Banana Trees

Last year I transplanted all of the Cavendish banana trees that were growing beside our back deck to a spot by the backyard fence. They flourished in their new digs but winter brought more than one hard freeze and they were hard hit.

(refresh the page if you want to watch again but get a big white and green arrow)

They've came back bigger and lusher than I ever expected and it's been a fascinating to watch their rapid growth, I think they must be nearing 20'. I spent part of Labor Day afternoon lying under them channeling my son; when he was small he would point out preying mantis eggs, tadpoles, all kinds of things that I couldn't see from my adult height and it was always a gentle reminder that children have their own particular point of view. I assumed I would learn something new about life at Piazza Uccello by lowering my stature as it were and I wasn't disappointed. Right away I started hearing the sound of some small but persistent insects that sounded like miniature crickets (or frogs). The microphone on my Canon S5 IS is sensitive so it sounds like I'm on the side of the road but I was actually a good 250' away.



Some paper wasps were cooling their wee nursery in the fold of one of the leaves.



Later in the day, as I was wrapping up making photographs of the trees, I received a visitor with a decidedly different perspective. One of the reasons he's called Sweet William Grey is he always wants to be where we are. He's 17 years old, has a bad eye, has been living with a health problem for the last eight years, and he's my bud. Just listen to that purring, he wants so much to be petted.

Slide Show: Hotel Le Cirque At Lee Circle, New Orleans

This would be better had I used a tripod but it was done on-the-fly one night while DH gassed up his work vehicle. The hotel's website shows a completely different light show so I imagine there's a rotating program; in this one some of the color changes are subtle but change they do. The first set of images was made from the upper level of the Robert E Lee Memorial and the second set was made more even with street level, back towards the nearby Exxon gas station. You can orient yourself here at this new map website I found. The backdrop for this shoot was both white and black homeless men spending the night on the upper steps of the memorial while General Lee gazed out at the night sky.

Faith & Doubt Sunday

Here I Am, Lord

by Michael Chitwood

The ribbed black of the umbrella

is an argument for the existence of God,

that little shelter

we carry with us

and may forget

beside a chair

in a committee meeting

we did not especially want to attend.

What a beautiful word, umbrella.

A shade to be opened.

Like a bat’s wing, scalloped.

It shivers.

A drum head

beaten by the silver sticks

of rain

and I do not have mine

and so the rain showers me.

PPB On The Road: New Orleans: VooDoo Pt 2

I ate at VooDoo BBQ on St Charles Ave twice and the first time I had the BBQ, straight up. The different meats I tried were superb but the sauces, not so much. I tried them again a few days later and was very impressed: Jamaican jerk, gris gris greens, corn pudding, and toast.

My buddy Albertina accompanied me that day but later lost her life to Red Stripe.

R.I.P. Albertina.

I also did some people watching, some surreptitiously and some, not so much.

He was not thrilled and came over to my table and interrogated me.

I admit it, I dissembled, a bit.