An Automne Table

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Fruits of Automne

Herbals I am processing a home in September:

Drying herbe cabri, elderberries, eldeflowers, chassepareille berries, chou gras berries, plaquemines and plaquemine seeds, loofa and loofa seeds,  chassepareille leaves in alcohol for bug repellant, perilla in alcohol turned it bright green, an enamel bowl of jobs tears, vineraire  

Les Plaquemines

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Qiū Sī of a Louisiana Autumn

 秋思 d'un Automne Cadien

The contents of a box- dried maypops 

La lumiere du soleil tourne comme la verge d'or

Indian heliotrope, tournesol du marais 

The wormseed chronicles on Jules LaGrange

The smell of dried vineraire in the prairie

A coyote under the plaquemine tree

Piquante bleue dans le platin

Poke berries, elder berries, socos, pepper berries, chassepareille

Persimmon seeds opened like books to fortell the winter

Lizard's tail root in water

L'eau de chassepareille

Les oranges du bois

Wax myrtle fruits

Gateau sirop

Tea cakes and sweet dough

Pecans and hickory nuts

The first spider lillies, curage rose, pea vines, orange trumpet vine, yellow loofa flowers  

Patates douces de Pecaniere 

Fils de la vierge dans l'air

Far off smoke of cane field fires

Cicada wings, a luna moth under the sweet gum tree

Copal resin and pine sap

Herbe cabri from the Jesuit pasture

Musk melon vines

Ground Cherry 

Possom grapes, soco

The smell of cut hay on the coteau

Les plaquemines de la Prairie des Femmes

​At the old convent on the hill I gather chassepareille from the woods and soak it in cold water. I drink this infusion with spherical ice while the girls and I snack on plaquemines. I tell them that the least attractive fruits taste the best and let the pretty, perfect ones pucker our mouths. We cut the seeds on the seam and open them like books to foretell the winter weather. I explain to the girls that learning Louisiana French is as much about the fruits of the land as it is about the language.

Meche-Wilkes Mound

                    

The Meche-Wilkes Mound, is located near Arnaudville on the periphery of the Atchafalaya Basin on the edge of the Pleistocene terrace. This site has been protected by the landowner and is relatively undisturbed. Gibson conducted excavations at the Meche-Wilkes Mound in 1990. The site contains deposits dating to the Poverty Point, Tchefuncte, Baytown, Plaquemine, and historic periods (Lousiana State Site Form).

The Anthropology department came across an historical discovery in '89, revealing some history of Acadiana. Archaeological excavations at Meche-Wilkes mound near Grand Coteau by USL archaeology students confirmed the earthen mounds were built by the Acadiana's native people during the first pre-Christian millennium. These mounds were used for cooking during the era. Lonnie Utley USL's L'Acadien 1989

Les signes de l'automne

La vinéraire blanchit 

C'est l'avant automne

l'Assomption arrive 

Annoncant le temps preis 

De ramasser ma sasafron

La lumière change

Gateau sirop, plaquemines oranges

La roulaison dans Prairie Laurent

Oxblood et vermillion

Damballah Le Grand Esprit

La Toussaint of memory

Umbrelles of elder in the sureau trees

A carencro feather, Bon Dieu te bénit

Je bois l'eau de chassepareille

The sides of the coteau are cut for hay

He likes a thin gumbo, no filé

Les Plaquemines Farouches

A la recherche du sassafron

When we first moved to the PDF, there was open cow field on all but one side of the property, and on that side was a swamp wilderness I call the oxbow woods. Back on the prairie, near the treeline of the cow field de Monsieur Vacheur there was a small grove of native sassafrass trees with their leaves in all sizes and shapes. I remember Miss Kary giving me some sassafras root to chew on a kid and I loved it. The first winter out here I had harvested some from the little grove and made file and root beer and tea with it. But then the neighbors (who love their bush-hog) started to clear that land more and more, cutting their trees and some of ours in the process. They ignorantly chopped the only native producing plaquemine that grew on the very corner of our property. The fruit I ate from it that first fall out here was like no persimmon I had ever eaten off of the trees that are in people's yards, those are Japanese varieties. This native persimmon was like une cuillère à café of velvet spice butter. Then when the parish came in and started ripping out our tree-line (for drainage, and, I was told, paid for by "BP stimulus money") we stopped them and asked they leave our side of the ditch and tree line alone. Half the damage was done but at least we didn't have to watch them tearing out any more of our trees. They agreed to leave our trees alone, but then one day on our walk, I saw they had left every tree on our side alone except the big producing mulberry, my favorite tree.... ahhh.... La Prairie des Femmes. She giveth, and she taketh away.

So imagine my surprise and elation this morning when I took a walk back there to see if any sassafras could still be found. I had looked recently, but wasn't able to go far enough to where I believed it was. I could remember when there was the little grove, but now it's all grass with a few mowed-around hardwood trees. At the back of our pasture where the overgrowth shadows fall on the uncut grass I stopped and stomped my feet. The grass was dripping wet with dew and the left overs of a the morning fog. As I proceeded from the shadows and to the spot where the sunlight hit the grass making it gleam, a black snake slithered in front of me and back into the green jumble of the tree line like a long smooth piece of silk. I frissonered and thanked God that I always have the presence of mind to watch the ground as I walk, but seeing the snake told me something: I would find the sassafron this time! Sure enough, at the base of a few of the trees, the odd shapes of the leaves caught my eye. I collected some and prepared the soil around the root of a sapling for a little transplant. When I got back to the house, I put some of the small branches to dry in the sun on the old Burger Chef Table and made a tea with the fresh loose leaves. Today, the Prairie giveth!

Beautiful Abandoned House in Leonville

Persimmons- Les Plaquemines

les roses

grotto

Mary among the vines

Sad-eye Mary

Roses