Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I always thought these little white bell flowers with the little green kisses were Irish snowdrops. But all the pictures I can find of “Irish Snowdrops” look different from these. Does anyone know what these are? Anyway, Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

OK. So. Friday morning on the way down to Natchitoches (pronounced "NACK-a-dish" for those of you not from around these parts ... oldest settlement in the Louisiana purchase territory) my fellow photog Sandra and I were laughing about last summer’s sunflower trip, saying we sure hoped there were more tulips today for the Bloomin on the Bricks Festival than there were sunflowers in Gilliam for the Sunflower Festival last June ... ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Well. We got down to Front Street, we parked and walked down to where all the tulips had been bloomin’ their little hearts out for last year’s festival and -- you guessed it -- not one tulip blossom. We should have guessed, since everything else has been blooming late this year. There were some that were oh, so close to popping their little heads out, but nope, not one was showing.

Still, it was a glorious day, and Natchitoches is quite picturesque, and the pear trees and tulip trees were breathtaking, and there were plenty of paperwhites a bustin’ out all over. We ate at Papa’s on Front Street (famous for their burgers, but I had a muffaletta - oh, yeah!), we went to Kaffie-Frederick (est. 1863, Louisiana’s oldest continuously operating general store - it’s huge, and they do have everything), and we stopped by to visit Sandra’s dad before heading home in the afternoon. All in all a fun day. I did take approximately one zillion pics (even some of the non-blooming tulips), but I went off and left my flash card in Sandra’s car, so will have to show them later! We might go back this week to try again for tulips.

Meanwhile, our place is resplendent with all kinds of little beauties this morning: