HEALING DEMANDS IT’S OWN PACE

I’ve always loved gardening, and the weather has been balmy and inviting. Finished the succulents and lined them up against the wall. These plants were in two over crowded containers when Karen and I started. She takes care of my plants when I travel, so I no longer do any planting without consulting her, first. She told me we’d have to put them under shelter for winter, so we decided on lightweight pots that aren’t too heavy to lift.

I now have a worker who comes to help with the heavy lifting, but he tends to come when he feels like it. I’ve felt quite fit, so, I got the loppers and pruned the sucker growth around the second-growth oak trees in about five places. 

His last two visits my helper was supposed to remov two small citrus trees for me. They got too big for the greenhouse. I moved them years ago. The lemon froze, the lime and orange didn’t flourish.  I took a  hand saw and cut them down. It was hard for me, but I know my upper body is still weak. Jim walks every day, I walk with him every other day, and my strength and endurance has improved in my legs and back. For months and months, I would try the exercises given me and I would “over do” it and be back in pain. Suddenly, I seem to have turned a corner since the accident and I can now walk a brisk mile without great pain. When it hurts, by the next morning, the pain is gone.

Then I tackled a pretty big branch for my little hand saw and my shoulders and neck were telling me, “you’ll be sorry!”  This is stuff for fire control and needs to be done.  This morning, I’m not sore enough to complain. My simple yoga every other morning has kept me toned,  but not enough to build muscle.  Now I feel confident I can do the therapeutic exercises I’ve been given and resume muscle-building tasks. I’m amazed at how the body refuted my efforts at various exercises until it was ready to heal. Now, let me see how well I do at chopping all this stuff up today.

ABBEVILLE DELIGHTS

Abbeville is a small, old town with a couple of jewels. One is  Magdalen Square. The square has precious ancient oaks impossible to fit in your camera, so you must go and look for yourself. As you can see one tree can easily cover  a city block.

These old oaks are often covered with rattan, commonly called resurrection fern, because it turns brown when it is dry and green when it rains. It is a plant we see often on old oaks. These trees have earned their whiskers.l

Metal arms help  hold up  long heavy branches

There are four of these giants, if memory serves. So huge, their branches mingle until you cannot actually take a picture of a single tree without getting parts of another. In a word, magnificent.

Across from the square sits the St. Mary Magdalen Church with a tree branch looking like a giant hand reaching for the building.

I look for something unusual wherever I go and I’m rarely disappointed. This tombstone sits in front of the church.

In the cultural center/museum/gallery, as usual, I found something I’d never seen before. This item is a change counter used by the church before they started handing out envelopes and urging people to put bills in the collection basket.

In the cultural center, I discovered the second jewel of Abbeville. Well,  great pictures of their Giant Omelette Celebration. If you decide to come, it is held the first full weekend of November every year. You are looking at the cooking of a 5,000 egg omelette.

One chevalier (chef) puts the butter on the 19 foot skillet. I’m going to give you the recipe in case you need it. 5029 eggs. (The confreres add an egg for each year of the celebration). 50 lbs.  onions, 75 bell peppers, 4 gallons onion tops, 2 gallons parsley, 11 1/2 gallons cooking oil, 6 1/2 gallons of milk. 52 lbs butter, 3 boxes salt, 2 boxes blk pepper, and tabasco sauce to taste.

To the original recipe, the chefs now add crawfish tails. After all, this is Cajun country. Ya gotta have crawfish in your omelette.

And hot french bread to eat with it.

Can you tell these people are having fun? The festivities include a Procession of Chefs, and an antique car show, etc. and etc. Everybody who wants a taste of the omelette lines up. It is free. But the tradition began with Napoleon. His army was traveling in Southern France and they stopped in the town of Bessieres to rest. A local innkeeper cooked him an omelette which was such a culinary delight, he ordered the townspeople to gather eggs in the village and prepare omelette for his army.  It then became a tradition to cook a giant omelette to feed the poor of the village at Easter. Of course, the tradition spread to other villages in France and eventually to the little town of Abbeville.

The cultural center has some great old pictures and history. This from the premiere of The Louisiana Story, a movie that was filmed on Weeks Island but the movie crew stayed in Abbeville

I was surprised to see JAX beer in the 1930’s. There is a JAX brewery in New Orleans and I thought it was a new beer.

A series of photos about the ravages of Rita. Much of the town was under water. Pretty horrific.

The center hosted a children’s art exhibit while we were there. This one was my favorite from their permanent collection, by Robert Baxter.

We took a pass through an old cemetery next to the church. Everything we saw was within walking distance of our parked car. Easy and neat.

Abbeville, Louisiana

The motorhome is currently parked at VFW Post #9822 in Duson, Louisiana.

Yesterday we drove the Bronco the about 15 miles south to visit the Town of Abbeville which you can read about by clicking this link…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbeville,_Louisiana

First stop was in the central square where there are some beautiful huge old Oak trees. I would say without a doubt that these Oak trees are the largest we have seen during this current visit to Louisiana. Several of the branches are so long and heavy they have to be supported by metal poles…

Here are some photos that I took…

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

Then we crossed the street into the Abbeville Museum in which the docent Cheryl was very knowledgeable and helpful by describing all of the artifacts. You can read about the museum by clicking their official website link…
http://www.abbevillemuseum.org/

In early November, Abbeville has a giant 5,000 egg omelet festival which you can read about by clicking this link…
http://www.giantomelette.org/

After Hurricane Rita in 2005, Abbeville was under water…

A short walk to the nearby church…

Around the side of the church we saw these huge Steen’s syrup cans. We didn’t stop in, but here’s their website link…
http://www.steensyrup.com/

To the cemetery in the back of the church…

Back at the motorhome later in the afternoon I shot these two photos of the sunset which I decided to do in black and white…

All in all…another nice day.

Enjoying historical towns is another joy in the life of a full-time RVer!

The red dot on the below map shows our approximate location in the State of Louisiana. You may double left-click the map to make it larger…

Enjoying 65-75 degree temperatures most of the year is a primary joy in the RVing lifestyle!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”…Albert Einstein

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…
http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

All original material Copyright – Jim Jaillet 2013
For more information about my three books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

TORRENTIAL RAIN.

And Then The Rains Came Down…Ah, Uh.  I know there is a song with those words but I couldn’t find it. Oh, well, I’ve always wanted an opportunity to use the weather words “torrential downpour”. That is what we had. The drain on my walkway is overwhelmed and can’t drain off the water fast enough. The river flowing in front of my guest quarters isn’t all that visible from the picture but I was ready to get out the row-boat.

This is what it looks like up close.

And, the waterfall from the roof where it overwhelmed the gutters.

Not exactly scenic. Science says, we’ll be getting more of this kind of aberrant storm with climate change. The Southland is going to get pretty crowded. I COULD be in 77 degree weather watching the deer and squirrels in Texas with Jim. Am I turning into a weather wimp?

 

Actually, there is real danger here because huge, heavy oak trees, especially if they are leaning, can topple when the ground gets too saturated all at once. I had some major trimming done when I returned home in July and am thankful all of my trees held firm.