Too Soon!

Too soon indeed our Louisiana adventure had to come to an end. On our final day in Shreveport, Sherry took us to a nearby park. It is not a city park; a local family has their art museum there and maintains the grounds around it as a public space. It is hard to imagine that happening in California. The azaleas were not blooming as wildly yet as Sherry hoped – they probably needed about another week of sunshine and warmth for that – but the park was still stunningly beautiful.

There are bronze statues throughout the park like this tableau about the American West.

 

And there are Sherry and I and, in her arms, Taboo.

Sherry wanted us to stay for the afternoon because she was hosting the Easter Bonnet party, a fundraiser for a local LGBT group. I am sure it would have been fun, but American Airlines wanted to charge us about the price of the original ticket for changing flight times. So we reluctantly had to leave for Dallas a little before noon. Sherry’s friend James who was setting up for the event gave us a little taste of some of the imaginative haberdashery that would have been on display later in the day.

And Sherry’s mom Shirley was going to be one of the judges for the contest along with Tom Giles’ mother. I adore Shirley.

 

The drive to Dallas went uneventfully and our flight left and arrived on time. So, gentle readers, I am signing off until the next time John and John are on the road – again!

Briarwood and Natchitoches

I woke up early as usual, and did some work on pictures and things for school. About eight, there was a whir of activity and everybody else jumped out of bed and drank some coffee. We were supposed to leave right around that time for Briarwood, a nature preserve near Natchitoches where we had reservations for a ten o’clock tour.

It took us a while to get there, and I must say the GSP was pretty helpful. We went through a number of small towns as we went over two lane rural highways. We finally turned down a dirt road, and, after a few hundred feet, we were there.

Briarwood is one of the few strands of old growth forest left in Louisiana. Here you can get a sense of what northern Louisiana looked like before the French arrived in the mid-eighteenth century.

Briarwood was the childhood home of Caroline Dormon. Starting in the mid 1930’s, Dormon collected information about the plants and animals of Louisiana. She took pictures, collected specimens, and wrote volumes about her discoveries. Here is a picture of Miss Dormon – she never married – in her later years.

Briarwood was her home throughout most of her life, and she lived here in a small cabin. For much of the time she lived there, she had no electricity, and she only grudgingly allowed a phone line late in her life when her friends feared for her health living alone in the woods. Her house is still preserved much as it was when she lived there.

 

We had Jessie, a very knowledgeable tour guide to take us through the 350 acre preserve and show us the native plants.  Caroline Dormon not only preserved the forest at Briarwood, but she planted native plants from around Louisiana and the south in a natural woodland environment. Briarwood is remarkable because it is a botanical garden which looks nothing the near rows of carefully label plants that we think of when we hear the words “botanical garden”. Jessie helped us to see plants which we might have otherwise not observed and explained about each. She drove us around in an electric cart.

In the picture below, Jessie is the woman on the right side by the steering wheel. The woman in front is Shirley, Sherry’s mother. Sherry Kerr and Tom Giles are in the back.

Here you can see a native azalea.

  

This is a native flox.

 

And I think this was a native sweet olive, though I should have taken closer notes when Jessie was explaining.

  

We saw examples in the cabin and the small visitors center of Miss Dormon’s plant drawings. They are truly exquisite.

After our tour of Briarwood, we went to Natchitoches, the only large town in this part of Louisiana for lunch. Now pronunciation can be a little challenging anywhere in Louisiana, but this town has possibly the greatest disconnect between letters and sounds. Natchitoches  is pronounced "NACK-uh-tish". Go figure….

But however you say the name, it is a lovely small Southern town. Founded in 1714, it has the distinction of being the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase. It is located on the Cane River, an oxbow of the Red River.

 

Natchitoches is most famous as the setting for the play and movie Steel Magnolias. This is the house where the characters played by Julia Roberts and Sally Fields lived. It is now a bed and breakfast.

 

We took a horse cab for a short and very pleasant tour of the town.

 

We returned back to Shreveport in the late afternoon. Tom’s daughter, her husband, and their child were in town for the holiday. They live in Texas. They stopped by to talk, but could not unfortunately stay for dinner. Sherry cooked us a nice supper, and we watched Steel Magnolias.

Shreveport

After our lovely dinner Wednesday night, we decided that we really loved Breaux Bridge and the Maison des Amis. We had breakfast at Chez Jacqueline, a nearby restaurant, as a part of our lodgings. The couple from Michigan were seated right next to us and we were joined by the gentleman from England. We had a great time talking, and the food was pretty wonderful, too. Afterwards, as I packed up, John took some farewell shots.

We drove down to Lake Martin just south of town. We had heard that this was a great area for birds, and we were not disappointed. There were lots of mysterious cypress trees ringing the lake, creating the wonderful Evangeline forest primeval atmosphere (to mix up a couple different Longfellow poems) that you want to see in the bayous of south Louisiana.

But the amazing thing were the sheer number of birds nesting there. From a distance we thought the pink birds were flamingos, but we later learned they were Roseate Spoonbills. It hardly matters. They were all beautiful.

After this, we just drove straight to Shreveport using Interstate 49. This is a fairly empty and surprisingly attractive stretch of highway. Once past Alexandria, the land starts to roll a little and urban sprawl gives way to mixed pine forests. There are few town along the way, and surprisingly little evidence of agriculture. By late afternoon, we were pulling to Sherry’s house.

Sherry and Tom Giles were excited to see us and we sat around and talked. Of course, this still being Louisiana, she had food ready. This is such an amazing house in the heart of one of Shreveport’s historical districts. They are doing minor renovations like stripping the old wall paper and painting right now. The big renovations, like a new kitchen, will wait for the end of the recession. But even as is, it is a beautiful house.

In the evening, Tom was serving as an usher for the Maundy Thursday service at Saint Mark’s Cathedral. I went to the Eucharist with him while John and Sherry talked and napped back home. We we returned, we had a lovely dinner and watched a documentary about the restoration of the Laura plantation which we had bought after our tour on Monday.