This past Friday morning, I took a solo field trip ninety minutes southeast of where we live in California to see the spectacular superbloom of wildflowers at Carrizo Plain National Monument. (See photo above—it was tough to choose just one.) As I wound and rolled through the velvety green, flower-dusted hills between here and there, grateful to be on this side of an unusually wet winter, I processed the emotional effects of last week’s big project: a batch of gumbo z’herbes, or green gumbo.

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