Author: loiseaufait

Little by little the bird feathers its nest, and object by heart burnished object we surround ourselves with lovely necessities of memory and function. It is these things that make a silly Apartment a Home or a silly Wednesday an Occasion. Whether my nest is an old farmhouse, a sixth floor tenement walk up, or a brownstone basement... whether I share it with family, vagabonds, women of heart and mind, or a little brown cat and a sweet ginger banjo, my principal joy is filling it with light and laughter (and corralling).

Beneath the Levees

CanalLeveeNewOrleansThen we went to the canal, down through the Bywater to what is not technically a public park (you have to skirt barbed wire and cross railroad tracks to get there), but which is full of young couples and their dogs and gutterpunks zooming around on their fixed-gear bikes in a perfect facsimile of a public park. The great green earthworks are beautiful, covered in clover, soaring 30 feet up from the lowlands of the upper 9th ward. Arriving at the top, come-heres like us can only stare at the huge brown muddy Missippi lapping at the rocks on the other side of the levee and wonder aghast what it must have been like for it to breach these walls. BigBrownMississippiRiverArmyCorpsOfEngineersLeveeTumbleNewOrleansMississippiLeveeRobot

A note on this amazing flotsam river robot: Here he is at the very edge of the river (I, typical to form, clambered down there to see him up close and search for treasures). That night there was a gentle rain, the river rose a few feet, and when I went back here with Miss McKay, he was gone.

Swamp Things

JeanLafitteSwampCyprusKnees

After a few too many days (or far too few, depending on your point of view) of beer battering and deep frying ourselves, Sweetheart and I lit out of New Orleans headed for the swamp. Listening to WWOZ 90.7 (which just might actually be the “greatest radio station in the known world”, as they say. I recommend judging for yourself here). The great vast and secret network of swamp trails and lagoons that spreads over south Louisiana like a heavy green petticoat has been a place of utter romance and adventure for me since I was little.JeanLafitteSwampBigGator Daddy used to tell me tales of a one-eyed alligator who wore a beret and an eyepatch and cruised the bayous making merry and trying to stay out of trouble and the sights of hapless poachers named Bubba and Ernest (one time he caught a train to Galveston by rolling off an aqueduct onto a bed of coal-car sugarcane, but that’s another story), followed quickly by Nancy Drew’s bayou adventures, the smoke hazed tales of mooncussers and rum runners using the natural canals for piracy under dead moons, and, of course, the song “The Battle of New Orleans”, which, I believe, is an entirely factually accurate account of said battle (including the part where they use an alligator as a cannon when theirs melts). So. Let’s just say I have a bayou kinship.JeanLafitteSwampPalmettoTrail Our destination: The Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve on the very land where the Battle of New Orleans happened (! in 1814 !), and hiked the four mile bayou trail. We saw two gators (neither in beret or eyepatch, which is just because my gator is too smart to hang out by the trail), a scarlet ibis, and miles and miles of lacy mire, loud with cicadas, and (our luck) full of strange cool breezes. You’d better hope that the next time I see you, I’ll have outgrown the pretty bad cajun accent I acquired walking around these swamps, but it’s not looking good dere, cher.JeanLafitteSwampLittleGatorJeanLafitteSwampIbisJeanLafitteSwampLiveOaks

And in case you forgot, some good gator advice.

Never Hungry, Never Lonely

NewOrleansJacksonSquare That’s what the ancient woman in the white dress said: “In New Orleans, you’re never hungry and you’re never lonely”. A motto for the luscious crescent city where I’ve spent the last woozy week, certainly, but crystallized there could be my own personal motto. Never Hungry, Never Lonely. My heart vibrates on that powdered-sugar dusted string. On that resonating note, our incredible hosts told us that if you love New Orleans she’ll love you back, and I think that’s absolutely true. The wet-hot afternoons and perfect spring-chill evenings, the orange blossoms, azaleas, and bougainvillea, the endless strains of music, the big dusky river wind in your hair, the endless flavor and constant cocktail, the ease of it all, never hungry, never lonely. I have a lot to share, so I’ll just start now with some greatest hits:

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NewOrleansOyster NewOrleansBalconyFrom top: The incredible beignet choux rolling machine hiding secretly around the back corner at Cafe du Monde, the actually-better-than-Cafe-du-Monde beignet at Cafe Beignet (don’t be fooled into thinking that I had a single morning without a chicory-coffee-and-beignet breakfast at several different locales), Preservation Hall, a tray of 50 cent oysters that we devoured with Sazeracs like good tourists/brilliant geniuses, One of infinite glorious balconies in the French Quarter. That’s some hits, tomorrow, the adventures.

There was the Yes

AliSmithIntroWith the snowmelt absorbed and the ground thick with promise, the world seems bursting at the seams, ripe for the blooming, about to pop off, this quote from the beginning of Ali Smith’s amazing short story collection really seems exactly right:

Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born. But before prehistory there was a prehistory of prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes.

Don’t be the never, be the yes.

The Secret Best Thing Ever

CaneSyrupSecret Best Thing Ever: Cane Syrup from Ravenel’s family farm. Dark and sweet and funky in the rummy way of Molasses (which makes sense since this is what molasses is before it gets hot, boils down and goes rogue), but with the lightning quick pour of hot Aunt Jemima. Sugar Cane juiced by mules (named Molly and Weezer) in the ancient manner, bottled in an old Hurricane (with the label drawn by Rav’s dad) perfect on buckwheat cakes. Secret Best Thing Ever.

Snow Day Aftermath

 

RedMapleWithNestI snapped this shot of the little birds nest in the big red maple a few weeks ago, just as the tight red buds were starting to form on the bare branches to signal the end of winter. Just this past weekend, the spiny flowers had started to unfurl, a first fuzzy pop of spring color against the sky.RedMapleInBloomThen, the big late season storm hit and the branch with the nest and the fuzzy red blooms came down under the weight of the snow. The yard littered with similar fallen soldiers, the aftermath of what seems to be the last gasp of winter. Sigh.RedMapleDown

SNOW DAY!

BigVASnowOh, hello and good morning! This is the view from my bed today. A little less than a foot, it seems, and the world is beautiful. We made sure to stock the birdfeeders before it all started so today we are being treated to a swooping ballet of snowbirds coming in for a breakfast. I simply can’t get over the Cardinal and the Jay.
BirdbathSnowJayCardinalSnowCardinalJaySnowNipsey Russell agrees, it makes for quite a show.RussellSnow We are the only people we know that have power and it may go off (never fear for us! we have the woodstove and a passel of food chosen for the exact purpose of cooking it on the woodstove) but alas, it might mean a few days of card games and playing music instead of being in this online space. That seems ok.

Chainsaw Love

ChainSawLoveI want a chainsaw. There are a lot of downed trees in my woods (including an amazing lightning tree, burnt at the edges, 75 feet long, that split off of a tree with a ten food trunk… I’ll share here sometime) and since we heat the house with the woodstove, all that wood just seems like free money lying around. Not to mention the extreme satisfaction I know I’d get from the tidiness that clearing up all that junkwood would afford. Every time I go out in them woods I can’t believe how much the trees shed. Branches and brambles, huge limbs, fallen-now-mossy trunks. Sticks of the world unite. At an awesome boozy dinner party, I had the good fortune to sit across from Shirlee, snake wrangler, shaman artist, and chainsaw mistress and she says she’ll give me lessons. And then she sent me the above picture. All kinds of cleaning up is in order.

Around the House

KitchenIslandToday it’s far too cold to show you the myriad of outdoorsy goins on that got tackled over the weekend, so, as often is the case on these blistering March-is-certainly-coming-in-like-a-lion-clear-and-bright-and-face-hurtingly-cold days, I thought I’d turn inward and share a few little spots around the house that have been giving me pause with their loveliness. First, the orange-red tulips Miss Rav got for the kitchen, the primroses with the compass Mama just brought me (and necessary Rosebud salve) on my bedside table, and the littlest mortar and pestle, just waiting to grind up the cumin seed that lives in the bird jar.BedsideTableMortarandPestleWith spring on its way, the house is in too much (eternal?) chaos for room tours, but I do so love these little glimpses. More to come, every week I think.