Song of the Painted Bunting

April 11- 

Heard the first song 

Of the painted bunting 

In the prairie today 

April to August they sing

July 7, 2016

Swans

Tasse notes 2-3

There were hits of thunder during the night, before daybreak, in the distance...

An iron breaker 

I am not too sure which one it is

The dammed coco grass took over my garden.

The north wind's blowin this morning. 

I saw the thing happen. 

You can rent them by the month. 

I know some of you ladies mulch your own flowerbeds. 

The purple martins are back in Vidrine.

 #tassenotes #kvpi #louisianafrench #evangelineparishfrench

Rooster in the PDF

All about Cherry Bounce

Cherry Bounce

 edited/transcribed from La Tasse Cafe

« Cherry Bounce is a thick sweet strong liqueur that people in south Louisiana make around the holidays.  You shake the wild cherry trees (merisiers) so that the berries, called merises or choke cherries, fall onto a sheet. You know they are ripe when they get very red, almost black on the tree. You collect them and make a cherry syrup that is mixed with alcohol to make Cherry Bounce. People say that the birds like to get a hold of the berries before people harvest them and that they make the birds act coo-coo, fly into widows, hallucinate and things, because the prussic acid in them is very toxic. The robins and the ciriers start wobbling and get "on high" comme dit bougre....or low, because they end up on the ground... »

 The Mercedes Vidrine cookbook features a Cherry Bounce recipe similar to this one:

1/4 gallon wild cherries
10 1/2 lbs of sugar
Whiskey

Place cherries (that have the stems removed and have been washed and dried) and sugar in a wide-mouth gallon jar with a good fitting lid and store for 25-30 days until the sugar has all melted and turned to syrup. The cherries will be black when the aging period is over.  

 Take an empty bottle of a fifth of whiskey and pour in some of the cherries and syrup until the bottle is 1/4 full. 

Fill the bottle with whiskey and repeat the process until you have used up all the cherries and syrup. Cover the bottles tightly and let them stand for a week before opening. 

Serve in crystal cordial glasses, or for a treat, over vanilla ice cream.

No More Birds

The Tasse de Cafe Radio Progam often asks public questions such as: Do you remember 1946? Was it a good year?  Do you remember White Rose Petroleum Jelly? We got any celebrity birthdays today? Do you know how old Ozzy Osbourne is today? How much did it rain last night in Vidrine as opposed to Belair Cove? What is a zouienne? How does one say hickey en francais? Do you remember Ferlin Husky? Why do thermometers read different temperatures, even when they are next to one another?Anybody remembers those things?

Most of these questions are answered by the faithful callers at one time or another, but there is one that has been hanging around. Where have all the birds gone? People call in to say how years back there were many birds in the trees, robins and cedar wax wings and little fou-fous, blue-jays, etc. and that now you don't hardly see them any anymore. They say, "y'a pas d'caille! y'a pas d'bee-egg! y'a pas d'kill-dee...just some mockingbirds and crows!"

"I called about the birds. We had a beautiful blue-jay in the back yard. He showed up on Thursday, I saw him on ma patio, oh! I was so excited. Well, on Sunday morning, I get up and come outside on the patio to have a cup of coffee, ma white cat had em. That was it, no more bird now! Il l'attrapé et pis il l'épluché!"

Then there is this exchange: Buck-a-Dial "Faux Pas"

More Bird Notes:

Charatte   
Le Geai Bleu et le Killdeer 
Random Bird Notes   
Gumbo Tchoc
The Cardinal Blues 
Bird Sounds of the Prairie

The Plowed Mound

the Apex and the Moon

I have always imagined, when I looked out over open water, of all of the fantastic sea creatures that are just below the surface unseen. It's the same out here in the prairie where one can see the undulation of the ground, the swells of earth, and knows the history in the dirt, the treasures below the surface.

When I venture to ask a local elder about the Prairie des Femmes' origins or where I can find an arrowhead, they direct me to this field, which is on a bayou path that I am familiar with.

You can't see it from certain angles, but when you do see it, it is unmistakable; there was a large mound here. The earth swells as a wave, climbing two or three feet gradually, and forming a clear apex out toward the center. It was disorienting to be there, like being on holy ground. I have passed on idle so many times but never stopped. 

It's the harvest time. Just last week I passed the field in question and it was knee deep with weeds grown up in the weeks after the harvest. But the fields on this side of the PDF have been getting plowed, so I had the feeling that it had been, also. I waited until the cool of sunset to go out there. I took my boys, sat them down at the treeline with a bag of potato chips and a pig in a blanket each and told them to stay put while I tramped off into the field. 

I looked around and around, walking, looking down, listening for trucks that passed, watching the little red and white spots of my children against the black of the tree line, yelling at them occasionally or hearing them playing. I was unprepared for arrowhead hunting in my old red leather loafers, now full of fine dirt, as I had sunk eight inches in places as I walked. At the apex of the mound, which is not extremely pronounced, I took some pictures. I detected a death smell, very faintly, yet clearly. Surely from a field mouse crushed under the plow, I thought, but I could not help to think of the place and wonder what it really was.  I picked up clods, but found no stone, no ceramic. I walked crushing the clods in my hands and letting the dust fall. At the high point I found a dark clod of earth, cooler and fresher than that rest, and put it in my pocket. 

It seemed to me strange that I was so worshiping this land, an ironic time for me to come there, the permission and the occasion of the harvest coming at the same time that I have been fuming daily about a near neighbor back on my side of the prairie who is excavating a pond and trucking out dozens of Mack trucks a day of Prairie des Femmes dirt to sell, I assume. I hear the grumbling and beeping for twelve hours a day, I can see the machinery. It's officially started to annoy me, not only the noise way back here in the peaceful prairie, but that they were trucking out the land.  The Prairie des Femmes, being unceremoniously trucked out, and I had to listen to it all day. Selling earth was taboo to me, I realized, especially this dirt. 

I believe it is sacred ground, and it has been desecrated to a point. People have built their own homes on these high places, plowed them repeatedly, dumped and littered them, or else built roads over them, as there are a few roads in the PDF that undulate up over a mound and back down again.

I left as the reds of sunset were fading to oranges and purples. I had found nothing but a dark clod of earth from the apex, but what Frozard had said was true: no one messed with me. Now I needed is a big rain...

the rise of the plowed mound

la terre et mon soulier rouge

Sept Aigrettes

Dans la Prairie des Femmes

Dans la Prairie des Femmes
Les oiseaux chantent tout le temps
Même ils chantent
au milieu de la nuit
Dans la Prairie des Femmes
Les guêpes et les serpents
Et dans l'été
Ca tombe les jambes de pluie

La Prairie des Femmes
Pointe Claire 

Prairie Laurent
Les femmes restait 

les hommes sont partis

Dans la Prairie des Femmes
Je crois je peux attendre

Quand dans la silence j'entends 

dans la nuit

 

Oh S'il J'Aurais des Ailes à la Feuille d'Or

A Strange Bird has landed in the Prairie des Femmes!

Gumbo Tchoc

 

Mais tu connais quoi c'est un tchoc, hein?
Blackbird, huh?

Un bon gumbo, ça. 

Ho, Jack! 

Si ça fait un gumbo! 

C'est un gumbo q'arette pas!

The Cardinal Blues

The way the the callers to the Tasse de Cafe Radio program speak French is so beautiful, it's like poetry. The following is transcribed from a conversation I recorded last week of the callers talking about different birds.

Les Blues des Cardinaux

Comment tu dis cardinal en français?

Mais, cardinau!

J'en avais un dans mon cours la semaine passée
j'voulais prendre un portrait.
Monsieur a gone
avant j'peux l'attraper le portrait et l'a'oir
il s'est sauvé!
il té 'près scout around
il va r'venir!
je vas peut-être pas le 'oir
Mais il va r'venir!
un vaillant tite oiseau
c'est joli pour les 'oir
et c'est pas souvent tu les 'oir
Tu les 'ois pas un tas!
Mais c'est joli pour 'oir

 Ça aime faire leur 'tite chanson bien tranquil 
Ça donne les blues d'attendre ça
Ça donne l'envie danser!

!

Prairie des Femmes Sign

Prairie de Femmes Chicken Yard

routed wood Prairie des Femmes sign in a neighbor's chicken yard