Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Not just for breakfast anymore: Plaquemines Parish Orange Festival

The Plaquemines Parish Orange festival is a 62-year tradition unbowed by hurricanes, including Katrina, which wiped out its original hometown and cost citrus growers 10 million dollars in losses. Though Buras, in the southern end of Lousiana's southermost parish, is still recovering, the festival continues to the north in Belle Chasse. This year's festival drew thousands this past weekend for a high-spirited time symbolized by Blossom and Man-Darin, the roving mascots (top left). Signs everywhere proclaimed "Think Orange" and there were plenty of citrus-themed activities, including orange races and citrus cook-offs, as well an art competition, whose winners included the maker of the all-fruit carnival scene below, which features terrified kumquats clearly desperate to get off the ride. (Top photo: Orange Festival. Bottom photo: Dawn Childs.)

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