Travels with Susan

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Eudora Welty's Home

We left Baton Rouge headed to Atlanta, going through east Louisiana and up Mississippi and on to Georgia. So much of the journey monotonously green, the trees, ever taller and fuller, lining the highway blocking the views of farm or pasture land, of little towns and homes along the way.  It is like driving through a green tunnel for hours and hours.  We did stop in Jackson, Mississippi to go to Eudora Welty’s home.  Not the right moment for a tour of the house, but we could wander about the garden and the small museum.  I could imagine Welty at her window in this now historic neighborhood of mature yards, daylilies and camellias, writing her stories of Mississippi at her typewriter.  I could almost hear her slow, southern drawl telling stories about the people and places she knew so well. The garden has been kept to honor the labor of Welty and her mother; it is large enough for several plant groupings, a white arch separating the upper and lower back yard, and a little club house in the back, surrounded, hidden almost by trees where she and her brother and their friends used to gather.  The home and garden an example of southern gentility.