Not Just Another Audubon Park Tree...
(photo courtesy of mark valley)
Posts
Seashells in the Park: Happy Earth Day!
You see seashells in New Orleans no matter where you go. There are on the sidewalks, in the parks. I started my day with a vegan brunch at the Eco Cafe Canal where I had the best grits I have ever had in my life. It was so good, I had to ask how did they make them? Good try, but they didn't fall for it! It's also a great place to get freshly pressed juice. I've been coming here for a morning cup of carrot and parsley juice. The lattes are pretty good as well. Then I walked over to one of the local stores, and looked at plants. Took some names down for the ones I want to have in my garden: tickseed sunfire & autumn sage to name a few... Learned the difference between perennials and biennials: the former lasts for three seasons or more, the latter, according to F lower Gardens by Suite 101 , "grows vegetatively its first year, lives over the winter, then finally blooms in the second season. Once it has bloomed and set seed, it dies. Foxgloves and hollyhocks are ...
Nola, April 2011
Street Music fills the air... Leyla McCalla playing Bach's Cello Leyla is also a New York girl.. Lower Ninth Ward Lower Ninth Ward My friend Mark , on the set of his latest film, where he gets to run down Nicolas Cage... French Quarter Festival Memory, April 2011
To Garden With Grandmother
To garden with grandmother is an instructional affair I pull up weeds & stick dandelions in her hair. I learn that hibiscus' are related to okra & that the mango tree is blighted while the cherry tree is laden it's fruit sorrel red with excitement. My grandmother swings her cutlass through the green blades of grass, turning into a plantation labourer gone the woman of middle-class. There is nothing delicate about this woman (except perhaps her love for me) as she produces food & abundance from her land throughout, it seems, centuries. She points at the hills that surround our concrete home, & sucks her teeth & lets out a silent moan Those people have it right, she confesses to me, those squatters up in the hill they are the ones who are free. She points at the hills that surrounds our valley, at the blooming poui trees aflame in ecstacy... To garden with grandmother means to water her English roses, awkward like tourists amongst colorful natives... planting ...
