Love playing with light

Still Beautiful

Seen pre-Katrina at Fountainebleau State Park in Mandeville, LA.
It's still there, although much smaller

City Park's Botanical Gardens

By now I've pretty much established myself as a picture manic poster. I revel in sights that delight my eye.

After spending Friday at French Quarter Festival (a great time), we decided to check out City Park's Botanical Gardens. After this visit I will refer to it as the Garden of Eden. What a beautiful place it is. (note to self: go to thesaurus dot com to find a more appropriate word for beautiful).

Between the two of us, hubby and I took over 1,000 pictures. No kidding. I've only checked out what I took as of this posting. I have whittled down my 500 plus pix to 50, but don't worry - I will not post them all here. Just what I think are the best.

So without much further ado I present you the beauty of the Botanical Gardens at City Park




















































If you ever visit the Botanical Gardens, there is a fantastic, secret garden for train lovers. It's the Train Garden and I plan to publish my pictures from this wonderfully imaginative garden soon. If you're ever bored on the internet - as my 22 year old daughter is wont to do - check out the rest of my Botanical Garden pix at my photobucket site

A New Nature Trail

When I was in my 20's New Orleans' Mardi Gras season involved partying and driving home with a buzz after the parades. 30 years later I'm not so much into that scene. In fact, my 'adrenaline scene' nowadays is nature photography. This is one of the many things that my husband and I enjoy doing together. Our hunger for new places to explore was satiated on this past Friday when we ventured into the Camp Salmen Nature Park a few miles from our house in Slidell.

The park opened in September of 2010 and is still in the building process. It will be a jewel when it is complete.



Camp Salmen was a Boy Scout retreat in the 1940's; before that it was the site of a trading post in the Bayou Liberty region which was probably built in the early 1800s. Later it was the site of a major ferry across Bayou Liberty which operated from the early 1800s
all the way into the early 1900s.

The day was one of those perfect days that Southeastern Louisiana residents love: low humidity, breezy and sunny. I'll let the next group of pictures do the talking for me.

click on pictures for larger version


















The park has a huge area that begs nature lovers to bring a blanket and have a picnic lunch. For those with kids that like to explore there is an enormous amount of land to discover. There is a wide variety of wildlife to observe, but you have to be patient and quiet to find it. I recommend this area for lovers old and young to visit to enjoy each others' company in a beautiful setting.




I also recommend this area for young families who tend to watch their kids and teach them about the beauty of nature. This is not the place to let your kids run wild and scream and leave trash behind. This is a place to be at awe with Mother Nature and respect it.