.  It did not.  The minnows were quite swollen and they bobbed along the ripples like little buoys.  Each bounce released another malodorous spew of stench into the air. Double ugh!

  At the time I thought that I could not stand the reeking dead fish bobbers any more, a seagull came to my rescue.  Down swooped one bird and it scooped up a mushy, stinking-to-high-heaven minnow.  The bird was the envy of all gulls and terns that eat dead things floating on the surf.  Several squeals later, another gull dove to fetch its own putrid fish.  Well, at least they were cleaning the water (and the air).  One after another, the birds dove after the minnows giving me the perfect opportunity to snap a few closeup photographs.  

  Once I settled down enough to observe the pictures that I had taken, I realized that the stench that ruined my fishing trip was not all bad.  The rising sun as a backdrop and birds diving just a few feet from my camera lens provided a perfect setting for some excellent photographs. The morning turned out well,  I got great pictures and the birds feasted on putrid fish.  Sometimes things we deem as bad do have silver linings.  We just have to look for them.