The Blue Angel – A New Orleans Treasure

In early 2004, I took a visit to see one of my closest friends in New Orleans. She had been living there for a few years and I always looked forward to my trips to visit her Down South, where we would feast on Southern food, visit cemeteries, wander around the Garden District, go on Swamp Tours, and just generally have a wild time of it. My favorite part though was always the days we would walk around Metairie Cemetery. There is nothing like Metairie where I grew up. The graves are all monuments to life. Beautiful marble, stained glass, shinning brass, and copper turning teal in the salt tinged humid air.

We had been to Metairie at least twice before on this trip, taking pictures and walking around, most importantly trying to get a good picture of my favorite Angel  “The Angel of Grief.”  But the doors to the Mausoleum that she is located, The Chapman H. Hyams Tomb had always been locked. But on that lucky day the doors were wide open, no lock, no chains on the doors at all. The statue was bathed in an incredible blue light, which was shining down on it from three different stain glass windows, one a beautiful floral tiffany window, the other two were simple blue abstract designs. That day it was like everything was meant to be, not only were the doors open, but the normally pale blue tinged light was a deep violet blue creating a dramatic visual effect. The statue of “The Angel of Grief” was carved out white marble, in Carara Italy by William Wetmore Story and then shipped to New Orleans Louisiana.

Small Scale Indoor Gardening

The indoor closet garden is exploding, with a deep heady fragrance, that smells like a hot-house, coming from the very center of our home. It’s filled with all sort’s of yummy edible vegetables. From the sweet pea’s climbing up the ropes that I hung from the hanging rails that the builders put in, I don’t think when they were designing a hanging closet they ever imagined sweet pea’s growing from them, to the budding tomato’s that are now starting to get the very first of their fruit, basil, and peppers.

Each week I get 5 maybe 10 big pea pods off of the pea plant not a ton, but it’s just getting into its big production period and it’s nice for topping on salads. Plus the wonderful smell of the flower blossoms is a great treat. Next time I think I will pick a variety with a larger crop, even if it takes longer to get to its harvest period. These sweet pea’s had a really quick time to harvest.

The other tip I would recommend is to always keep your lights LED 3-5 inches above your plants. While the plants will still survive with them even a few feet above your plants, they wont have the super growth you’ll see with the plants nice and close to the lights. It’s hard to manage keeping everything this close when you have plants which are big like the tomatoes and peas, and small, like some of my pots of basil, so I have been trying to stack pots together and pot things doubled up.

The weird thing about our garden is that the only light coming from the room is a deep dark fuchsia. It seems alien, or like something you would imagine seeing in the far reaches of space, or on a Sci Fi show. I love it. I think the coolest part of the LED UFO lights that I use, is how they confuse your eyes, while you’re in the room everything is so pink, the leaves are black, blue, or white if they have died back, but once you leave the room everything white turns a strange yellowy green. It’s trippy, until you get used to it.

I’d like to keep expanding our indoor garden, in the next few weeks we’ll be adding some Genovese basil, as well as some cutting flowers. I can’t wait to see how these Tigerella tomatoes develop!