Complaining knees force relocation decision on neighbor

By John Howell, Publisher

The news from Laurel Street this weekend was that neighbors Bob and Sue are moving. Bob announced their plans in the invitation to his annual Sunday-before-Thanksgiving semi-pot luck dinner where he cooks the turkey and everyone else brings any dish they wish and a grill is kept fired.
Theirs is a raised basement house which in New Orleans means that the ground-level floor is the basement and everything else is on the story above. From there they will move next spring to Magazine Street, mainly at the insistence of Sue because of Bob’s knees. Those stairs have proved problematic for Bob’s recently installed after-market knees.
The Sunday-before-Thanksgiving invitation also included a Sunday-before-Mardi Gras invitation. Bob and Sue have annually hosted a Thoth Party each year as well on that Sunday. Bob’s 2017 Thoth Party will be the last on Laurel Street, but I fully expect that it will be continued on Magazine Street.
Bob and Sue’s departure will leave Rosemary and me as the next-longest-tenured occupants on our block, so rapidly have changes come in the last decade. Gale and Robert have the longest tenure. They have told us they have no plans to go anywhere.
It has become a busy block. Week days and weekends there is a steady stream of pedestrians passing on their way to and from the coffee shop that opened in the spring. Cherry Espresso has boomed in what for many years was a neglected old firehouse building.
Some stop as they walk by to admire the flowers. Then they notice the damncats sprinkled generously on the porch, steps and foliage. Just overhead, monarch butterflies flutter by in lazy circles over the milkweed.
Our sweet olive is blooming and the wonderful fragrance of those blossoms penetrates the cooler nights and days.
Everything else is blooming as well — bougainvillea, ixora, false birds of paradise, hibiscus, marigolds, geraniums and impatiens — among those I remember.
Summer held on in New Orleans during October just like it did here. Only with November have we been able to sit back and enjoy cooler temperatures and lower humidity.
But just like all over the southeast, we still need rain.