Posts Tagged ‘Cajun’

I’ve been working on repopulating the garden, and and of course the hibiscus are what draw my attention first and foremost. This one is Creole Lady, and has been blooming pretty steadily for the last few weeks, making me very happy:

She actually lasts 2-3 days, her colors changing. The pinkish fringe becomes orange and the center gets darker. IMHO it’s prettiest when it first opens, but any hibiscus is better than no hibiscus, right?

I was playing in the garden, so naturally Bianca arrives to show me what a real Creole lady looks like…

It’s been several years since we’ve gone, so this was the year. Everybody was staying home instead of travelling for the holidays, and we’ve decided to go in for a bunch of local traditions, like bonfires on the levee.

To stay true to the tradition, we would have had to do it on Christmas Eve, but Oak Alley Plantation’s fundraiser and whoop-de-doo is a few weeks before, full of music, amazing food, and the opportunity to walk the grounds without tons of tour groups all over the place.

It was damn cold that night, but we were glad to be able to have it at all after heavy rains the day before. Unfortunately, the pyre got dampened and took awhile to really get going, but it was lovely. Carols and music around the fire with Hot Cocoa to look forward to afterward. What could be more festive?

It’s a damn cold night here in NOLA- hard freeze warnings on both the North and South shores, my heater is not cooperating, and I have too much to do tonight to rely on some real Schnapps-like beverage to create any internal warmth, so we’ll just have to Think Spring.

Or Schnapps. Whatever works for you.

On our brief tour through southwestern Louisiana, we stopped in Crowley while we waited for a crawfish place in the next town to open for dinner. Charlie actually would have liked to tour a rice farm and/or processing plant (it’s a guy thing), but there were no such immediately apparent establishments.

Instead, we just drove around. It’s a nice little town with some interesting touches.

This certainly got my attention more than a typical neighborhood watch sign.

The streetsigns are still in both English and French…

And then we ran into this odd car. Charlie got went to take a closer look, and saw the owner was sitting under his carpark, repairing his accessories. It’s something that was put together for a charity, and he drives in all the parades. He’s always accepting donations- both for the car and for the charity.

What most surprised me was a) How many commercially recognizable items there were (likely from Happy Meals and suchlike) and b) How many vaguely naughty ones there were. Ah well. I guess we all contribute our own unique talents.

We left behind $5 for the car and $5 for the charity. Click on the thumbnails for a closer look.

When we were on our road trip around the coast of Louisiana, we stopped into Rayne, a teeny tiny town that happened to lead to Hawk’s, a locally famous crawfish place in the middle of nowhere.

Along this country road was this cemetery- it, like everything else around, was pretty small, but as we passed by I wondered why there was a carport in the middle of the thing. Since it was still light when we came back through, we stopped for a bit.

Despite having only a few dozen graves, there were some really interesting things. They like their statues in Rayne, they do. Lots of them about. And several had quotes and such on them, something that doesn’t seem to happen much in New Orleans.

And there was certainly a sense of style. Take Gertrude Hamilton Johnston’s marker, complete with dog etchings:

A slideshow gallery follows after the jump with more, including the carport that originally caught our eye.

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Nice and big, beautiful bush. It’s been 2 days now, and it’s still open with very little color degradation. Definitely a keeper!

Another new-ish one, this is the first bloom since it arrived. Nice growth, fairly big flower.

Now that the weather’s cooled down, the hibs are starting to pop again.

Another Dupont; blooms in bunches. There’ll be nothing for weeks, then several will pop at once.

One of the Dupont’s- this is the darkest I’ve seen the center pink.