Category: Upcoming Events

Calling all members and friends: Join us tomorrow (Saturday, 3/11) at St. Thomas’ Episcopal on the Bayou for our First Quarter meeting and to work on our project there at the church. We begin at 1:30 p.m. in the pavilion next to the church.

As guest speaker, Bette Kauffman will describe the scope of the project we began last year of adding educational natural history signage to the walking path and will lay out a plan for completion. The part of the project we will do tomorrow is to inventory and map the trees. This data will be used on the signage and be the basis of our decisions about how many trees to label, which ones and where.

LMN-NE will be joined in the day’s work by several members of the church and some students from Canterbury@ULM, the campus group that meets at St. Thomas’ and previously contributed by planting native plants along the walking path. Canterbuy@ULM received a “Care of Creation” grant from the Episcopal Diocese of over $6000 to pay for the signage.

Canterbury@ULM is also providing pizza and beverages to be shared while LMN-NE has its Second Quarter meeting after the work is finished.

The weather tomorrow is supposed to be beautiful, and the site is certainly beautiful. Please come, bring a friend who might be interested in LMN-NE, and join in the adventure of figuring out how to inventory trees on a two-city-lot natural area! St. Thomas’ is at 3706 Bon Aire Dr.

But of course, in keeping with who we are, some of our partying will be educational and natural history oriented.

We meet at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 11, at Heartwood Natural Area near Rocky Branch, La. We will begin our festivities with a guided walkabout of this upland hardwood forest conserved by Kelby and Amy Ouchley. If you need directions to this location, please contact me at bjkauffman@gmail.com.

Hot dogs and all the fixings, including chili, will be provided but you might have to roast your own around an open fire. These will be followed by s’mores! If you would like to bring a side dish or holiday goodies, please do.

If you would like to participate in our gift swap, bring a $15-$20 item, wrapped or bagged. Those who participate will draw a number and pick a gift. I can’t promise but bartering might ensue after the initial distribution!

And please do RSVP. Again, you can email me at bjkauffman@gmail.com. We need a headcount to buy hot dogs, buns, etc.

We will also squeeze in a business meeting. I’ll try to keep it short, but we do need to elect officers, introduce some new members, and take care of a few things in order to get 2023 off to a good start.

BTW, you are not required to be a member to attend this event. If you are interested in what we do, come find out!

Dec. 11, 1:30 p.m. – Our Christmas Party and 4th Quarter meeting will be at Heartwood, the wonderful natural area Amy & Kelby Ouchley call home. We’ll begin with a guided hike around Heartwood, then party and meet. Details coming soon in another post.

We have a few new members interested in becoming certified Master Naturalists, and several long-time members who were interrupted in their progress toward certification by the pandemic. Therefore, I am working very hard on lining up 4 or 5 certification workshops mostly on second Saturdays in the spring. Here’s what I’m planning and have so far:

Feb. 11 and March 11, 2023, 9 am–3 pm – One of these days will be Basic Field Skills and I hope the other will be mammals, but I have not been able to pin that down yet.

April 15, 2023, 9 am–3 pm – This will be Aquatic Life, with Dr. Anna Hill instructing at Black Bayou Lake NWR. (This is the third Saturday of the month because the second Saturday is the one before Easter.)

May 13, 2023, 9 am–3 pm – This one will be Dr. Joydeep Bhattacharjee’s basic Ecosystems workshop. We’ll begin at Kiroli Park, meet in the public library for his lecture then go to Restoration Park–all in West Monroe.

June 10, 2023, 9 am–3pm – Possibly Geology.

To the extent possible, I have chosen topics that people in the process need to finish. However, anyone willing to pay the $25 workshop fee will be welcome to enroll. I for one am looking forward to repeating these, as I know I didn’t absorb everything the first time through.

Please put these dates on your calendar. I will update the Events list in the right hand column on this page as soon as I get confirmation from a workshop leader.

The certification workshop we had planned for Saturday, Oct. 29, had to be cancelled. We will meet anyway, at 9 a.m. at Black Bayou Lake Environmental Education Center. This will be a free “family fun” day. All are welcome.

David Hoover will present his certification project called “Snakes Alive.” It is fun and informative, and if you have a bit of a snake phobia you want to get beyond, this presentation will help you do that.

After David’s talk, we will ask the refuge volunteer, Jim, to get one or two of the Louisiana pine snakes out of their tanks for anyone who would like to try touching or holding a snake. I will fill in a bit of information about the current plight of the Louisiana pine snake: Why it is a valuable snake and how it became an endangered species.

We will also go for a walk on the refuge and share information about what we see. Black Bayou Lake NWR never disappoints! There’s always something fun and interesting to see and talk about.

Bring your own snacks, lunch and water. Dress to be outdoors and walk. The weather is predicted to be beautiful: mostly sunny with a high in the 80s.

This will be a relaxed day with no obligation to stay to the very end.

We will meet Sunday, September 11, 3-6 p.m. This will be an all-members quarterly meeting, but as always friends who are interested are welcome to attend, observe and participate in every way except vote, should we need to vote.

We will meet at St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, 3706 Bon Aire Dr., in the pavilion overlooking Bayou Desiard. Many will recall that this is where we met in December for our holiday party and 2021 4Q meeting.

Our speaker will be one or more members of St. Thomas’, who will talk about the congregation’s goals in making their 2-lot site a natural area for the community. You might want to bring a lawn chair for the presentation and meeting.

Back in December, we talked about helping. The first step to doing that is assessing what is already there. To that end, we will spend some time after our meeting beginning to identify species of plants and critters. David and Bette will meet ahead of time to create an assessment project on iNaturalist so that we will have an official record of what’s there. David is also looking into natural history signage that would enhance the educational value of the site as a natural area.

I don’t know if the Cooper’s hawks have been sighted recently, but here’s hoping!

Right now, the forecast for Sunday includes 47% chance of scattered thunderstorms and 86 degrees, so we might not get a lot of identifying done. That’s fine. We can start!

See you the 11th! And please check on someone we haven’t seen for awhile. A phone call from another member can be the difference between someone drifting away and returning to active participation.