After two years in the frozen North, my husband and I received word that we would be moving back to Houma, LA so that he could open an office for his company deep in the heart of Bayou Country. This was excellent news for me. To be totally truthful, I never really cared for Wisconsin. I could never get warm, but I did manage to get Lyme Disease and thought I was going to die, and the wildlife destroyed any hopes I had of having a garden--the chipmunks even tunneled into the green house I bought to thwart the deer and devastated my hopes of a fresh salad.
On the flip side of the coin, I love pretty much everything about the South: the heat, the food, the people, even the wildlife. (Thankfully gators don't care for lettuce.) Houma has changed a lot in the twelve years that we have been away. It has just about doubled in size, there are a ton of chain restaurants and big box stores, and the little independent gallery where I used to show my work is long gone. There is an art guild, but it is mostly nice retired ladies who paint watercolor magnolias, and I learned my lesson in WI about involving myself with groups of nice retired ladies who paint!
The good news is that there is a market for art in this area, and the locals seem to really want to buy real art made by real people. I've already had a few word of mouth sales and commissions, so I hope that is a trend that will continue. I have a house that needs redone from the floor up, a garden that I can putter in all year round, new friends to make, old ones to reconnect with, and fire ants to poison.
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