Stick Out Your Tongue Day!
Suggestions for celebration are
- Stick out your tongue at people. Just let them know why you are doing it, lest they think of you as a terribly rude person.
- If there are things that are bothering you, take this day to stick your tongue out at them.
- If you are overdue for a general check-up, perhaps today is the day to visit the doctor and get a clean bill of health.A
Actually that doesn’t really sound like a FUN holiday at all. Think I need to find a different source!
Let’s talk about scallops–or the lack thereof. Since we don’t go scalloping, it shouldn’t really matter to us but this year I am “mentoring” a young lady that is working on her “Gold Star” Award for Girl Scouts. That is the highest level you can get in Girl Scouts. Similar to Eagle Scout. She came to me to ask about doing something with scallop shells to better the community. Her first idea was to create a cleaning station. I said noooooo. There are many other better things that you can do.
While I am NOT a scalloping expert, Terry and I do know a few people in the area. We introduced the Girl Scout to Steve and Cyndi Minguy, the couple that started the Old Homosassa Restoration Project. Steve is also on the board of the Homosassa River Association and the Homosassa Civic Club. Both are members of the Old Homosassa Heritage Council and were responsible for getting those lights on the Old Homosassa Water Tower.
Steve and Cyndi had many ideas for the Girl Scout such as how to properly dispose of the scallop shells. The shells could be used in landscaping, driveways, art–there are a myriad of ideas to use the shells. BUT THEY REALLY STINK! Cyndi said that they are testing the idea of having the tiny creatures in the river clean the scallop shells for them. She had already put a crab trap full of shells in at her place to see how long it takes to clean them out. Naturally.
We are now 19 days into scallop season and it’s been a slow start. The problem we were having with this project was that we didn’t have any scallop shells! Finally last week, a captain showed up with enough scallop shells to put them in a crab trap on the Homosassa River. In four days, the shells were clean.
So, we decided to put a crab trap in our brackish water off of our dock. The same captain provided six gallons of scallop shells this time. Some went into the crab trap on our dock and the rest went into the crab trap on the river. Here’s our shells ready to go into the water:
And here they are on the second day. Almost clean. And we caught a crab. We will let him go after he has all the shells clean!
That’s it from me this week! And I will close with a snap of some ibis in my back yard. Just hanging out, aerating the grass, doing what comes natural.
