Fab Friday in Abita Springs

Thursday night was obedience practice.  Grace and Bern practiced for the LCCOC obedience trial this weekend.  I'm hoping Grace can manage to qualify in Rally Exc B to earn her title - I'm sure her score won't be great but she is doing somewhat better.  However her healing is still all over the place except when I start doing harder moves like turns and pivots... she thinks those are fun so she plays along great.  Bern did fabulous on everything but his broad jump which was horrid.  May he find his inner obedience dog for this weekend and get those last two CD legs he needs.  If not we will try again in Bossier City in a few weeks.

Friday was a take it easy day and the start of an extra long weekend for me.  Mike and I ventured over to Abita Springs.  Mike wanted to see the Abita Mystery House.  This destination is best described as a folk art "museum".  I more than got my $3 entry fee worth of fun out of the experience.  It is worth a visit if you haven't been.

From there we wondered around Abita Springs and then drove along LA Hwy 36 into Covington.  Several blocks Covington appear to have escaped from the French Quarter in New Orleans - much newer structures though than in NO.  Yet other blocks are older warehouse buildings along the former railroad track.  Said former Gulf, Mobile & Ohio railroad right away is now part of the rails-to-trails program ... it has become known as the Tammany Trace since it runs through St. Tammany Parish.  When it cools down we want to return to walk or bike a portion of the trace.

While we were in Covington we stopped by two old fashioned (can't find them in Baton Rouge anymore) feed and seed stores:  O'Keefe Feed and Seed and Marsolan Feed and Seed.  Both of these were neat places.  The O'Keefe building is adjacent to the former rail line and is a very old wood structure complex with rail car docks.

Good work on the edible garden space has been completed in the last few days (photos to come soon):

• The Mantis twin composter is assembled and being filled with raw compost elements.  
• There is running water (minus the O'Faithful geyser effects)  in the proposed edible garden space.  
• There are broccoli  microgreens sprouting on the wet bar adjacent to the kitchen.  
• I planted several amaryllis seeds in jiffy 7 peat pellets that I saved from two amaryllis that bloomed in the soon-to-be-herb garden area.  These amaryllis seeds are the first seeds that I have ever saved and replanted so I'm excited about this new gardening adventure.

Last but not least, I posted my Plan Forward for Meadowood Ranch.  The pre-amble explains how the plan forward has morphed into a "to do" list of sorts.  There is a permanent link to the Plan Forward from the Meadowood Ranch side bar box.