The old shotgun house that I was renting on Conery Street in New Orleans came up for sale, and with it's foundation trouble, swarming termites, and increasingly dangerous neighborhood, I passed on it's purchase. In need of a place to live I began what would be a relatively painless process of finding a new home. As fortune would have it a friend of a friend had a property for rent that suited my needs. The new place was on Bellaire Drive in the Lakeview community, a suburb of New Orleans, and not far from the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. Lakeview was a working class neighborhood, comfortable but not wealthy, with streets that had that lived in look that occurs with most suburbs after a few years.

The house was pleasant, airy, anonymous, and as with any space I have occupied, it quickly become a social gathering point. Most of the folks who would drop by to see me at my previous address soon found their way out to my new neighborhood, and although they missed the old house, the Krewe of Conery Street quickly adapted to the new surroundings, and in no time it felt like home.

The back yard, which had been neglected by the previous residents, was in need of attention. Slowly a garden emerged from amongst the weeds and spotty patches of grass. It became a tiny tropical paradise consisting of small fountains, two goldfish ponds and a variety of hibiscus, wisteria, sago palms and mandivilla. Of all that I lost to Katrina, it was losing my garden that hurt the most. At the end of my back yard was the levee wall of the 17th Street Canal that fed directly into Lake Pontchartrain. Pelicans and herons would sit atop the levee wall, eyeing my fishponds and waiting for the opportunity for a free lunch. As the day progressed toward sunset, the shadow of this wall would creep ominously across the garden bringing dusk ahead of schedule and much needed relief from the heat of the day.

On August 29th, a section of this levee wall, only a few blocks from my house collapsed from the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina and began to fill the city of New Orleans with water from Lake Pontchartrain. My house and most of New Orleans would be under water for nearly three weeks. In October, over six weeks after Katrina came ashore, Lakeview residents were allowed to return to the neighborhood and inspect the damage and salvage what they could from their homes. As you look at the images from Lakeview, remember it is not just a few dozen homes that were destroyed, but over 200,000 thousand, and all of them looking for the most part just like the inside of my home. I cannot express the feelings I experienced as I drove down Fleur De Lis and witnessed my neighborhood transformed from a lush, verdant area of tropical foliage into a dead, dusty and brown wasteland.

Once I arrived at the house the first impression was how normal things looked. Except for the dead vegetation and downed oak trees, the fishing boats in the street and the automobiles in the trees, things looked relatively normal. As I approached the front door of the house I was amazed to find that the holy card of “Our Lady of Prompt Succor” that a dear friend had given me and instructed me to place on my door for protection from the hurricane, was still attached six weeks later. Once the front door had been forced open, I was confronted with a stench that is impossible to describe. The interior of the house was covered with a combination of mold and sludge that can only be described as a putrid black pudding.

Had the levee walls not broken, I would be sitting in my garden about now, feeding the fish, admiring my “prom girl hibiscus,” and having the first cocktail of the day.

The images presented here are from October of 2005, when we were allowed to return to Lakeview and salvage what we could. I regret that I have no images of the garden when it was completed and in full bloom. Like so many of my photographs, paintings, and drawings, those images did not survive.