Wednesday, February 22, 2012

New Orleans day 3











Boudin balls, mac and cheese, and bloody marys with E. + D. on the terrace of the country club, then a walk through Jean Laffitte Parc.

bayou: thought to emerge from the Choktaw word "bayuk" meaning small stream. Bayous are extremely slow-moving bodies of brackish (half fresh half salt) water highly conducive to supporting plankton, shell fish and fin fish. In this case we were walking through an anabranch of the Mississippi River -home to so many birds, reptiles, mammals, insects. We saw a brown bunny, an egret, 8 alligators (e i g h t a l l i g a t o r s!) and, after cuddling a bunch of Spanish moss, a delicate stick bug walking across my arm.

spanish moss: a flowering silvery plant that grows on Southern Live Oak and Cypres trees. Though it resembles lichen or moss and the specific name "usneoides" means "resembling Usnea (lichen)", it is unrelated.

dwarf palmetto: 1 of 14 species of palmetto palm, dwarf palmetto is characteristic of forests on the wetter backslopes of natural levees formed from thousands of years of river flooding. Dwarf palmetto is perfect for making baskets and thatching roofs. With a dozen palmettos one could construct an effective watertight dwelling in less than a day.

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