The Landry Property is a beautiful piece of land outside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, owned by my wife's parents. It is nearly 10 acres of mixed hardwood and pine forest, with predominantly Magnolia-Beech forest on the higher elevations and Elm-Ironbeam-Loblolly Pine forest in the bottomlands.
We've lived here for just over two years, as of February 2024, and in that time I've been able to connect to the flora and fauna of Louisiana in a way that I was never able to in the 34 years of living in Baton Rouge before we moved to Oregon in 2017.
In those two years, I've observed nearly 1000 different species on the property, including approximately 230 native plant species, over 400 insect and arachnid species, 100 bird species, 24 species of reptiles and amphibians, 14 native mammal species, and a few dozen species of fungi.
I've also introduced (with varying degrees of success) several plant species here, including Mulberry, Elderberry, Mayhaw, Common Paw Paw, Titi, and Buttonbushes. The Watering Can series of posts from 2023 documents a good bit of those efforts here.
It's been wonderful to have this place to reconnect to my home state, to have a place to train my Naturalist eye as I become more familiar with the more-than-human world around us. Day to day, week to week, year to year, I learn more about the land and beings that inhabit the land, and am still frequently surprised by what pops up in places I've looked at hundreds of times before. As it's often called by visitors, it really is a little slice of Heaven.
Last updated February 18, 2024.
