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

 

 

POO YI, PECANS AGAIN!

Marquee on New Site of Cane River Company

Six years ago, I walked into the offices of the Cane River Pecan Company here in New Iberia, Louisiana and was surprised to see, on one wall, a framed copy of a 34-year old article in the Daily Iberian entitled “Pecan Businessmen Beginning Young” with my byline. After I talked with Jady Regard about the framed article, I blogged about the  Company, acknowledging the Dan Regard family for its phenomenal progress with a small enterprise manned by three forward-looking brothers who established a home-based pecan-cracking business called “The Nutcrackers" that  mushroomed into a thriving business selling pecans as far afield as Singapore.

The Cane River Pecan Company features a product line that includes roasted and salted pecans, chocolate-covered and praline pecans, fresh-baked pecan/chocolate chunk cookies, pecan pralines, pecan praline popcorn — and, now, a dessert that CEO Jady Regard has concocted for the “Company Special”—Boudin Pie!

In the window of the Cane River Pecan Company

Jady Regard is one of New Iberia Louisiana’s entrepreneurs who gave up a job as manager of corporate sales for the Chicago Bears and for the LSU Basketball team to take over marketing products of the Cane River Pecan Company. His newest concoction, Boudin Pie, contains one pound of locally sourced, uncased pork boudin, a layer of sweet potato souffle covered with a pecan glaze in a handmade deep-dish crust. Boudin and pecan glaze? I’m told that it’s a dessert infusion that bests all homemade Cajun dishes.

I haven’t tasted this dish yet, but I visited the new headquarters of Cane River Pecan Company on Main Street two days before their scheduled tasting event. I walked around looking at products the company offers and admired the murals of the Natchitoches plantation area on one wall of the showroom — pictures and timelines concerning the pecan growing business. By adding pictures to this wall, Regard hopes to form a museum that will educate visitors about the industry, as well as advertise Louisiana’s rich resources. 

The Cane River Pecan Company was sourced by Jady Regard’s father, Dan Regard (now deceased), who owned a pecan grove on the plantation “Alcock Place” in Natchitoches, Louisiana. He employed his sons to spend their after-school hours and holidays cracking up to 400 pounds of pecans a week, using a large nut-cracking machine he ordered from San Antonio, Texas. Jady and his brothers sold pecans from a shop adjoining the Regard home on Darby Lane and advertised their product on signs placed in store windows of New Iberia and in the local newspaper, The Daily Iberian. From that small beginning, with their parent’s backing, and, later, with Jady’s talent for marketing, The Cane River Pecan Company burgeoned into a worldwide product distributer now equal to other Teche Country products such as hot sauce and rice.

Colorful tins with lids featuring paintings by Louisiana artist Clementine Hunter and, now, lids of tins with pictures of New Orleans streetcars, contain the company's pecan products and line the shelves of the new showroom. In addition, corporations can order custom gift tins of pecan products that show their own logos and personal messages.  

Mais, when the weather clears — if the weather clears — I’m going downtown and get my satisfied from a boudin pie so I can brag about it to my Sewanee, Tennessee friends who often wonder what Cajuns will eat next!