A gutted house interior on Flood Street (I’m sure I’m not the first to pick up on the awful irony). The Ninth Ward is mostly empty, just green spaces, a few houses, most of them empty, here and there. I had not been down into this part of New Orleans post-storm until last Saturday; I’d been in a neighborhood to the west last year, doing some work with Habitat for Humanity, but had never ventured across the canal until last week.

One of the few houses on the street that looked fixed back up; Our Lady is still keeping watch, anyway.

The front lawn of a washed-out little Catholic church.

A little further west, towards the canal. This is the Deep South; the greenery is irrepressible, and devours everything in very little time if it’s given half the chance.

Not the Ninth Ward this, but close enough. The oil spill was being mopped up Saturday, but was still bad enough to keep most of the river traffic bottled up. I took this photo from the landing opposite Jackson Square.