WHAT BIG EARS YOU HAVE

A few years ago, I attended a lecture delivered by David Haskell, a biologist at Sewanee, Tennessee, who spent a year observing life in a square meter patch of Tennessee forest and writing a book about his observations in The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature. I thought about him this morning as I arranged the books and papers on my desk to write about a plant that appears in a small patch 570’ x 130’ beside the door of the rental apartment adjoining our carport. It's an elephant ear, among my favorites in the plant world and one about which I’ve written numerous poems. I don’t know the plant heaven into which all the elephant ears in my garden by the glass porch disappeared. Still, I felt significant sadness for their departure — the absence of these friendly faces of former plants in my garden when I saw the one struggling elephant ear beside the renter’s door.

I consoled myself by reading about the giant elephant ears at Melrose Plantation memorialized by Francois Mignon in one of his columns and included in Plantation Memo: Plantation Life in Louisiana: 1750-1970. The latter is a collection of Mignon’s columns written for The Natchitoches Enterprise, Natchitoches Times, Alexandria Town Talk, Opelousas World, and the Shreveport Times during the thirty-year period Mignon spent at Melrose. The book is a kind of chronicle about “The man who came to dinner” — Francoise Mignon appearing at Melrose following WWII and taking up residence in Yucca House at Melrose for three decades. Cammie Henry, the Mistress of Melrose, welcomed writers and artists during that period in Louisiana history if they produced art of some kind…if they didn’t work at their writing or art, they couldn’t stay. However, Mignon produced his columns almost daily and earned the right to remain.

During Mignon’s residency at Melrose, he wrote numerous columns about the plantation gardens. I found several passages about elephant ears in which he explained that for thousands of years the South Americans were in sole possession of “God’s gift to the New World, the plant everyone endearingly described as the elephant ear, and all its countless relatives embracing the caladium family…”

Although Mignon regarded the elephant ear as a “Divine gift,” he often entertained his readers with anecdotes about the plant and animal life at Melrose, relating a vignette about the large elephant ears planted at Melrose.

A hard-headed neighbor who visited Melrose between rain showers one day questioned the value of this “divine gift.”

“‘What earthly good is this thing called the elephant ear?’ the neighbor asked.

‘None whatsoever,’ Mignon replied, straightening up the great leaves sagging onto the gallery, greener, in fact, than Montezuma’s emeralds, its spindly, foot-long flower brighter than Inca gold.”

When the rain began again, and the visitor decided to depart, Mignon snipped off one of the huge leaves (three feet wide and four feet long) and handed it to the visitor to use as an umbrella, somehow putting Mignon’s mind to rest since the ear “really did prove to have some pragmatic virtue if only to keep someone dry.”*

The weatherman says we’ll have rain today, but alas, my renter’s elephant ear isn’t large enough to put into use as an umbrella. However, just across Darby Lane near our home, I know where there are several of “God’s gifts to the New World”…hmmm.

*Plantation Memo: Plantation Life in Louisiana: 1750-1970 by Francois Mignon, 1981.

 

Photograph by Victoria I. Sullivan

 

 

A BIT OF GOURDING

Yesterday when I went into Paul Schexnayder's A&E art gallery to pick up several paintings that will be included in a book entitled Porch Posts that I and Janet Faulk-Gonzales have written, I discovered a new brochure about the Louisiana Gourd Society lying on the checkout counter. Now, I'm a fan of gourds, as my father always raised a crop of them that he dried and placed on the back screen porch because my mother loved to see them hanging there. Mother was an artist, but I don't think she ever considered painting or decorating them like many contemporary artists do. On my travels last year to Rugby, Tennessee and Berea, Kentucky, I saw many painted gourds and admired the colorful artwork, but I left them hanging as I found that they were a bit pricey for my pocketbook.

The Louisiana Gourd Society, whose mission is to educate, promote, and encourage the growing, culture, use, history, and/or craftsmanship of gourds, made its debut at the Acadiana Gourd Festival in Jennings, Louisiana three years ago. The festival featured two gourds decorated with beautiful paintings—one of a Blue Heron and the other of a traveling gourd dedicated to Louisiana's Threatened and Endangered Wildlife.

The first annual Louisiana Gourd Show, "Gourding on the Bayou," was held last April in Haynesville, Louisiana, and this year it will be held in "The Berry," aka New Iberia, Louisiana. An auction and a raffle for the Louisiana Gourd Festival Traveling Gourd entitled "Louisiana Native Wildflowers" will be featured.

My discovery of the gourd brochure brought to mind the gourds I saw at Melrose Plantation in Natchitoches, Louisiana when I was researching Their Adventurous Will: Profiles of MemorableLouisiana Women, a book I wrote back in the 80's. A long line of gourds extended across the front of African House, a building representing Congo architecture on the grounds of Melrose. Later, I found much ado about gourds written by Francois Mignon who lived and wrote at Melrose Plantation for over thirty years. Mignon compiled the columns entitled "Cane River Memo" (later changed to "Plantation Memo") that he wrote for the Natchitoches Times, The Alexandria Town Talk, Opelousas Daily World, and Shreveport Times and published them in his book, Plantation Memo.

Mignon published a lengthy column tracing the history of gourds to Aztec, Mayan, and Inca empires of Central and South America, reporting that these people used them for dippers, jars, even as aids to folk music performances. He said that it was fun raising gourds in the Spring, but it was a job curing them in the Fall, adding that "any dolt can toss a gourd seed into the ground with fair prospects of it bringing forth a vine and a bumper crop," but at harvest time it was a job to divest them of excess moisture. To avoid decomposition of the gourds, he advised the grower to allow the gourds to remain on the vine until they ripened and fell, then suspend them from a line until the water (3/4's of a gourd!) within them evaporated. Mignon reported that in a few weeks the gourds would become discolored, but he usually removed the outside layer of them with a knife, then washed the gourds in soapy water, dried them with a cloth, and hung them back on the line to dehydrate.

A few weeks later, Mignon would take the gourds down and paint them with a thin coat of oil. His gourds would eventually develop colors ranging from deep russet to shades of purple, and he recommended using them to decorate porches, to provide houses for wrens, to create dolls, even to provide containers in which to store eggs. He concluded his remarks about gourds with the comment: "I am the happier when my calendar reminds me it's time for gourd harvest."

And, in case you think I've gone off my gourd about this subject, I refer you to Mignon's Plantation Memo, published by Claitor's in 1981. Francois Mignon was another Louisiana writer who may be unsung in the annals of Louisiana literature, but I admire his writing and regard it as a breath of fresh air. He wove a rich tapestry about life in Cane River country during the three decades he lived on Melrose Plantation.