Little Towns of Louisiana: LeCompte

Went around the nearby small town of LeCompte (pronounced: Le-Count) and took some photo's of some of the landmarks or scenic views.   

For LeCompte, first up would probably have to be Lea's Lunchroom. Purported to be home of the best pie in Louisiana, and the Pie Capital of Louisiana, there's even a Pie Festival in LeCompte every year.

Lea's is a small, family owned restaurant off the main highway through LeCompte, so it's got a nice location to stop off at while heading through town.

 Lea's Lunchroom has been around since the 1920's, and is actually kind of famous, and has been featured on some tv shows, as well as being part of some tours in the area.

 Another well known restaurant in LeCompte, at least to me, is Don's Cajun Kitchen.  Their hours are a little more sporadic than Lea's, but as small as LeCompte is, that's somewhat understandable.  They have some pretty good Crawfish Etouffee, which is somewhat like a gumbo dish, typically being served over rice.

 This is a photo of what might be called...main street, in LeCompte.  As a town with a population of around 1300, it's pretty much the definition of the rural town.

 This is a mural on the side of, I am sure you guessed it, the Water Street Market, but I thought it looks really nice.  The Water Street Market is a fairly typical small town convenience store, providing small, varied sundries.

 A small bit of a river running through LeCompte, pretty close to the previously named Water Street Market, but I just couldn't help myself, as I thought this scene looked great.



This last one is technically from LeCompte, but actually from our yard, hanging out on one of our small yard carts.  I think it turned out even better than I thought it would 

 

More Landscape Photo's Too.

 I like taking close up pictures of bugs with wings because I like seeing their wings, and bugs seem to be a little more...forgiving with proximity to people than un-domesticated animals.  Although I don't know what this bug is, I wasn't able to find out anything bad about it, so I don't think it's too dangerous.

 

 Most of the bugs I take pictures of happen to land on me while I'm out mowing, and sometimes, it gets really difficult to take a good picture with an actual camera when I have only my left hand to use, so I wasn't able to get this one very close.

This one looks kind of like a really small moth, but it was the middle of the day, so I really doubt that it was a moth, from the shape of the wings I might think maybe a Leafhopper, but it seems a bit too chunky for one of them.

 I didn't know frogs had a habit of being so cool.   I keep a little Grabber-Arm tool with me on the mower while mowing to move branches out of the way or other things, and I don't know how long he was there, but he was just hanging out, I guess enjoying the ride.  Which is weird since the tractor was on pretty close to full power so it was rumbling and making lots of noise.  I ended up dropping him off near the tree I noticed him at, since I had to go mow in the sun, and I doubt frogs like the sun much.

 Our pecans are coming in very nice, these are some of the bigger ones.   A lot of the trees we have are still green, but some of them are already starting to brown and open up.  I think this will be a great pecan year.

 I'm going to start taking some landscape-type pictures from now on, these won't necessarily be 'of' anything, and for a while they might be a little bad until I get the hang of taking this style of  photo, so I'll start off with my favorite one, the one I think came out best, of the bayou across the road.  We get all sorts of birds, nutria, gators, pretty much every type of animal in Louisiana is over there at some point in time.

 This one is just a picture of the, mostly, mowed yard, the picture might not do it justice, and this is only about half of it, but it's actually really big.   And while you can't see it right now, it's incredibly wet out there, no standing water at the moment, but pretty much all the dirt is mud right now.  We've had some pretty serious raining over the last couple months, and yesterday we had some more rain, so the ground is pretty saturated.

 And this last one is the tree in the background of the previous picture, it's a pretty big tree.  Not terribly tall, but really wide.  This one is not one of our pecan trees, almost unfortunately, one that big could drop a whole heap of them on it's own



Thanks for stopping by, and if you'd like, let me know which one of the pictures you liked the most, or share your thoughts, I'd be happy to hear them.   Until next time, have a great day or night.

Oh, raspberries!

 Got you, these are actually of a lizard, a Broadhead Skink, specifically.  Pretty big one that hangs around my trailer.  Here it is sitting on a normal sized pallet, you can see a little of how big it is.   It's been around me long enough that it doesn't even worry about me anymore, I've stepped less than a foot from it, and it won't even budge, just hangs around, eats bugs, lives the life of a broadhead skink.

But I do have a couple pictures of some wild raspberries growing on one of our in-yard fences, I wouldn't try eating them, personally, but they add a nice little bit of color to the yard, I think.  It looks to be just one vine for now, but given some time, who knows how big it might grow.

  I am planning on trying to post more regularly, going to try for everyday from now on, even if it's just some photo's from around the yard or in the nearby Alexandria/LeCompte.

A few spring/summer flowers and critters

Took a few pictures of the new flowering various plants, and  a couple of little critters around.
    
We have a couple apple trees in our back yard, and they seem to have some nice pieces coming in, hopefully they come through all the way to full size without getting snatched by some critter running around

 This was a picture of some flowers on one of our Catalpa trees, taken by my mom.  Catalpa trees are pretty well liked by hummingbirds, and grow pretty fast, for a tree, as well as having a pretty good rot resistance so get used for wood quite often.



This one, on the right, is a Canna Indica, it comes from in fairly large bushes, and the only real 'use' is that they look pretty, the seeds have been used in jewelry before, and they are not particularly aggressive plants, they dont spread very much past their bushes.

As promised, the first of the two critters, a toad living in our cow bowl, a large bowl that used to hold water for cows, but is now home to some minnows, some shiners, a catfish, and this toad.





Outside of my home, I have a walkway, made out of pallets, and this Broadhead Skink lives under it.  The Broadhead Skink is the largest of the skink types natural to Louisiana, are adept at climbing, and are good at preying on bugs and other lizards.  They prefer the heat and, like me, can be rather sluggish in the cold.

 This two I think were my favorite, and I think they turned out the best.   A couple of pictures of some magnolia flowers off of one of our Magnolia trees.   In addition to being pretty trees, Magnolia trees are also very good as shade trees, and can provide a lot of it.

Ladybugs and Mushrooms

 This was a picture from during the ladybugs mating time, they were literally everywhere, not as many of them now, but still quite a lot.

 These are some pictures of a growth of mushrooms that took up the same size as a small tree stump, and the ant hill next to it is pretty big too, last picture is a bit further out to show how big the mushrooms are

A few wildlife-y photos

This is one of the two non-insect pictures I took this time, I think it was called a Canna, or maybe a Kanis, I couldn't hear too well at the time.

  And this here turtle was, as they seem apt to do, laying its eggs in our yard, poking it's head out to look at me as I was going around it.

 And I think all of these insect photos came out great, I believe I got some good ones here.  2 of a (the same) dragonfly and one of a regular house-fly

 A nice close-up of a Dragonfly, although I think it's right wing was broken, which is why it's dipped off, but I am not sure.









And here is the promised 'better next time' egret that I keep promising you all :P

A few 'normal' pictures from everyday life around here

This picture is sort of an update, this is a picture of those 'web-ball' caterpillars.  It's actually called the Fall Webworm, and the web-balls is a cocoon for what becomes a white moth, and they tend to nest in pecan trees, among others, and are, mostly, not dangerous, according to the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center at https://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/our_offices/research_stations/Pecan/Features/Pecan_FAQs/index_seriespage-18.htm

 This is a picture of a couple of our 'house-cats' in our screen room, where we put up a few shelves, for them to climb around on, still inside, technically, while also still sort of being outside.

 Saw at least 4 of these girls out in the yard today, the Red Eared Slider, a fairly common turtle that is quite often kept as pets.

 The family across the way has at least 2 horses, as well as their neighbor has at least 2 horses, and also a couple dozen cows.

Sorry for the quality of this Egret, I will definitely do better, this one was done at 32x magnification, so, he was pretty far away.

And here is my favorite one, I call it 'To the Setting Sun'  Even though it was taken at around 8-9 this morning, haha.

First Actual Artistic Photographs [In Vietnamese : trong tiếng Việt]

I call this one 'The World Blooming'  [mỹ thuật

: thề giới nở]

                                                             This one I call "The Fairys Calling"  [mỹ thuật : nàng tiên gọi]

A few pictures from around the farm.

 Took a few pictures around the farm, this one is from some sort of caterpillar that creates these 'web balls', kind of all over the place.  Almost drove into this one a couple times while mowing, haha.

 For some reason, turtles like this girl here love to come over to our yard from their places to lay their eggs, so we usually have quite a few around the yard in spring.

This is a great (in my opinion) picture of a Mangolia tree blossom, one of the trees out in our pasture had quite a few of them.









Thanks for checking out this post, if you have any thoughts, let me know.  My next one will be a little different, they will be what I think of as a more Artistic type of photograph, with a bit more work on them.

Another band at the Alexandria River Fete, Matsuri Daiko

 This was another band at the Alexandria River Fete (said as:  Fet), out of Houston, Texas as well, called Matsuri Daiko, also Japanese-themed, but this one is Okinawan as opposed to Mainland.   They were also very high energy, but their energy was more...aggressive, which was understandable in the scenario, as the song they played for us was an old song and dance to ward off evil spirits, to fight against these spirits


Before they even made their appearance, their performance had begun, with a stylized entrance, with the sound of drums beating off in the distance as they started from beyond the stairs, and came down into the audience opening.

 The dance was a mix between a powerful, liberating call to arms and an aggressive, combative attack, on the spirit who they were attempting to ward off.

 And then, a demon makes its appearance, although, this one is technically here to help, at least if it is what I think it is, which would be a Shisa, in Okinawan mythology, sometimes also called Guardian Dogs, the males help to ward off evil spirits, while the females spread goodness unto the land.  Although they are technically good demons (in Japan, a demon is not always evil, there are good demons and bad ones) they are not exactly 'friendly' creatures, and while they protect homes, they will also attempt to scare away any people from the home.

People like these ones here, where it made a jump at a woman taking a video with her phone, causing her to jump up to the next stair up, hehe.

 And the Shisa Stars are unveiled.  And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those pesky kids and their drums too. *shakes hand in the air*












Well, thanks for checking out my post on Ryukyukoku Matsuri Daiko, a Japanese themed band out of Houston, Texas.   If you wish to look them up, or see where they may be making appearances, you can check out their website at  http://www.rmdtexas.org/  

Leave a comment if you would like and please stay tuned for my next post.