Je suis la Prairie des Femmes

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La pluie tombe sur ma reineaume 

Mes larmes font une prairie tremblante 

La terre ondule en bas de mes pieds 

Je suis la Prairie des Femmes 

Les Blues Cardineux

​Quand ils disent

C'est plus pareille

Ca me donne les blues

D'attendre les cardinaux après chanter

A note on Cajun Influencing

  This here PDF blogspot started in 2012 to provide a real, albeit liminal, perspective on Louisiana Cajun and Creole culture. It was shown through the eyes of a young, self-taught Louisiana French speaking woman who found herself in an old place that was still largely wilderness. I am talking both metaphorically and about the physical realm here. The linguistic as well as geographic isolation, coupled with learning my heritage language, doing my genealogy, observing the seasons and plants and animals was all enriching as well as overwhelming. I was inspired by the language, the place names, the folklore of Louisiana, and wanted to provide something new and more substantial than the usual cliché versions of our culture found in the media and popular culture. I didn’t want to feed into those ideas, but to provide a real look into the values of a modern Cajun woman.  I used it as an excuse to explore my own linguistic acquisition as well as document the place where I lived, which, from the surface, seemed like any Louisiana back country, east of Opelousas, but underneath held the old memory that only the ground can store.

I hazarded myself to my elders, accepting their corrections, guidance, and stern warnings against some behaviors. I saw, and still see, my role as someone who gathers, protects, expands not just the folklore and language but also the values carried in it, the old Latin ways and Indigenous matriarchy that our great-grandparents operated within, maybe even without  realizing it. I wanted to share my experience learning the language to provide an example of what is possible for other young people as well as what healing can be done  inter-generationally across the reacquisition of our heritage languages, and applied this to my artistic work. It was healing work of my own linguistic wounds as well as those of my community and for years I did it anonymously, with no name attached to my blog. This was my personal deeply painful healing work and I wanted to be a vessel for it, to transmit it. If you know anything about treatment, faith healing and the beliefs that we still carry, you know this work intrinsically carries a prohibition against capitalizing on the work, if the healing is going to happen at all. Otherwise, it’s just American business as usual. This has been my struggle and I still as of today, reap no financial benefits from my herbal, language or artwork because of my core belief that it may negate the healing. Like saying thank you for a plant, or working on Good Friday. There are certain things we just don’t do. 

Fast forward 20 years and there are a whole crop of “Cajun influencers” who despite their heavy accents and adorable mannerisms, many of which hit people including me in the nostalgia, still miss the mark. This is deeply personal work within the individual, and also that spills out into the larger society. If we share it without true understanding, it risks the continuation of Cajun stereotypes, half truths and generalizations that we have endured for centuries, but this time it is metabolized, disseminated and sold out by our own people who think a quirky t-shirt and some catch phrases is proof of culture deep enough to influence. I fear that Americanization has already influenced the influencer to capitalize on our culture on a surface level to appeal to the general American public. This work of figuring out who you are, who we are, how to reengage with the language and apply the values of our ancestors is not to be broadcast and cheapened. It’s personal work full of the missteps made by us, the children of this culture, who are  just learning how to speak.  If influencers did the private work, and learned the language, experienced the humility of the old ways, felt the embarrassment, ingested the same indignity shown to our elders through the language, they would cease to want to be influencers on an American platform. There is a change in the value system when we metabolize the true essence of our people and of Louisiana French, and this dignity has parameters, it is not a joke or entertainment. It’s like a rare prairie plant that blooms quietly in the pasture, unseen by anyone but the bees who work to pollinate the entire Cajun Prairie.

Radio sur la Prairie

Radio on the Prairie Herbology 

Pixelated Maris Stella

 

Medicines I made in the Spring

 Medicine I made since the early spring

Vinéraire oil and balm

Wild orange flower enfleurage oil

Sweet olive flower enfleurage oil

Poke root oil

Pine sap balm and oil

Cleaver infusion

Lizard's tail infusion

Chickweed oil

Plantain oil

Nettle tea

Nettle powder

Violet hydrosol

Violet tea

Clove, nettle and poke hair tonic

Clove spray for face

Cinnamon Florida water

Wax Myrtle infused alcohol

PDF Official

 

Talking Pâque Eggs with K4 and 2eme

​Pock Pock Talk with K4 and 2eme

We watched Monsieur Calvin Rabbelais of Avoyelles Parish paques eggs with his grandson- they all cheered for the petit garçon
You have to be a judicious paqueur! I tell them. 
The difference between the pockee and pockeur: 

The "pockee" gets pocked, the pockeur pocks.
A round of Queen's "We will Pock you"
A warning against the vieux nonc's unfair and aggressive pocking tactics: 
side and under pocking, efforts to gris-gris by encircling the top slowly, 

ruses of soft taps, sneak attacks. They like to do that, the old uncles. 
Hand position provides protection from side paqueurs and sneak attacks. 
Petit bout vs grand bout: K4 knows the difference. 
Kissing the egg for luck.
They don't pock eggs in France, so say. The kids are shocked.  

A stern warning to the second grade girls not to paint the eggs with nail polish, it's their secret.

No use of guinea eggs except in a separate bracket guinea fight, now that's country.

The men would dye their eggs with old felt hats and the eggs would come out black black. Then they would polish them with oil- some scary pock eggs!

In Ville Platte the men carried their egg in their front shirt pocket 

to pock in the churchyard after Easter Sunday mass.

Why do the French eat one egg for breakfast?

Because one egg is "un oeuf". 

Pointe Blue Toile

Cypress washhouse

Sprouts from the spearmint patch

Sharecropper barn with license plates attached

Manche des Prudhomme blue hatchback

Wild onions and the red sassafras

Chicken trees, soco vines

Brick cistern, fig wine

A child's gumbo, balles de foin

Catalpa tree at the coin

Appalousa paint horse

Under the chinaball

Nonc grows the chat-bouillie and lilas parasol

Point Blue rice pump

Barbwire fence

Beyond the cove

The tops of the trees in

Pointe Aux Pins

Song of the Painted Bunting

April 11- 

Heard the first song 

Of the painted bunting 

In the prairie today 

April to August they sing

La Prairie des Femmes

Prairie des Femmes ​

Gold Confederate Buttons in Grand Coteau

Civil War General wrote this in his book published in 1879.

"On an occasion, passing the little hamlet of Grand Coteau, I stopped to get some food for man and horse. A pretty maiden of fifteen springs, whose parents were absent, welcomed me. Her lustrous eyes and long lashes might have excited the envy of " the dark-eyed girl of Cadiz." Finding her alone, I was about to retire and try my fortune in another house ; but she insisted that she could prepare "monsieur un diner dans un tour de main," and she did. Seated by the window, looking modestly on the road, while I was enjoying her repast, she sprang to her feet, clapped her hands joyously, and exclaimed : " Voila le gros Jean Baptiste qui passe sur son mulet avec deux bocals. Ah ! nous aurons grand bal ce soir." It appeared that one jug of claret meant a dance, but two very high jinks indeed. As my hostess declined any remuneration for her trouble, I begged her to accept a pair of plain gold sleeve buttons, my only ornaments. Wonder, delight, and gratitude chased each other across the pleasant face, and the confiding little creature put up her rose-bud mouth. In an instant the homely room be- came as the bower of Titania, and I accepted the chaste salute with all the reverence of a subject for his Queen, then rode away with uncovered head so long as she remained in sight. Hospitable little maiden of Grand Coteau, may you never have graver fault to confess than the innocent caress you be- stowed on the stranger ! It was to this earthly paradise, and upon this simple race,  that the war came, like the tree of the knowledge of evil to our early parents..."

Merci Madeline of Mimosa for passing this information along

 

À l’Académie

Gathering nettles, poke root and  

Clear pearls of pine sap 

In the bois de Sacré Cœur 
Making wild neroli enfleurage oil 
Collecting violets under the oak alley 
Je rentre dans l'arcade, l'aire est lourde 

With osmanthus ​and fog - a springtime aerosol 

Marie Antoinette in the gardens of the Sacred Heart / Marie Antoinette dans le jardin de Sacré Cœur

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Printemps arrvier

J'espère comme j'espère le printemps se montrer

Je ramasse les violettes sur le coteau saint

J’observe les pécanniers

A Grand Coteau les fleurs de catalpa après tomber

Tu peux espérer le printemps comme tu veux

Mais ça vient

A Prairie des Femmes Desire Path

Printemps dans la prairie

Je refuse de couper les zabs

Ca fait plus possible à voir

Mon spring desire path

Dark Acadiana

Dark Acadiana

The night sky over Kaplan

Fleur d'Asiminer

La valse de Balfa

Cucumbers with black peppa and white vinegar

Maw-maw from Pointe Noire

The Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary

A Sidney Brown Accordion 

Daily mass in Scott

Reciting the Divine Mercy 

"Spidawort can grow unda the black walnut tree, yeah."

Rodrigue's oaks

Un cafe noir

Racine de chou gras

Sur le Bord de Vaisseau

Malveaux

Water from Bayou Vermillion

Making a holy hour in the early morning

Ash Wednesday

Moise Robin's Golden Gate

Blood Boudin

Pray Opelousas

Planter dans la lune

X on your last name 

Light Acadiana

 Light Acadiana

Evangeline Maid Bread

Elder Flower Tops

Maw-Maw's from LeBlanc

Nannie's Tatting

White wisteria on Church Road

3 mailles de l'herbe a malo/lizard's Tail root in water

La Danseuse by Blind Uncle Gaspard

Rue des Etoiles

Daily mass in Vatican

A bag of Avery Island salt

A blonde roux

A Job's tear Rosary 

Alligator gar earrings

Un cafe au lait

Cattle egrets

Cherokee Rose 

Catalpa flowers

Holy Water from the rice pump

Vineraire flowers at La Toussaint

The Imaculatta Center

Easter Sunday in Abbeville

Magnalite pots

May crowning by the girls of the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau

A bowl of white rice

Mercredi Saint

​Mercredi Saint 
His voice inside my head 
Strikes a disobedient chord 
All week I wait in vain 
For the coming of the Lord.
The Paschal moon illuminates
I go all in my whites
Les animaux peuvent parler
Good Friday at midnight

Prairie des Femmes Chalk Cave Painting

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Boucanner les Mouches à Miel

 "That man smoked me with cypress shavings just like he did the bees, to calm me down"
Journal Page from August 2022
Tisane de prêle de champ
A calumet of peace
Houma war paint 
Bloodroot bear grease
Au Nom, il touche ma tête,
De la bonne Saint Accroupie!
Burn the cypress shavings en cachette
To smoke the bees 

O Malheureuse

 

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In Veneration of Life Everlasting

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Odile Falcon Journal

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Équand Bocephus était au Purple Peacock. »

Le grand musicien et garçon de Hank Williams Sr. aussi connu comme Bocephus va être après jouer la musique au bal à Eunice!  Ouais mes amis, c’est Hank Williams Jr. qui va jouer au Purple Peacock a grand Eunice ce vendredi soir à sept heures du soir, Portes ouvertes à six heures! Comment tu crois, hein? Mais monde, il faut se fionner pour y aller! Etre faquin! Hot Dog! Bocephus au Purple Peacock.

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Joan of Arc

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Joan, it’s true. I only wanna know you.

​Joan of Arc week with the girls of the Sacred Heart 

Bonfire Chez Olivier January 3

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Entrer la Prairie des Femmes

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Madame Grands Doigts

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A Zydeco Fairytale

Une Serpente dans mon Lit la Nuit

C'était tard la fête de la Saint-Jean. C'était un dimanche. J'avais passé la journée en bas du sureau sur la galerie, les ombrelles de fleur de sureau comme de la dentelle parfumaient l'air lourdement. J'ai baigné, ramassé les merises au bayou, et aussi les petites fleurs de sureau qui tombent sur la galerie. J'aime manger ces fleurs, faire les boissons et de l'eau pour me laver le visage. Les garçons avaient coupé le bois et le bambou alentour de la maison pendant la journée, et ils ont quitté la porte en haut ouverte pour un bout de temps.

Après une heure du matin, j'ai montée les escaliers pour aller dormir.  Je m'ai couchée dans mon lit. J’ai resté dans le lit à regarder mon phone, peut-être j'avais vu quelquechose là dessus qui m'a choqué, m'a beaucoup chagriné. Peut-être j'avais vu une forme en bas des couverts, peut-être pas. Peut-être je me rappelais, j'ai compris. Je ignorais mes sentiments à force que j'étais si contente dans mon lit, et qui donc jongle à chercher en bas des couverts pour une serpente? Meme avec plus que vingt ans ici dans ma compagne, j'ai jamais jonglé de faire ça. Mais les affaires changent.

Dans mon lit, assez fatiguée j'ai éteint la lampe et tout d'un coup j'ai senti un glissment étrange surgit sur mon bras, mon estomac, et j'ai vu la lumière de son oeil, le scintillement des écailles du serpent, le blanc de son cou. Ma cervelle disait "lézard!" mais c'était trop grand pour être un lézard. J'ai volé du lit en jetant les couverts, et j'ai vu la longue queue de la serpente glisser au coin. J'ai marché en rond dans ma chambre pendant quelques secondes à jongler quoi faire. J'ai cherché une boîte en plastique du placard et j'ai commencé à fouilliler pour la serpent. Elle était dans le coin, en arrière de mon armoire. Elle grimpait l'entourage au coin verticalement. J'étais dehors de mon corps . J'ai lutté pour mettre la boite sur la serpente, et j'ai reussi à faire ça, mais sa tête s'échappée en gagnant vers moi, j'ai essayé de la couvrir plusieurs fois mais sa tête ne voulait pas entrer dans la boîte. La serpente vibrait. Sa tête poussait vers mes pieds nus. Je pouvais la sentir. Ca fait je me suis dit: Ashlee, faut pas que tu laisse cette serpente sortir de cette boîte! Faut l'attraper. Faut la tuer. Aies la confiance en toi-même! Et c'est ça j'ai fait. J’avais le trust dans moi-même.  Je voulais pas la tuer, mais il le fallait, c’était dans mon lit. J'ai mis un amp de guitare sur la boîte pour tenir la serpente en place pendant que j’ai cherché un haltère de dix poids. C'était avec l' haltère que j'ai tué la serpente par écraser sa tête. Enfin c'était fini, et j'ai tombé back sur le lit. J'ai commencé à brailler et respirer en hystérie. J'étais seule, c'était le milieu de nuit. Je tremblais comme le temps j’avais commencé à accoucher mon bébé dans la nuit, toute seule. Le sang du serpent faisait un flacon alentour de sa tête. J'ai halluciné, en descendant en bas pour passer la balance de la nuit. 

C'était une réalité horrible, et ça m'a arrivé. Un couche-mal en vrai. C'est comme ça et avec cette connaissance terrible que reconnaitre que je suis une femme de cette prairie, et je peut faire. Je connais que j'ai appris comment attrapper, comment soigner, et des fois, comment tuer des choses pendant tout ces années je passais ici.

Cherry Bounce Update

 In 2013 I transcribed a recipe from La Tasse Cafe radio program about a curious drink called cherry bounce:

"Cherry Bounce is a thick sweet strong liqueur that people in south Louisiana make around the holidays.  You shake the wild cherry trees (merisiers) so that the berries, called merises or choke cherries, fall onto a sheet."

From that time on I began spotting wild cherry trees in our tree lines and around town or at the camp. This was my process with many plants. Every year we would check for the cherry trees and gather from the most reliable ones considering access, height, severity of bird strike, yearly production changes or other challenges. Over the years, my knowledge of where the best producing trees are has grown. This year I have become especially good at spotting the trees and the season is long and plentiful, possibly because of the snows. I have spent the entire month of May and half of June daily checking my cherry trees and it is a fulfilling activity for me. I go to my little tree, gather enough for the day, then gauge if I have enough for another fifth, and should I stop in at Russel's for it. As I pick along the Teche, I can hear the bells of the church ring on the half hour. It's just me and the birds. My cousin Paula told me that my great grandfather also made cherry bounce. I've been making it for about ten years and never knew that, but my yearly focus on this process feels like it must be hereditary.

I have a list that I wrote of where to find the cherry trees but I may have augmented it for my own bounce security. 

Les merisiers:

2 in the garden at the house with swamp rose, pomegranate, muscadine and grape vines 1 in the eastern tree line in the front (could not locate 2025) 1 Prairie Laurent Dolla Store (big daddy) 2 on the Bayou Teche, pas loin de l'eglise 4 au moins à l’Academie de Sacré Cœur treeline Grand Coteau 1 at the mound site Bayou Bourbeux Road 2 on the Main Drag à Carencro (did not access) 2 on I-49 at exit 11 near the cypress place (trop haut, trop traffic, et dans les herbes) 2 Chicot woods island à Nonc Den

Here is the recipe I transcribed from the Mercedes Vidrine cookbook via la Tasse de Café radio Program. 

I should note that I go heavy on the cherries, lighter on the sugar, and I do not do the aging process with just cherries and sugar. I prefer to wash and dry the cherries, admire them, fill a bottle up 1/3 with them, cover with 1/3 sugar and fill to the top with whisky. I let that age for a month or two, shaking every week and quality control testing every few days.

Recette pour le jour-même Cherry Bounce

 

Recette pour le jour-même Cherry Bounce

C’est le mois de mai et j’après trouver encore les merisiers pour faire mon cherry bounce. Il y un merisier sur une île dans le Bois de Chicot chez ma famille, c’est là àyoù j'ai été le jour. C'était le jour même, la première fois, un dimanche matin. L’après midi, j’étais dans le merisier sur l'ile et ces merises noirs que j'ai tant espéré pour tombait autour de moi. Pour asteur c’est le mois de mai et je peux voir que toi aussi t’as paru dans ce temps de mûrage. 

Quand j’ai vu ces merises après pendre comme des régimes des raisins, plus que jamais, j’ai pensé à toi. Un beau cou-lève noir et vert glissait à côté de mon pied.  Equand j’ai secoué l’arbre, équand j’ai pris le pôle pour battre les branches et les merises tombaient sur le drap.  J’ai pensé de comment c’est bon pour un arbre d'être touché comme ça dans l’avant printemps, ça le fait produire plus des fruits. J’ai lavé ces merises dans le soleil avec rien que mes mains, ôté les tiges, équand j’ai mis mes merises en bas de l’eau fraîche encore et encore, j’ai pensé à toi. Equand j’ai séché chaque petit fruit, je les ai admirés. Comment ça brillait.  J’ai pris chaque merise pour drop un à la fois dans le cou de bouteille, doucement, chacun représentait la patience et l'espérance qu’il faut pour faire ça tourner en sirop, pour faire un fruit aigre, doux. Je les ai couvert de sucre, remplis la bouteille de whisky. Je faisais tout ça avec mon amour des choses bien faites, bien mûres, des fruits noirs et rares dans les bois, entourés de l’eau. Chaque merise que j'ai mis, j'ai parlé de mon coeur, en remerciement pour ces fruits, ce medicine, ce connaissance, et en espérance que comme ces merises chaque année, que toi tu vas revenir encore et encore, et que tu vas être là pour partager le cherry bounce avec moi dans avenir, dans le temps des fêtes.

Gifts from the girls

Half a bird egg shell in the garden

A pine knot, a berl

 3 droplets of clear sap

Swamp rose petals and mamou flower in my apron pocket

2nd grade girls on the chapel steps in their white first communion dresses and veils

Gouter at 2:45- chocolate chip cookies 

Vinéraire

 In 2012 there was a persistent maple syrup smell that hung in the back of my pasture. Having had enough familiarity with the other medicines, remedies and prairie plants,  I began to scrutinize the individual plants in the back corner, and it was easy to find the one because I knew the others. I often identify familiar plants for my own needs through crushing the leaves and smelling them. If you know a plant well and work with it, this method is reliable. This plant's smell was unique. After some identification (it was pseudoghaphalium obtusifolium, fragrant rabbit tobacco, life everlasting, vinéraire), I let the season pass. Each time I returned to the back pasture it was no longer in that spot. 

I still looked occasionally and asked around about a plant with this maple smell, but I lost it. Eventually I arrived at a time when I had a mental critical mass of native plant experience through my transcriptions of my hometown's Creole folklore. Sometimes I would set an intention to find a plant like herbe à vers, or wormseed (to make the traditional de-worming praline) or herbe à malo, aka lizard's tail (to make the teething necklace) and go out and find them somewhere in the prairie or swamp. It was in this way that in the summer of 2023 I finally found three vinéraire plants again in the side pasture.  I cleared the other plants from around her and allowed her to grow. I also began to carry a spring with me everywhere I went. It was a sad time and I sat with the plant often and began to use it medicinally and spiritually. I never left home without it and it was with me through some tough times and gave me comfort for its smell, softness and as I began to learn, local rarity. 

In this time I had a meeting with some folklorists and horticulturalists who I shared my curiosity with. They knew what it was but were incredulous that I had found it with my nose in the pasture. They eventually produced letters and contacts of local healers and Indigenous women who were 40 years in search of the plant, because it was now hard to find down the bayou. 

I learned that it's a mid succession species that comes when the prairie is healing and becoming more diverse, but that it usually grows in undisturbed prairies, which my field is not; it was farmed for decades. Still remnants might remain at the edges, and memory remains in the land always.

Over the last three years I have observed this plant at all stages and seasons, through snow and drought. It likes liminal edge and dry soil. This could be one of the reasons that it appeared here, among others. It has spread voluntarily across my back pasture from three to around 700 (this year, so far) individual plants. It has spread on its own, under conditions that I monitor, and does not yet she grow where I plant her.

I make sprays, balms and burn it regularly as one would burn sage. I have documented its native uses, etymologies in Creole, French and Choctaw, as well as its extensive spiritual connections. I have shared in ongoing art exhibits such as Botanica at the Louisiana State Museum at the Cabildo in New Orleans as well as the Prairie Stories exhibit Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, Louisiana. I have given lectures about it for several college classes in Louisiana and out of state, as well as at Basin Arts, Academy of the Sacred Heart, Nunu's, Atelier de Nature and at a workshop at Balfa Week.

I have had the most satisfying honor of providing the plant and seed to the women and men who were in search of it, as well as herbalists, traiteurs, healers, and a few of the members of the Indigenous tribes in order to return its medicine to the people of south Louisiana.