Coming up this time on, Art Rocks, a DeRidder duo, working to build a garden Paradise right here in south Louisiana, and a world famous long distance swimmer immerses herself in the craft of memoir writing these stories up next on Art rocks.

West Baton Rouge Museum is proud to provide local support for this program on LPB, offering diverse exhibitions throughout the year and programs that showcase art, history, music, and more.

West Baton Rouge Museum culture cultivated Art rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you.

Hello.

Thank you for joining us for more Art rocks with me, James Fox Smith from Country Roads magazine.

First, we're off to the town of Derrida, seat of Beauregard Parish, in the part of southwest Louisiana that sometimes known as no man's land.

It's no no man's land for James Burnett and his wife, Patti.

Though the couple has spent 40 years teaching in Beauregard Public Schools, building their own home and designing and working a spectacular flower garden.

The Burnett's house might very well be a masterpiece, but it's the garden that really has to be seen to be believed.

Come with us and we'll see what's sprouting.

I think I have about three acres in the garden itself.

We bought this place and started in about 1985, and I planted my first Japanese maple in 1985, which would make it 40 years old this year.

My favorites in this yard change daily.

This morning I got so excited over a certain Magnolia.

And then I turned and I went around to take another picture.

And I saw natives and it's like, oh wow, this is my favorite.

I don't know if I have a my favorite, really.

I guess one of my favorite is my mom's ditch Lily because it was hers.

Every time I see it, it's Momo, and I almost worshiped Momo.

She was just incredible.

It all started one day after school.

In 1985, I went to Bonnie's nursery.

It was downtown and John and Bonnie Macmillan at Plant Nurseries.

And John said, James, I've got a tree you need to see.

You are the only person in town I can sell it to, because you said nobody else would pay for it.

He wanted $100 for it.

It was a little bitty Japanese maple, crimson queen.

And I thought, well, I don't know.

So I bought it and I planted it where it's at.

And I bought another one, a butterfly.

And I planted that butterfly somewhere right over in here, and I didn't know what I was doing.

I planted it in the red clay, and the butterfly died.

And the Japanese maples survived somehow.

And then as it grew, I wanted another one.

So we had to hunt other sources.

And then Patti and I would look for Japanese maples when we'd go places, and then for an occasion, birthday or something, she would buy me another one and another one.

And then over time, I guess I became obsessed with them.

And they just have so much color in the spring.

And then in the summer they're another color, and in the fall they're another color.

And in in the winter they're still neat because the limbs are going which direction they get in your blood.

If you buy one, you got about two.

And then I eventually started grafting them.

I'm a camellia person, most likely by blood because of my dad and my mom, Burn Burnett.

She had a nephew, first cousin, I don't remember which that grew camellias way back in the 50s.

And so my earliest recollection of Camellia was when you went in her yard and you walked down the sidewalk.

There were two red camellias, one on both sides of the sidewalk.

My grandfather hated them.

I don't know why he sold them down, but my dad would buy and plant camellias.

The thing about camellias that are so cool is in the winter, when everything else is drab and weary and the skies blue in the weather's cold, you open the door and walk outside and there's this dynamic green bush with color on it.

Just incredible color.

And so I started getting into the camellias, and the one after another.

I've got red, white, pink, one, two, three, four, five, six different yellows.

Two of the yellows that I have are supposed to be not cold hardy.

They're supposed to freeze when it gets cold.

But believe it or not, they were incredible.

In spite of the hard freezes we had, and they looked like a fabulous rose and they are just doing fantastic hair.

At one time I had over 300, but we've had such hard, severe freezes and we had that drought that was just so hot and so dry for months until I've lost quite a few.

There's stress to the max since I was two hurricanes.

Everything around here is just stressed me on the lake.

And then we had the fires so the sky was full of smoke and ash.

Well, even I found it stressful.

Story on lady was a is with me.

I prefer to call them honeysuckle and some of the plant people just get so upset when you call them a honeysuckle, because I think of a vine growing in the ground.

But when I was a kid here, they were known as honeysuckle.

We all called them honeysuckle.

And everywhere you went in the woods, there were honeysuckle.

And I couldn't wait for the springtime because I would go out and just snap limbs.

I absolutely loved the smell, the all the woods around my mom's house was just full of them.

So I would go out when we'd go visit and just go out and just snap limbs and bring my hands just loaded with those pink blossoms.

And she would put them in our little kitchen.

Our kitchen was a little back porch.

It had been closed in, and she put them on a table and it would fill a whole room full of just just this aroma.

So that's some of my fondest memory of the prettiest flowers.

And then I discovered that there were other colors, white and yellow and red and orange and and there's all these series and all these people hybridized in Maine.

And I thought, I want my yard full of every color, every kind.

So I started traveling all over the country, meeting different people.

And I met so many fascinating people, and Georgia and Alabama and Tennessee and and in the mountains.

And just one would say, James, you got to go meet this one and this one.

Go meet that one.

And they've just I've been everywhere.

Looking for native is a is honeysuckle.

And so my yard is just full of them.

Just full.

And I guess you could say I'm obsessed with native roses.

I don't know which obsession I feed the most, but lately I've been on this magnolia cake and I love the the purple magnolia is the Japanese.

Magnolia is one of the prettiest.

Is next to Taco Bell by a fence downtown.

It's just beautiful every year.

And then my mail lady told me about one way out in the country that is this magnificent tree.

So I went to see it.

Just incredible.

And I thought, I've got to have another one.

And then I read about a yellow one that was invented in 2007 up in, in Boston, Baltimore or whatever.

And I saw it for sale for $90 about this, and I thought it would be a nice size, so I ordered it.

But it came in little bitty part about that tall.

And I planted it.

And it's one of those right over there.

That tree is now well, let's see oh seven soon to be 20 years old.

They're not very big, but they just pop in the springtime.

And I thought, I gotta have another one.

I guess you could say I'm just an obsessive person.

And.

In this part of the world, there were a lot of palm trees.

And they were made out of old, rich tree trunks.

And they had blue bottles on them.

And all the blue bottles from magnesium and my, my mom all lived on miracle magnesium bottles.

So.

And I became fascinated with those blue bottles in the light.

But I also, eventually found out the story of the bottle trees, and I found it to just be the most fascinating thing.

And then I watch that movie Beethoven, about, the dog and the lady in there, the, I think they called her a witch.

And she had this tree full.

All these glass objects and all this, and I thought, I gotta have a yard like that.

I just have to have that in my yard.

And then I would go to Mississippi, and I'd come across these fancy trees and and bottles here and bottles there, and I thought, why not?

So I don't drink.

But I have a lot of friends that do, and they all save me their bottles.

So I get all their bottles and I use the bottles in the yard.

And, I had the opportunity years ago when Julie was in New Orleans and, and nobody to have bought some of his first artwork.

And my oldest daughter begged me to, and I didn't, which was a mistake I shouldn't.

But as he got to be famous and started making all these glass objects, well, they then the people in Mexico started making knockoffs.

And I thought, well, I can't afford Julie, but I can afford a knockoff.

And and I learned, you know, if you want something, give up a few cold drinks, give up a hamburger and buy 1 or 2 at a time, and and make it yourself.

And in my bottle, trees, they're made out of all kinds of stuff.

My, one of my arches is, was a rose arbor lady, and I saw it in her yard, and I stopped and I said, what do you sell me?

That Arbor Euros Arbor?

And she said, well, yeah, so do you.

And so we bought it, and I got at home and I took my grinder out, and I cut a lot of pieces off of it, and I made an arch bottle tree out of it.

Just, I just love glass and the light, the way it shines through it and the story behind it and the old spiritual stories of trapping the spirits and getting them in the sky to see away from you.

I mean, it's just incredible to have it in the yard and it gives color year round.

And then I got fascinated with old stained glass windows, repairing old stained glass windows, and I decided that every window in my house would be a stained glass.

And so I made or I proceeded to make all these windows out of stained glass.

Gates, Gage.

Gates, I guess that were the gate at every entrance.

And I always hated gates because the latches always give me fits.

Latches are like, how do you do this?

And then and usually when you get to a gate, there's a bad dog on the other side.

But here I am.

I don't have any dogs, but I got a lot of gates and and, I've got gates from everywhere.

The prettiest runner I bought for Patty.

Because she's got this little lady in the morning and that's her when she gets to be a little old lady sitting in the foyer around here.

As far as petrified wood and rocks, I was, I guess, obsessed with, I colors in rocks.

So when I got to be in high school, I started going to the woods a lot.

My dad always went to the woods because when I was a kid, everybody squirrel hunting.

He coyote hunted you, squirrel hunting, dove on it, and that's.

And you ate those things.

I mean, you know, you make gumbo out of, squirrel and dumplings and all kind of stuff.

So we were always in the woods, and I would discover pretty pieces of wood, petrified wood, little pieces here and there.

And then they started building to later being.

And when I was in high school and on the weekends, when I had time that was free, I would go to the different creeks and friends of mine, and we would look for arrowheads as before.

It was against the law and we would look for, petrified wood.

And I started finding trees and I started finding these gigantic sand rocks.

And I wanted them at the house.

And then my dad became interested in them, and he had a friend who had a weights truck, and in the weights truck, friend got interested in them and we would go and we would get them.

And so I started gathering stuff up and I gather mountains of rocks.

And then years later, Patty and I were going down one, seven, one when they were four lining it, and we got the horn back, and we started down that steep hill and there were rocks everywhere.

They hit this massive quarry of rocks.

So I stopped and said, could could I have some of these rocks?

And I said, you can hold them all off.

And I said, well, subtle.

But I tell you what, every day after work, let's take the pick up and let's go load it down with rocks and we will haul all the rocks.

So we literally created a mountain of rocks in our backyard that someday I wanted to use in a garden, but I am still using rocks from that pile.

It's getting low, but all these rocks we found and hauled ourselves.

Except one little batch that Patty bought me.

Now it's an all day everyday thing, so when I come out, I'm ready for whatever I'll say.

Okay, what do you have in mind for today?

If it's something that he can do by himself, then I'll go off and do things I can do by myself.

I've like cleaning, pulling weeds, blowing leaves, raking, mowing grass.

I usually do the grass, mowing and, things like that that don't involve him.

But sand, if he's on a project and he needs help lifting or are laying out or whatever, then I just come out later in the morning, probably close to 10:00.

And I'm ready to help in whatever capacity I'm needed.

It doesn't come easy.

You can't just sit back and relax all the time and enjoy it, because then it's going to be overrun and overgrown with weeds and it's not going to be enjoyable.

So you have to reach a balance somehow or other, and I do.

That's what we've had to do.

And not only that, we have to be sure we take the time for the enjoyment part rather than sitting in the swings, looking around saying, oh, I forgot to do this.

I forgot to do that.

Oh, those weeds over there are taken over.

We really need to get down to business on that flower bed over there.

So you have to be ready to do the nitty gritty, the dirty work.

But at the same time, you have to carve out time to appreciate what's here.

Patty and I spent forever doing the brick wall and making it perfect.

And then along came the hurricane and ripped the giant trees up and the giant trees ripped all the bricks up.

And and we had the we had no path, we had no walk.

And I saw, the little gray limestone rocks at the rock yard, and I thought, I'll just rock it.

I can't do the bricks again.

The healing spot started with one swing and the gazebo, and we used to do barbecues and family outings here, and it had a cypress roof on it.

Shingles.

And.

And then I built a little arbor over the one swing.

And so then, I added another swing, and in the hurricane, store it all up.

And so I added another one in, and I thought, well, we could all sit in the circle and it would be pretty cool.

And then I came across frogs and I thought, what it needs to be a fountain in the middle.

And so it all came together.

Then one day my oldest daughter was here and she said, you know, this is the healing spot.

You can sit here, you relax, you forget all your troubles.

And we do a lot of garden tours in the spring, a lot of garden clubs and master gardeners and different ones come.

We schedule them and they come and invariably they all wound up at the healing spot, sitting in the swings, and they just.

It's like when you sit down in one of these swings with a frog fountain and the bells and the wind, and no matter where you look, there's something pretty to look at.

You just forget all your troubles.

Garden is, the perfect definition of evolution.

It evolves from the day you plant the bush.

And the one thing I think that people horticulturist, scientist, expert that they all, I'll say all I don't know, a lot of them never discuss, never talk about.

Plants are just like us.

Some die young, some die middle aged.

Some live for years, some never grow well, some thrive, and some are just massive.

But there's one thing they all like to do eat and drink.

And people don't fertilizer plants enough.

And they don't watch the water enough.

A tree behind me makes a bush next to it almost impossible to grow, and people tend to plant under trees.

But the tree has so many roots that it sucks all that water out of the ground, so there's nothing left for all the plants under the tree.

So you've got to make the difference up for that plant under a tree.

And people just don't tend to their plant like they should because they think they can survive on their own, but they can't.

They need our help.

And I wish everybody would plant a flower because it just makes your day go better.

As I get older, I realize there's a lot here to tend to and to keep up with, and perhaps I may have created a monster, but, to go away and come back and drive in the driveway and look around and it's like, I, I, you know, I, I can't believe that Patty and I did this, and and it's peaceful here.

It's just Paradise.

It's really like heaven on earth.

The birds are happy.

The the world.

And you hear all these noises and you see all this stuff on the news, and yet the environment around you makes all of that go away.

So, so.

Yes.

And and I love my place.

I just I really love my place.

If you enjoy watching the arts on TV, trust me, they're better in person.

The trick, of course, is knowing where to find them.

For a comprehensive roundup, each issue of Country Roads magazine includes a curated list of upcoming events, including exhibits at area museums and galleries printed monthly and always online at Country Roads mag.com.

We're retracing history here on September the 2nd, 2013, when she was 64 years old.

Long distance swimmer Diana Nyad swam 111 miles, crossing the Florida Straits from Cuba to Key West in 53 hours.

It was a feat of perseverance that shattered records and captured the world's attention.

Now, Nyad has written a memoir named Find a Way The Inspiring story of one woman's pursuit of a life long dream and a story has been adapted into a major Netflix film.

So we head to New York to find out what it is that keeps pulling Nyad back to the ocean.

Endurance sports are different.

You know, the extreme endurance sports are in different categories than most other sports.

I can't say that an NFL player won't make it at the age of 60, but let's just say the chances are slim.

It wasn't, a physical impossibility to me when I started thinking of this childhood dream of mine swimming from Cuba to Florida, I literally, at the age of nine, had the first first glimpse of it within my imagination of it.

So I had friends, Barney, other friend who said you didn't make it at 28?

What in the world makes you think at age 60 you're going to do this?

But there was never daunting to me, I was fit.

You don't like to have other people put limitations on you.

Nobody can tell us how far we can push the human body and or mind.

And Diana has both.

She's got the mind and she has the body to do it.

None of us know the power of the motion picture.

Once it became a movie with the likes of Annette Bening and Jodie Foster, it went worldwide.

It went more viral.

My story.

Came just two was when I'm just the type who is never happy, I look back and say, why didn't I do this more?

Why didn't I do this better?

But the truth is, this book, it's one of the few things I've done in my life that I had no second guessing, no regrets from when I finished and put the last period on this book, I thought, I can't write this story any better than I've written it now.

24 Hour Swims 18, 17, 16.

She did it.

I listen in the beginning.

I was in it for the ten and then it became my passion and my purpose.

We all get knocked down.

It's part of the human condition.

We have frailties, we have bad luck, we get knocked down and it's the people who get back up and try again and again who are resilient and persistent.

Those are the people who get at.

And that is that for this edition of Art rocks.

But never mind, because more episodes of the show are always available at lpb.org/uh, rocks.

And if you love stories like these, keep your eyes peeled for a copy of country Rock magazine.

The magazine makes a vital guide for learning what's taking shape in Louisiana's cultural life all across the state.

Until next week.

I've been James Fox Smith and thank you for watching.

West Baton Rouge Museum is proud to provide local support for this program on LPB.

Offering diverse exhibitions throughout the year and programs that showcase art, history, music, and more, West Baton Rouge Museum culture cultivated Art rocks is made possible by the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you.