Ardath(102) and Gary left this time last week to return to Wichita. When they got back this was the scene looking out her front door that greeted them. The Wichita public schools have been closed three times this year for snow days. This is pretty unusual they tell me. In Texas we close schools when snow is forecast.

Greg seems to know where the reds are. He told me on Wednesday morning he was going into Copano to the back side of redfish point. The wind was strong from the north. I said to send me a picture. Within 30 minutes he sent a picture of a red in his landing net using his iphone. The next day the winds were from the south. He sent this from Cove Harbor. Not bad.

The cabana is nearing completion. A windstorm inspection will be done this week and then the roof will be put on.
There was some excitement in town on Friday. A bank was robbed, the one in Walmart. Look for details in the  Pilot.
The post office finally came out and put the large package box locks in place. We had been trying to get this done for years. JR put his secretary, Joanna, on it and she kept after them until the job was finally done. This means when an oversized item is to be delivered it can be placed in the big box and a key to the big box put into the individual's mail box. When the individual uses the key to get their item, the key will lock itself in the lock mechanism. Only a post office person can remove the key from the lock.
The lift station gave us some problems this weekend. JR has been cleaning it every day instead of the previous twice a week. However, this weekend someone flushed four garbage bags. JR worked on it and got them out without serious damage being done. The pumps were reset and so far so good.

I don't know what the occasion was, but the Turkey Vultures sure had something going on top of the 400 building this week.
I've had two different owners call me recently about their January electric bills. They both use CP&L and had bills way over what they expected. Both had not even been here more than half the month. I have no idea what is going on there.
Yesterday, I talked to Karen Meador's replacement at Parks and Wildlife. She retired last fall and I had not talked to anyone about their most recent gill net surveys for our area. I got some good information. I did not know that they released 250,000 redfish fingerlings at Kontiki last year. Our mitigation site might be productive for years to come. There estimates are that 68,000 keeper trout were taken from Aransas Bay last year. There surveys show that the flounder population has skyrocketed. I think we can attest to that one.
The crabs have moved up into the creeks to find water that is not so salty and right now there are few in the bays and crabbers are selling back there licenses.
The oyster harvest in Copano has been exceptional. They have cut the bag limit from 80 to 60 per day and cut back the hours. They will check next week to see how the harvest is going and may shut it down if it appears the reefs are being over harvested.
Over all we just need much more rain to regain biodiversity to help the trout and redfish populations.

Finally a fish picture. Vic(712) caught this 21 inch red today from his kayak at Hog Island. He showed me the lure it took. It was an ancient tandem worm jig. I don't think they even sell these anymore.  This red had probably never seen one.

ProBuild delivered the materials on Friday to be used to construct the addition to the cabana at the end of the 300 building. The heavier stuff was put on the concrete in the background of this picture. JR thinks this can be completed in a week.
Also on Friday, Don and the guys went to Turtle Pen and the surrounding areas of Copano. Again, they had no luck at all.

JR and Larry Skelton removed the stucco wall here that was starting to come down on its own. Just before I snapped this, the top portion did fall unexpectedly and they both did a dance and avoided injury. The second photo shows how deteriorated the corner studs and the all the plywood was rotted. JR is going to use hardiplank to rebuild it. All seven of the columns on the back of the 100 building may need to be done not too far down the road.

Greg is still finding fish fairly regularly in Copano, but Aransas Bay is still not producing anything.
Don and the guys went to the California Hole today with no success at all. They are thinking about trying Saint Charles Bay tomorrow.
Around Kontiki there is just no fish activity of any kind going on. The mitigation site does not seem to even have a mullet and the pier at night seems totally bereft of any kind of fish.

Looking  back at old pictures I realize how much better the railings look now that they are painted. They are difficult to maintain, but do dress the place up. I think that was Karra's idea.

This is the back of a postcard that my family received in 1959 confirming our reservation of a summer rental in unit 14. We always stayed in the same one. It was next to the big apartment building.

 The dumpster from in front of 210 has been relocated and enclosed with fencing.
This provides an unabated view of the pool area and should improve the air quality around the pool in the summer when the strong south winds blow. We will have to add an extra dumpster in the summer and our board will be looking at different options for that location.

The wood lathe in the middle of the picture marks the northeast corner of our property. We plan to build a shoreguard bulkhead to prevent any further erosion. It would be nice to just build to this survey pin, but this is not how it works. The Corps of Engineers is working on our request now and they will have to determine where the high water mark is at one foot above mean high tide. The part that is dry belongs to us and the part that is under water at that point belongs to the State of Texas and we cannot build on that property. They will let us know how much land we have lost and where we can now build our barrier to prevent any further loss.

The irrigation upgrade and repair were finished on Thursday.  In the picture you can see what a good job they did. Seven sprinkler heads had been shut off quite some time ago because there was leak in the system behind 701 that could not be located. They just bypassed the area of the leak and trenched a new line from the lower left in the picture to the upper right. Notice the grass looks barely disturbed. Instead of a ditch witch or trencher, they hand dug everything they did. I figure that with an eight inch sharpshooter spade and one shovel full every 20 seconds, that amounts to about 8 hours of work just to dig it out. The winds were really high during all the work time too.
Since they were from San Antonio, they tried to save on a room and brought a tent they set up on the Port Aransas beach. Did I mention the winds were howling? Yes, their tent got destroyed and they had to rent a room anyway.