You Gotta Love New Orleans

Super Tuesday?

Giants Tuesday?

Fat Tuesday?

I choose Fat Tuesday as my reason to celebrate today. I just got back from New Orleans and my head and my heart are still there.

Coffee so good it made me forget my Starbucks addiction.

Beignets at Cafe du Monde with powdered sugar piled to the sky.

Dixieland jazz at Preservation Hall . . .

and impromptu parades.

King cake and gumbo and fried catfish po-boys. . . Katrina's scars. . .

and Bourbon Street shenanigans.
I was in the Big Easy for a national board meeting of the Garden Writers Association and I had to get back for the start of the class I teach with my husband in Narrative Journalism at Stony Brook University. So I'm only there today in spirit. I've just finished writing a column about my infatuation with a lacecap hydrangea I saw on Royal Street and giant banana plants and ancient wisterias in hidden courtyards and the ivy and aspargus ferns dripping along with Mardi Gras beads from balconies in the French Quarter.

Here are a few more sights that caught my eye. You gotta love New Orleans.