Bellingrath Home and Gardens- part Two

In the last posting I mentioned of a series of waterfalls flowing down to the Fowl River.  Before moving on with scenes of the house on the outside, I want  to show one of those beautiful fountains.  With cascading mums framing it, it is just too gorgeous to omit!

There was no way for me to get an over-all view of the Bellingrath home as it is completely surrounded by trees.  I can only offer here small glimpses of sections of the 15-room home. The best one showing the brick two-story building is a view looking up at the north terrace.  This side of the house, which features a series of terraces, offers scenes of the river.

The house was built in 1935 as a permanent residence.  It was constructed using bricks dating from 1835 and ironwork from the 1870s.  They were salvaged from historic structures being demolished in Mobile.  Pictured below is the entrance to the home.  It exudes all the warmth of an old English manor.

A courtyard was built off to the left side of the entrance, it was designed to be in the Italianate villa style- a style which was not carried out in the design of the rest of the house.  Also, in the picture below, notice the wrought- iron framing the entrance, as well as the balconies which have cascading mums.

Bessie Bellingrath died in 1943, and her husband in 1955.  By 1957 the house was opened for tours per their request.  All of her collections of period furniture, porcelain, and crystal  remain in the house.  There are Royal Dalton figurines as well as Meissen china.  The interior of the house is as wonderful to see as well as the gardens!   After the house tour we still had more to see of the grounds.  We visited a small chapel which was designed for services for the Bellingraths and their guests.  There is also a rockery with winding stairs, waterfalls and pools, as well as a Japanese/ Chinese garden.  We walked around Mirror Lake which was once a runoff pond for a 19th century sawmill.  Mrs. Bellingrath loved swans, so three large metal swans can be seen floating on the lake.  There is no way I can completely cover everything at Bellingrath Gradens,  I only hope what I have written here will also convince you to put this on your bucket list,  if you have not as yet visited this home in Mobile.

Bellingrath Gardens

We have now moved on to Mobile, Alabama.  These gardens had been on John's bucket list to see.  They are considered to be one of the South's most beautiful gardens, and they certainly more than came up to our high expectations.  However, it is the end of November and I was concerned that the gardens may not be at their best appearance given the time of the year.  We were quite fortunate that we were proven to be wrong- the gardens currently have an amazing display of cascading mums.  This exhibit is done yearly, a staff member informed me that 80,000 plants are set out every fall.  Unfortunately this coming week will be the end of them as they will be discarded for the Christmas light display in the garden.  By the way, this is not your usual mum.  These mums can be used in hanging baskets, as you may notice in the picture below.

After we purchased our tickets we were told that tours of the house would not begin for about another hour.  So we then began our tour of the gardens.  There is a total of 900 acres of land, of which 65 are cultivated.  Our first stop was the conservatory built in 1935.  In front of it is a very large rose garden which features about 75 varieties of roses.  Despite the cooler weather, many are still in bloom.

In the conservatory there is a large poinsettia tree, as well as many blooming Christmas cacti and plumeria, pineapple plants as well as orchids - to name but a few of the many tropical plants in the building.

Our walk next took us along the Great Lawn, which is a large meadow.  It formerly was a farm which adjoined the original fishing camp.  The flower bed bordering the lawn is 400 feet long and has a variety of flowers, including the cascading mums and mums in the ground.  Both sides of the walk have the flower beds.

Live oak plaza is at the center of the gardens.  It adjoins a series of fountains and runnels which once carried an overflow of an artisan spring down to the Fowl  River.  The view from the plaza down to the riverfront pavilion is pictured below.  At this point we needed to stop and tour the home,  more on that in the next posting.

 

Baton Rouge- Part Two

There are many historical places of note on the capitol grounds.  An Indian mound is located there dating back 3,500 years.  The grounds were once the site of the British Fort San Carlos.  Spanish forces in 1779 retook the fort and ended British control of the Mississippi River.  The Pentagon Barracks were built in this area in 1819 and survived Civil War bombardment.  The weather was too unpredictable with strong winds and a bit of moisture in the air so we were unable to explore many of the historic sites on the capitol grounds.  We did, however, tour the old arsenal museum.

Zachary Taylor, our 12th president, lived on the grounds of the capitol.  He was in command of the 1st US Infantry Regiment that built the arsenal in 1819.  Part of the armory, the powder magazine building,  is pictured above.  In 1865 that structure was part of the Union line of defense, it occupied Baton Rouge for most of the Civil War.  In 1862 the Union Army burned the capitol building and the capitol was moved to Opelousas, Louisiana temporarily.  A new capitol building was built in 1880 in Baton Rouge.

Our first impression was that the old capitol building looks a bit like a castle.  We came to find out later that the original building looked quite definitely like a castle complete with cast iron turrets and towers.  Mark Twain called it a "sham castle".  The turrets and towers were removed in 1907. 

A beautiful gilded staircase caught our eyes the second we stepped into the rotunda of the capitol.  The massive cast-iron staircase has 32 steps which fan out from the center column and led us to the second floor gallery.  The canopy of stained glass over the old state capitol is a beautiful kaleidoscope of color.  Wood frames hold in place the more than 2,000 panes of glass that make up the dome.
On the second floor are rooms with displays relating to the history of Louisiana, especially the governors.  As I wrote in the previous posting, most notorious of them was Huey Long.  One room is devoted to Long's good and bad virtues, letting the visitor to decide for himself/herself how they wish to remember the man.  True, he got a lot accomplished for the state, as 13,000 mile of roads, funding for Louisiana State University and the Port of New Orleans, books for school children- in a sense he was a bit like Robin Hood in that regard.  However, as the museum also indicates, he was a ruthless dictator in his political wheeling and dealing.  Many years ago I read All The Kings Men by Robert P. Warren, and one of the characters, Willie Stark, is believed to be inspired by the life of Huey Long. 

We had to walk a few blocks from the new capitol to the older one.  Baton Rouge is a mixture of older buildings, as well as newer ones.  One of the older buildings has a balcony with the cast-iron architecture which we saw in New Orleans.  That said, as we neared our destination, we passed the beautiful Manship Theater as well as the town square- all very modernistic in appearance.  As you can see in the picture below, rain storms were heading into Baton Rouge.  It was time for us to leave Baton Rouge, a city which surprised us more than we expected with its most fascinating history.

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

This is the capitol city of Louisiana,  and we do try to visit the state capitols as much as possible.  Our niece Kat was a bit dubious about visiting the city, but she was up for going where we wanted to go.  During the course of the day we learned about how the city got its name.  Baton Rouge in English means "red stick".  A French explorer in 1698 saw a tree stripped of its bark and draped with freshly killed animals.  It marked the boundary line between two American Indian tribes.  So Baton Rouge became known as the place of the red stick, I must admit it does sound a bit odd.

A place high on my list to visit was the old governor's mansion.  The Georgian mansion constructed in 1930 for Huey Long is said to be a copy of the White House.  It was replaced as the governor's home in 1961. Unfortunately we were not able to tour the mansion as it was closed for the day.   Here I need to digress, as I want to write here about Jimmie Davis, the first governor to live in the new governor's mansion in 1962.  He wrote "You are my sunshine" and "The green,green grass of home".  Just for writing those two pieces of music, he far outshines the other governor of Louisiana, Huey Long,  of whom we were going to learn more than we would ever want to know in the course of our day!  Davis served two terms, and was known as the "singing governor".  It has been said that he sang his way into the hearts of the people of Louisiana.

Back to Huey Long, his statue was the one of the first objects we saw looming over the horizon as we walked unto the capitol grounds.  One of his hands is atop a miniature version of the current capitol building.  And how that building came to be the tallest state capitol in the United States is an interesting one.  Long had visited Lincoln, Nebraska and saw their modern tall capitol.  He wanted something similar, but bigger.  The current capitol building is 34 flours high and stands at 450 feet.

 

 Unfortunately Long was assassinated in the new capitol three years later.  His body lies in the memorial garden where his statue is located.   There is not much to see in the capitol, other than the house and senate rooms and the overlook of the city from the 27th floor.  The senate room is pictured below.

The senate room is all ready for Christmas, quite over the top with the decorations.  The docent who gave us a brief talk about the capitol noted that the senators and representatives are only here about three months out of the year during the spring months.  We also learned that only the senators have offices in the building, and they are closet size.  The representatives carry out their business in the lobby.  There are 64 parishes in the state, compared to 19 when the state was annexed into the United States in 1812.  The docent also noted that the ceilings in both the senate and house are made from the pulp of sugar cane.  We got a good view of the capitol grounds as well as the city from the overlook on the 27th floor.  The picture below is the view looking to the west and the Mississippi River.  Capitol Lake is in the foreground.  There will be more on Baton Rouge in my next posting.

French Quarter of New Orleans

In the French Quarter is historic Jackson Square, pictured above.  Pictured above is a common scene in the square of musicians, palm readers, artists and a variety of other street performers.

The street performer above startle me when, after I dropped a dollar in his bucket, he/she suddenly moved and gave me a deep curtsy!  In the background is General Andrew Jackson on his horse.

One cannot visit the square without stepping into the Basilica Of St.Louis of France, the oldest Catholic Cathedral in the United States.  The first permanent church was built in 1727, but was destroyed in 1788.  The present one was completed in 1851.  The statues, stained glass and frescoes  on the ceiling are all quite beautiful.  On the right side are flags which represent the countries which New Orleans has been under from its founding to the present.

The French Quarter is about some 90 blocks, we only covered a small portion of it.  From the square we spent some time in the French Market where we just had to stop at Cafe du Monde for beignets.  The market has gift shops, bazaars, clothing stores and a praline cookery.   We also walked on the waterfront of the Mississippi River and visited Washington Artillery.

Walking back to our car we happened to see the building where Faulkner in 1925 wrote his first novel, "Soldier's Pay".  According to the historical marker, the building was constructed in 1840 on a site formerly occupied by the yard and buildings of a French colonial prison.  It is now a bookstore, otherwise we never would have given the building a second glance!

We would have missed the Blue Dog in a store front window had not Kat drawn our attention to him.  He was created by the Louisiana artist George Rodrigue.  After Katrina devastated the city the artist painted the dog half submerged in water with a red cross on his chest.  Using the dog and a motto "we will rise again" he created an initiative called Blue Dog Relief.

New Orleans

John and I have visited New Orleans now several times.  This time we benefited greatly having our niece Kat along as tour guide.  Our first stop Monday was at Lafreniere Park, a park which Kat loves to visit because of the wildlife which can be found there.  It was a first sighting for us of the black-bellied whistling duck.

There were many of them in the park, as well as ibis and sea gulls.  A couple of nutria were also hanging around the birds.  They are a rat-like invasive pest from South America, and look like musk rats.  One other note here, Lafreniere for whom the park is named, was a leader of a colonial revolt in 1764.  He protested the transfer of the French colony of New Orleans to Spain and was executed for his treason.

Our next stop was Metairie Cemetery, one of the largest cemeteries in New Orleans which is a "showplace of tomb architecture" ( quote taken from AAA tour book).   Characteristic of New Orleans, if a tomb is not in a concrete vault it is above ground.  Many of the larger tombs contain more than one family member.  A favorite tomb which Kat likes is the Egyptian sphinx.  We could have spent the rest of our day looking at the many interesting tombstones, but we still had many more places to visit in New Orleans.

Our stop for lunch was a good one, again thanks to Kat.  We ate at Booty's Street Food restaurant.  It features food from around the world, and the menu is changed daily.  Kat had shrimp ceviche from Ecuador.  It was a cold soup of poached shrimp, tomatoes, onions, lime and cilantro served with a side of popcorn.  That was from Ecuador, I tried it and it was tasty.   John had empanadas from Portugal,  I stuck to what I knew with fish and chips- however I did try the chips with curry ketchup!  Not bad at all.

Out of all the cities which we have visited New Orleans remains the most unique.  And the massive destruction of the city by hurricane Katrina in 20005 did not quell the soul of the city.  There are still the famous iron-embroidered balconies with lush green plants draped over them, as well as many colorful buildings and interesting murals as pictured above.  We parked outside of the French Quarter and walked through neighborhoods bustling with tourists and local shoppers.  Live music can be heard everywhere, even in the middle of the day.  The French Quarter was our last stop of the day, more on that in the next posting.

San Francisco Plantation

One should always see at least see one plantation when down in the southern part of our nation.  There are 10 of them along the Great River Road between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.  As I wrote previously, we are in Hammond, about 40 miles north of New Orleans.  Saturday we drove west along Highway 10 and then south to Highway 44, the road along the Mississippi River.  We were expecting to start seeing large stately plantations with rows of live oaks lining long winding drives along lush green lawns.  No, what we saw were large grain silos with enclosed conveyors belts connected to them arising over the road and a high levee.  Cargil was the name on one complex of buildings.  Further down the road we saw oil refineries and a sign indicating that this was Louisiana Refinery District.  Gone are the days when sugar cane and cotton were the big money-makers of the day!

 

We almost missed the plantation, only a fence and a sign indicated its presence.  Walking the pathway up to the house we passed by a fountain created from two large kettles.  They were once used in rendering down the sugar cane.  A tour guide greeted us at the door.  She first commented that in the mid 1880s two-thirds of the nation's wealth was located in the south, which was made possible by the slave labor.  We later saw  by a slave cabin a memorial to those people.  The memorial noted that the slaves "contributed immensely to the economy and culture of Louisiana".  The slave cabin is pictured below.

 

Now back to the tour and information regarding the history of the plantation.  Until the 1970s, when Marathon Petroleum Foundation bought and restored the plantation at a cost of several million dollars, the plantation house was lived in by several families.  The present house was built between 1853 and 1856.  The owner, Pierre Edmond Marmillion, died in 1852, leaving the plantation to his son Valsin and his German-born wife Louise von Seybold.  Over the next 23years while she lived on the plantation Louise wrote faithfully to her mother back in Germany, 100 of her letters have been found.  In those letters Louise writes of her unhappiness pertinent to that time of violent upheaval in Southern history.  Hearing from our tour guide stories about the family (from those letters) certainly made the tour of the house quite fascinating, and brought to life the actual events which took place within the various rooms. 

The house, pictured above,  is touted as one of the most opulent plantation houses along the River Road. Bookend water cisterns are on each side of the house.  The house has Gothic windows, ornate embellishments and gingerbread trim.  Louise did not like the original dull muted colors of the French Creole house of that time.  She repainted the place in bright Bavarian colors, inside and out.  The ceilings were painted in a vivid palate of colors,  also a number of wall panels and doors had colorful designs painted on them.  The fresco designs are of birds, cherubs, jewels, and scrolls.  Various artists from around the world were hired to repaint them during the restoration of the house.   Pictured below is a view from the front porch overlooking the grounds. A sprawling live oak shades the porch.

 

It is a very large house with 17 rooms.  As most houses of the day, kitchen and bathrooms were located outside.  Valsin complained that the cost of redoing the house and furnishing it with only the finest accoutrements left him poor, so the plantation received the name of Sans Frusquin.  That is a French slang phrase meaning "without a penny in my pocket".  A later owner changed the name to San Francisco.  One final note here, this house was spared by the Union Army.  Valsin supplied the army with food and girls.  He  supported the North- his younger brother Charles was a soldier in the Confederate army.  Valsin died in 1871, Louise managed to run the property until Charles' death in 1875.   Louise returned with her three daughters to Munich in 1879 after she had sold the plantation.

Abita Springs, Louisiana

Yesterday, Friday, was one of those days when we left our home not knowing how our day was going to unfold.  We are parked in Hammond, Louisiana the home of our niece Kat.  We met her for lunch, she could not spend much more time with us because she had to work at 2PM.  We are hoping that some time while we are here we can find more time to spend with her.  Besides working full-time Kat is carrying a heavy college schedule.  She recommended the town of Covington, which has art galleries, antique shops, as well as a brew house.  After lunch we drove to that town, but only passed through it.  The traffic was heavy and we were just not inclined to stop.  John had heard of the town of Abita Springs, so thinking that perhaps there is a  picturesque spring area there, we drove out of Covington and took a road leading to Abita.  Coming into that town we followed the first signs which directed us to Audubon Park.

In the park we were immediately drawn to a sculpture of an Indian princess bent over a bubbling fountain of water.  We learned later that it was not one of the springs which are in the area.  A sign nearby indicated that the sculpture was created in 2009 and is called "Princess Abita".   According to legend she was married to a young Spaniard during the colonial period, fell ill and after her husband returned her to the healing waters of her village, she recovered.  In a museum located in the park we learned more of the history of the area, including the fact that the pavilion pictured above was part of an exhibit during the World's Fair of New Orleans in 1884.  Hurricane Katrina cut her in one- half, she has been restored since then.

In the museum I saw an interesting picture, similar to the one above, and asked where that building is located.  The staff member gave us directions and, upon my query as to the nature of that museum, she just said that it was a bit unusual and could not begin to describe it.  We gave up any more ideas of hiking in the park to search for natural springs (we did find one) and headed to the U C M  Museum.  It was now 4PM and that museum closed in an hour.   It was easy to find the vintage gas station which serves as the entrance and gift shop.  In addition to that small building, the museum is a labyrinth of old buildings (one of which is a 90 year-old Creole cottage) connected by walkways.  Another one of the buildings is an old barn built in the 1920s.  Now it is a House of Shards.  On an exterior wall is 15,000 pieces of ceramic plate, tiles, colored glass and mirrors.  Behind this building is the Patio of Compassion and the Shed of Revelation.

Guess you get the picture by now, a mystery museum for sure?  A bit strange, whimsical, and also humorous.  John Preble, the owner is an artist of many talents.  His paintings are displayed here, as well as a large collection of bottle caps, wacky postcards, vintage signs, old arcade machines, and a large paint-by-number collection.  Preble started collecting the latter in the 1970s.  He say that despite their recent popularity and inflation,  he has refused to pay more than one dollar for one.

Preble has also collected more than 50,000 recycled objects  and presented them creatively in many humorous animated southern displays, as the Martians at Mardi Gras pictured below.

That was our day Friday, certainly a very serendipitous one for sure!

Antique Rose Emporium

We have a friend, Edie, who resides in Houston.  She wanted to meet up with us before we leave Texas, and it was her suggestion that we meet at the rose garden outside of Brenham.  She had heard that the gardens had a rose festival this past week-end, so even though we missed that, we could still see the gardens.  It does seem to be an odd time of the year for roses, but cooler weather is starting up again which gets the roses blooming after they had died back during the hot summer.

As you can see in the picture above, the roses are doing well with the fall temperatures and lots of rain.  The emporium/nursery has a wide variety of roses for sell as well as many native plants, old-fashioned perennials, herbs and wildflowers.  Some are in pots ready to be sold, others are planted in flower beds located through-out the 8-acre old homestead.  There were many beautiful plants and flowers everywhere we wandered on what we later learned was an old homestead.

When the nursery was started in 1984 there were the ruins of an old stone kitchen on the grounds.  The old homestead of Mcknight- Hairston was rebuilt around that kitchen.  Outside the house there is a period cottage garden as well as perennial garden.  Mike and Jean Shoup, owners of the emporium, created the nursery with the idea of combining both historic plants and buildings.

There was another home which we could visit while we were at the emporium, a home built in 1910 and moved to the emporium.  The "Champneys Green" cottage was named for the rosarian John Champney who introduced climbing roses in the 1800s.  As a side note here, it was as early as the 1850s when commercial nurseries offered a variety of flowers and trees for sale.

The nursery also has a children's garden which features characters from the Beatrix Potter books.  Not sure which picture I will conclude this posting with, I took so many awesome pictures it was hard to choose!  I guess my favorite was a potted begonia, it was sure tempting to bring it home with me.

Austin, Texas

The picture above should give you an idea of the traffic in Austin.  And to handle that traffic Austin has developed a very complex web of highways.   Forget GPS, the instructions for highway exits and lane changes came up so fast from that lady that I literally gave up!  We did a lot of wandering and u-turns, eventually getting to where we wanted to go.  Also, traffic is bad 24/7.  Well, maybe the week-end was a bit unusual- when we made our hotel reservations many places were already filled.

Our first morning was a rainy one in Austin, a type of morning only good for museums and art galleries.  After meeting up with our niece Katie and her friend Larnell, we drove to the Art on 5th Gallery.  One of our tour brochures noted that right now is a exhibit there titled "Home of the Secret Art of Dr. Seuss".  It seemed strange to me to think of him more of an artist than a writer of children's books!  He also created  17 sculptures during the 1930s.  They are called "unorthodox taxidermy".

A staff member of the gallery explained that the above artwork was created using horns, antlers and beaks of dead animals.  Seuss's father was superintendent of parks (including a zoo) in Springfield Ma. and he would send his son the animal parts.  In the lower left-hand corner is a Turtle-necked Sea Turtle, next to him is the Two-Horned Drouberhanni the ram is a Goo-Goo-Eyed Tasmanian Wolghast, above him is the Sea-Going Dilemma Fish,  the bird is Kangaroo Bird and the last one is the Blue-Green Abelard. 

Speaking of unconventional, Sunday found us wandering along Congress Ave. with Katie.  Picture above is the store Lucy in Disguises, a costume store.  Maybe that gives you an appreciation for that shopping district.  From a food truck I purchased what I thought was a gyro.  Next time I will read the fine print, which describes the sandwich as having lamb with tomatoes and a tangy sauce and a "few french fries". What an absolute travesty of the gyro as I know it!  I picked out the few fries, ate a small portion of the gyro and threw the rest away.  The fries and lamb were good!  But I sure missed the tzatziki sauce!

From the ridiculous to the sublime...We attended church Sunday morning at Gethsemane Lutheran Church.  I have not seen that much stained glass since our trip to Rome!  The window rises 36 feet behind the altar.  It is called "Heritage of Faith" and is the story of redemption through Jesus Christ.  Additional stained glass windows continue on both sides of the altar reaching to the ceiling.  The artist is Gabriel Loire of France.  He used 150 shades of "Chartres Blue" and other colors for highlight effect. The masterpiece was completed in 1969.  Gethsemane calls itself the "Mother of Lutheranism in Austin", the congregation was formed in the late 1800s.  This is the second location for the church.

Washington-On-The-Brazos State Park

John and I were on our way to Austin last Friday when we decided to make this stop.  It was a nice break during what proved to be long slow-pokey trip on two lane highways through the cattle fields of  Texas.

I wrote of the Brazos River in my last posting.  Guess it is about time to post a picture of it and explain how it got its name.  Spanish explorers were so thankful in finding the river's fresh waters that they called it Los Brazos de Dios, or Arm of God.

The building pictured above is a replica of the place where the constitution of Texas was signed in 1836.  There are two wonderful museums in this park, we had time to visit only one and there we learned a great deal about the state's history.  The town of Washington during the 1800s was far enough inland ( a place where Santa Ana's forces would not come) and a well-traveled river town that it was chosen as the site for Texas delegates to have their convention and sign a constitution.  Texas was then a part of Mexico called Tamaulipas.  The territory extended from what is now Wyoming, to New Mexico and Colorado.  Even though Texas suffered a bitter defeat at the Alamo in March of 1836, they won in a battle against Santa Anna the next month.  They then were an independent nation for 10 years before gaining their statehood in  1845.  Texas is the only state that was a nation before it became annexed to the United States.

Back in the 1800s the town of Washington had fewer than 200 residents, only one street and commerce limited to the ferry crossing.  The path pictured above was once Ferry Street and, as we walked on it we found a historical marker with information regarding one particular ancient tree.  That is John standing by it, the pecan tree is 60 feet tall.  It is not native to our country, its nearest relatives are 900 miles away in Mexico.  The La Bahia pecan may have been planted as a seedling from Mexico, or fallen out of a saddlebag or wagon.  One other interesting fact here on the town of Washington.  During the Civil War it refused to have a railroad built through it.  By the 1880s this Philadelphia of Texas was mostly farmland.  The Civil War and emancipation totally tanked its economy.