Having spent my adult life living in the French Quarter, stone patios and plants in pots were my back yard and balconies my front yard. I lived on my balcony always sitting and sunning myself, watching parades and the world go by. I never thought of gardening as any thing I would ever do.

Though I will say growing up we had a great yard, all due to my mother’s love of the outdoors. We had pear trees, three types of pecan trees, plum and fig and a poor persimmon tree that got in the way of my mothers clothesline. She would often lament why she didn’t move the clothesline instead.. The persimmon tree didn’t survive the move.

One of the surprises of my post Katrina life in New Orleans is my interest in gardening. Flowers are my love and I have been lucky that most flowers grow in the silt of the swamp of my small yard. Still I did not foresee the Nature Series. Where it came from I do not know. Its monochromatic for one thing, and I thrive on color. But once I started I couldn’t stop. Its the shapes in the natural world which fascinate me and I was drawn in. As I worked on a piece I would add in things like tea bags, and unpopped popcorn.

At a yard sale uptown there was a free table and on it I noticed a bag of money beans,the ones thrown by the Italians on St. Joseph day. I asked the lady if they were really free and she said she was afraid selling them would bring bad luck. So I try to add a good luck money bean to each art piece in the nature series. Luck is something we could all use a little more of.