Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

A Multi-Storied House

If these walls could talk . . . occasionally, they do

By Billy Ingram

“How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start, when memory plays an old tune on the heart!” – Eliza Cook

Rarely do time, temperature and opportunity coalesce to create conditions rife for recapturing carefree memories of sunshiny, youthful afternoons. In this instance, it’s an unplanned springtime saunter through Fisher Park — a frequent footpath in my teenage meanderings when hoofing it from Latham Park to First Presbyterian or onward Downtown, sketchbook and graphite at hand for rendering fascinations like that bulbous Weeping Willow billowing at the entrance (long since withered away), those cobblestone arches crossing creeks, masonry stairways and hardwood hickory trees.

Only once did I attempt drawing any of the surrounding houses, and that was 106 Fisher Park Circle, a majestic, two-story Neoclassical Revival with inviting slate steps that lead to a grand portico canopied by a tympanum accented with a whimsical lunette window that, even then, I suspected had witnessed its share of illustrious people and familial felicity. This graceful home is a centerpiece of Greensboro’s very first residential development, one that broke ground in the 1890s then grew exponentially throughout the Roaring ’20s.

If every picture is worth a thousand words, then, surely, every vintage home has potential to inspire an entire novel. In theory, one could select randomly any period property and undoubtedly uncover countless intriguing untold — or untoward — tales, walls eagerly awaiting listening ears. That recent midday wandering into wistfulness led to wondering: Why not honor 106 Fisher Park Circle for this “novel” experiment?

Knowing little more than that 106 had been dubbed “R. D. Douglas House,” I began researching in my own library of local lore. Tucked into unread recesses was a nondescript paperback inscribed to my mother on her birthday in 2005 entitled The Best 90 Years of My Life, written and self-published two years earlier by Robert Dick Douglas Jr. Born in 1912, the author’s chronicle commences with recollections of growing up with his three siblings at . . . 106 Fisher Park Circle. In his opening paragraph, Douglas Jr. describes the stately five-bedroom manor his parents had built back in 1906: “The house was high above the street and had four large cement two-story columns in the front. On the north side of the house was a concrete driveway leading from the street up the hill to a red wooden barn at the back of the lot.”

That barn originally housed a horse that pulled the family’s four-wheeled carriage. Before long, the Douglases were motoring in touring cars (with Eisenglass curtains, no less) east down North Park Drive to arrive at 480 Church St., where the children’s great-grandmother lived in the estate known as Dunleith. The striking three-story mansion had been built around 1858 by her husband, N.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert P. Dick. One of the nation’s earliest examples of Italianate architecture, it was briefly requisitioned for Union Headquarters as the Civil War drew to a close. Descending into disrepair, that elegant dwelling was demolished in the late 1960s. More recently, the former Aycock neighborhood was renamed Dunleath (close enough, right?) in its honor.

In the 1910s, public transportation was incredibly convenient for citizens of the newly-named Gate City. “We had electric trolleys running on rails in the street and getting electric power from overhead trolley wires,” Douglas Jr. writes. “Streetcars ran from downtown out North Elm Street to about where Wendover crosses now. Later, they went all the way out to Sunset Drive where you could walk to the Greensboro Country Club.”

Douglas Jr.’s youth revolved around the single Catholic Church in town, St. Benedict, within easy walking distance. “Father Vincent was a great golfer and a member of the Greensboro Country Club,” he writes. “I think a lot of anti-Catholic prejudice was dispelled by his charm and golfing ability.” The Parish’s Sunday School was taught by the Sisters of Charity, who established St. Leo’s, Greensboro’s first hospital in 1906.

As an Eagle Scout, Douglas Jr. spent a summer hunting big game alongside Serengeti natives, about which he wrote a book, Three Boy Scouts in Africa: On Safari with Martin Johnson, published by Putman. He followed that up with a second memoir published one year later in 1929 about bear hunting on Kodiak Island, A Boy Scout in the Grizzly Country. He later returned to Alaska, exploring steaming volcanos, graduated Georgetown Law School and, by 1941, was rounding up Axis collaborators as an FBI agent. In 1945, he resettled with his wife and toddler son in Greensboro to specialize in labor law. Multiple cases he argued were heard before the Supreme Court. Douglas Jr. passed away in 2015 at age 103, remarkable in itself. The Best 90 Years of My Life was republished in 2007 by Vantage Press but remains elusive to locate.

In 1936, 106 Fisher Park Circle welcomed Dr. Luther L. Gobbel, the same year he was appointed president of Greensboro College, where, two years later, he presided over the school’s centennial commencement. My mother was an undergrad there during his tenure, her 1945 sophomore yearbook fronted by an appropriately placid portrait of Gobbel as an archetypical, armchair-seated academic doyen projecting an air of professorial steadfastness.

Gobbel relocated around 1941, when this Fisher Park landmark was purchased by Dr. Samuel F. Ravenel, founder of one of North Carolina’s first pediatric practices in 1925, positioned on the third floor of the Jefferson Standard Building.

In 1948, Ravenel rallied city leaders to raise $100,000 (roughly $1,350,000 today) in just 12 days. The funds were needed to convert a former rec hall on the recently-vacated Army Air Corps base, located off Bessemer, into an emergency, M.A.S.H.-like triage infirmary where he and new associate, Dr. Jean McAlister (pioneer female physician), risked their lives combating — and promptly conquering — a polio outbreak crippling Guilford County’s children by the hundreds.

“Dr. Jean” was our beloved family pediatrician in the ’60s. When she was away, it was Dr. Ravenel’s stethoscope pressed to our chests in their modest, rectangular office suite on East Northwood Street (improbably still standing among Cone’s expansions). What those well-healed patients’ parents likely didn’t know was that Dr. Ravenel spent spare hours at Children’s Home Society charitably attending to some 9,000 infants that would otherwise have gone untreated. Revered across every community, his 51-year devotion to the health and wellbeing of Greensboro’s most vulnerable ended tragically with a 1976 car accident.

A mere three chapters in, if we do indeed have elements necessary for an intriguing historical novel, it’s going to need a satisfying wrap-up. Turns out my old pal, Bill Baites, along with Stephen Dull, restored this gem to shine anew while residing there in the 2000s, undertaking a million-dollar renovation recognized with a Preservation Greensboro Award for excellence in 2006. I had no idea! 

Then again, many casual readers crave conclusions couched in cloying profundity. The epitaph engraved on Dr. Jean McAlister’s monument at Green Hill Cemetery could decisively serve as a suitable swan song for those selfless souls once resting their heads at 106 Fisher Park Circle:

Good and faithful servant of God

Well done

Rest from thy loved employ

The Battle fought, the victory won

Enter thy Master’s joy.

Beat By Beat

BEAT BY BEAT

Beat By Beat

Greensboro’s newest poet laureate aims to build bridges

By Cassie Bustamante  •  Portraits by Liz Nemeth

“I didn’t really start off wanting to be a poet,” says Greensboro’s newest poet laureate, James Daniels. “I always wanted to be a rapper.”

But, says Daniels, “I had a Dead Poets Society moment.” That was while he was attending Johnston County Early College Academy. Just like the students in the film who were inspired by their professor (played by Robin Williams), Daniels remembers how a couple of his own teachers, Amanda Rowland and Dawn Blankenship, kindled the spark that ignited his love of poetry. They introduced him to Poetry Out Loud, a high school poetry recitation competition. And though his gut reaction was a big heck no, “I took the leap.” And, turns out, the spoken word spoke to him.

As he listened to poets and poetry, he recalls, “I started to absorb the power of the word — just understanding that there are so many different mediums it could go in. So I just started trying all of them and poetry was the one that stuck.”

Later, at N.C. State, where he was earning a B.S. in education, he discovered open mics, where anyone, from beginners to pros, can step up on a stage and share whatever is in their hearts and minds. Greensboro’s inaugural poet laureate, Josephus III, visited the campus, leading a Poetry Cafe session (an interactive open-mic event). “I went up and, of course, embarrassed myself on that mic, too. You know, you got to step out.”

Daniels got even more involved with Poetry Cafe while working on his M.F.A. at UNCG. At first, he says, he was “a table boy, bringing people in.” But soon Josephus was asking Daniels to teach at events for kids when he wasn’t available to do it himself.

When it came time for his two-year term as poet laureate to come to an end, Josephus III reached out to Daniels, who notes, “a bunch of dope poets in the city also got that call.”

At the time, Daniels was deep in the application process of another position — assistant professor and director of creative writing at N.C. A&T — which he soon landed. Thinking it might be too much to take it all on, he made calls to other poets, suggesting they go for it. But one question kept bouncing back to him: “You’re applying, too, right?”

His response? Of course, he told them, even though that wasn’t his intention. “But I was like, I can’t lie to 20 people,” he says. “Now you said it, so now you’re doing it.” He sat down and got to work on his own application after all.

He ran it by his most trusted critic, his wife of three years, Ajani Anderson, who “tore it up.” Through some tough love from Anderson, a visual artist who Daniels says “makes me better everywhere,” the application was ready to submit.

Loving metaphors as all poets do, Daniels is constantly talking about building bridges “between creatives, institutions and other artistic mediums — through the power of poetry.” A bridge, of course, is the sum of many trusses and supports. Daniels envisions a city where organizations and creative people across multiple genres reach out to each other collaboratively. One man cannot bear the load on his own, but he hopes to continue building on the foundation Josephus has laid.

“I’m grateful for this position. I’m grateful for all of the positions that I’ve received thus far,” he says. But don’t for a second think that he’s given up on his initial dream of becoming a rapper: “That’s still a goal,” he says.  OH

The following poems are by James Daniels. 

Simple Life

SIMPLE LIFE

Garden Reborn

And just maybe, ready for prime time

By Jim Dodson

On a warm and dry afternoon last October, as I mulched and watered my front yard’s 35 parched azaleas in the middle of the most punishing drought in memory, a shiny, white Volvo eased into my driveway.

A pair of well-dressed women emerged.

They introduced themselves as Candy Gessner and Lorraine Neill, committee members from the Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs. They had something to discuss.

For an instant, I wondered what crime against nature I might have unwittingly committed. Unnecessary strain on municipal water supplies? Had neighbors complained about my loud (and entirely inappropriate) oaths issued at a rainless sky?

Instead, Candy smiled and reached for my grubby hand.

“We understand you have a lovely garden,” she said. “We’ve come hoping to view it and ask if you would be interested in having your garden featured on the 2026 garden tour in June.”

Between us, they could have knocked me over with a packet of Burpee seeds. In my time on this Earth, I’ve built three ambitious landscape gardens and never given a passing thought that somebody might wish to see them. Especially a lot of serious gardening somebodies.

My first garden was built on a heavily forested hilltop in Maine, a classic New England woodland garden created on the remains of a vanished  19th-century farm that my cheeky Scottish mother-in-law nicknamed “Slightly Off in the Woods.” It was the perfect name because the only people who ever saw it were the FedEx guy and tourists who’d taken a wrong turn onto our dirt road.

“Nice layout,” the FedEx guy once remarked with a smirk. “But why build a garden like this that nobody will ever see?”

“Because I see it,” I said. “It keeps me sane in a crazy world.”

He thought I was joking. But any serious gardener will tell you that time spent in their garden is a cure for whatever ails the spirit. Most of us, in fact, never imagine that others will desire to see our gardens. We create them for us. The closest we can get to playing God, as a famous English gardener named Mirabel Osler once said to me.

My second garden belonged to a cute little cottage in Pinehurst that my wife, Wendy, and I rented in hopes of eventually buying. The previous owner had been an elderly gardener who let his 2-acre garden run amok. I spent a year cutting back overgrown azalea bushes and battling wicked wisteria vines and even recovered a “lost” serpentine brick fence that had been swallowed whole by English ivy. I also built a beautiful wooden fence around the fully restored garden — just in time for disaster to hit.

The week we planned to officially buy the place, the kitchen floor collapsed, and we discovered that black mold was running like a medieval plague through the walls and floors. We moved out that same afternoon. At least the garden looked fantastic. 

Finally, there is the garden where the women from the garden council and I stood on that afternoon. It is, without question, my final garden and, therefore, a serious labor of love.

A decade ago, we moved back to my hometown, taking possession of a charming mid-century bungalow that the Corry family built in 1951. I grew up two doors away from this lovely old house and always admired it. Al and Merle Corry were my parents’ best friends. Their grown children were thrilled when they learned that a pair of Dodsons would be their childhood home’s second owners.

And so, we set off to fully restore the property.

As Wendy got to work on the interior, I confronted “Miss Merle’s” long-neglected garden. It took a year of weekends just to clear dying trees and dead shrubs from the front yard before I could turn my attention to the backyard so wildly overgrown, I nicknamed it “The Lost Kingdom.”

Over the next decade, neighbors and friends got used to the sight of me getting gloriously dirty every weekend, rain or shine — digging holes, building beds, hauling in new soil and manure, eventually planting a dozen flowering trees in the front yard alone, with banks of hydrangeas and 30-plus azalea bushes, inspired by a former neighbor who did the same during my childhood years.

In due course, our “east” garden became a flowering space with a tiered stone pathway and lush beds that are home to autumn sage, Mexican sunflowers, purple salvia, society garlic, Mexican petunias, Gerbera daisies and red-hot pokers. Knock Out and old-garden rose varieties preside over a trio of butterfly bushes that monarchs swarm upon on late-summer days.

In the former Lost Kingdom out back, I built an Asian-themed shade garden that’s home to nine Japanese maples, scores of autumn ferns and monster-sized hosta plants (I imported from my Maine garden). The final touch was a stone pathway that winds through this tranquil, hidden space, though only I and our three dogs have ever followed it.

Which brings me back to the lovely women from the council.

I thanked them for considering my garden for their June tour but pointed out that drought had taken an alarming toll. Moreover, mine was still a young garden, a mere decade old. It needed time to heal and find its way.

“Another year perhaps?” I suggested.

They wouldn’t hear of it. “Everyone’s garden has been beaten up,” Candy reminded me. “But come spring, they always bounce back like a miracle. Yours will, too.”

So now, friends, April is here and I’m a man in constant motion, fussing, fixing, weeding, mulching, trimming, planting new things and getting gloriously dirty. A garden, of course, is never finished. There is always something to do, to change, to add or subtract, or simply fix. Nature abides no slackers.

Nothing could make me happier than to welcome folks to my reborn garden come June 6-7.

Don’t mind my grubby hands, though. A gardener’s job is never done. 

Tea Leaf Astrologer

TEA LEAF ASTROLOGER

Aries

(March 21 – April 19)

This month, you’re giving theatrical bravado — and we’re lapping it up. Mars in your sign from April 9 through mid-May is the energy shot you didn’t need but surely won’t squander. Just don’t move so fast you miss a stellar career opportunity that aligns with yourlong-term goals. A friendly tip: Passion and impulse aren’t always synonymous. Now, channel your inner Freddie Mercury and watch the world respond.

Tea leaf  “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Taste as you go.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

Double the recipe. 

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Best not to overextend yourself. 

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

Slow down and proceed with wonder.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)  

Go waffles-for-dinner wild. 

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Check the expiration date. 

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Try changing the lens. 

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Two words: flameless candles. 

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

It’s time to turn the compost. 

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Read the room, Darling. 

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Schedule the oil change. 

Chaos Theory

CHAOS THEORY

Why DIY today what you can DIY tomorrow?

Ceilings and other unfinished projects

By Cassie Bustamante

When it comes to house projects, my husband, Chris, and I have an unspoken motto: Why do today what you can put off until right before you need to sell your home?

Just before we moved to Greensboro, our project procrastination caught up with us. I kneel atop a 5-foot-tall, mint-green, vintage shelving unit in our kitchen, my neck craned toward the ceiling I’m painting. Tiny, white droplets fleck my dark-brown hair. Nearby, Chris feeds our infant son, Wilder, stuffing lukewarm spoonfuls of mushy, Gerber oatmeal with a touch of homemade applesauce into the little guy’s hungry, gummy, baby-bird maw.

In our house, painting is a tag-team endeavor. Chris is the roller, while I am the cutter-inner. After many years spent creating content for my DIY blog — mostly paint projects — and refinishing furniture for my vintage-furniture storefront, I’ve got a steady hand, one that requires no blue tape. Chris, on the other hand, is more like a bull in a paint-your-own-pottery shop — not so good with the details but great with the brute force required for rolling. So, as soon as I swipe paint on the last of the kitchen ceiling edges, I hop down and swap places with him. He douses a roller in white paint while I take over with Wilder.

“Why do we do this to ourselves?” I say, exasperated. “All of these projects we let pile up over the seven years we’ve lived here and now we’re cramming them into seven weeks!” Light fixtures to replace, countertops to update, a half-dead maple tree along the driveway to chop down and, obviously, ceilings to paint.

“And, you know,” says Chris, “none of these projects are that bad. It’s the getting them all done in rapid succession that’s killer.” He pauses and I can practically read the thought bubble that’s forming over his head. “Let’s not do this in our next house.”

I nod enthusiastically. “Let’s get things done over time so that we can actually enjoy the results of our own blood, sweat and tears,” I say, rubbing 6-month-old Wilder’s button nose with my own. “That’s right, Mommy and Daddy are not going to procrastinate in our new house!”

A couple short months later, we say goodbye to that home and its freshly-painted ceilings, and make our way to Greensboro, where a 1966 Starmount Forest ranch home waits for us. Sure, it needs some updating, but it ticks so many of our boxes as a family of five — four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a great location.

The kitchen, however, is never going to work for us. While I am a huge fan of reusing what you can, the original cabinetry only allows space for a 24-inch oven. A baking sheet full of dino-shaped chicken nuggets? Forget it. And I can stop fantasizing about hosting Thanksgiving with an oven like that. So, just months after moving in, we hire a contractor to renovate our kitchen, updating it with new cabinetry, new flooring and fixtures, a hammered-brass sink from locally-owned Thompson Traders, and, of course, new appliances, including a gorgeous, white-and-gold, 30-inch Café oven.

As the renovation crawls closer to its completion many months later, I tell the contractor, “We’ll take care of all the painting.” We just want our house back — no more workers tromping around, no more plastic sheeting, no more construction dust. “Trust me, we can handle that part.”

“OK, if you’re sure,” he says.

“Oh, I’m sure.”

Once the contractor and his accoutrements have quite literally left the building, we spend a weekend coating the walls in white. I give the new built-in banquette and molding a touch of easy-to-clean sheen with semigloss in the same shade. And it looks fresh and finished — as long as you don’t look up. “We’ll save the ceiling for next weekend,” I say to Chris as I scrub my brush clean. “I’m too tired to think about it right now.”

Approximately 150 weekends — or three years — later, our ceiling finally has its moment with paint. While we’ve grown so tired of looking at the dull, drab ceiling in its primed state, apparently we haven’t been tired enough to actually push up our sleeves and do it ourselves. Nope, the first thing we do when I go back to work full-time is hire out the work. All I have to do is select the color: Sherwin Williams’ Romance at 75% saturation, a lovely, warm shade of blush. No argument from Chris, who’s just happy to have it done.

Well, almost done. You see, the painters arrive on a sweltering July day and our AC is working overtime. The two vents in the kitchen ceiling are dripping with condensation, making it impossible for paint to stick to them.

“Don’t worry about it,” I tell the concerned painter as he shows me the issue. “We can easily get to it when the weather cools this fall.”

It’s been almost four years and, as I sit at my kitchen banquette writing, I steal an upwards glance at the vent closest to me, stark white against the soft-pink ceiling. Really, how hard could it be to just slap some paint on it when I’m done writing? Not hard at all, but we’re not ready to list our home anytime soon.

In Good Taste

IN GOOD TASTE

Sweet Spring Layers

A strawberry cheesecake parfait

Story and Photograph by Jasmine Comer

I’m currently in a full-blown parfait phase. While they’re traditionally served as a dessert using ice cream, health-conscious millennials now think of them as yogurt bowls, and they’ve become my breakfast staple. But really, they’re good any time of day. I usually start with a Greek yogurt base and layer in seasonal fruits — it was apples all winter — plus granola, nuts or a drizzle of nut butter. Once you add a sweetener of your choice, something like honey or natural maple syrup, you are all set. The real draw for me is the texture and flavor play: You get that perfect mix of creamy, crunchy, salty and sweet. But the best part? How little effort it actually takes. Of course, you can go full-on indulgence and make it a true, rich and decadent dessert. Though I’m not suggesting you eat that for breakfast.

This recipe is a love letter to effortless kitchen adventures. Even for those of us who find peace in cooking, there are days when standing by the stove feels like a chore — especially as the temperature rises and the last thing you want to be is tethered to a hot oven.

Enter the strawberry cheesecake parfait: Think of it as cheesecake’s laid-back, sophisticated cousin. It’s a deconstructed masterpiece that layers silky cheesecake mousse with the bright, macerated sweetness of seasonal strawberries and the salty-sweet crunch of buttery graham cracker crumbs. This may be your first foray into dessert parfaits, but given the high-reward, low-effort ratio, it certainly won’t be your last.

Strawberry Cheesecake Parfait

Ingredients

Cheesecake Filling

14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk not skim, please

Two 8-ounce blocks cream cheese, room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract or paste

Graham Cracker “Crust”

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs

1/4 cup melted butter

2 tablespoons sugar

Pinch of salt

Cinnamon to taste, optional

Strawberry Topping

1 pound strawberries, sliced

1/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Zest of half a lemon

Directions

For the cheesecake filling: In a large bowl, using a hand or stand mixer, blend ingredients until smooth and creamy. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or overnight; the longer the better.

For the graham cracker layer: Right before you are ready to assemble your parfait, using a spoon, mix ingredients until combined in a medium bowl.

For the strawberry topping: Just as you are ready to assemble your parfait, mix the strawberries with the sugar, lemon juice and zest together until combined in a medium bowl. Let sit for 20 minutes so the strawberries can release their natural juices.

Using a glass of your choice, start with a layer of graham cracker crumbs, followed by a layer of the cream cheese mixture and then the strawberries, using approximately 3 tablespoons of for each layer.

Sanctuary

SANCTUARY

Sanctuary

A Kernersville gardener creates a native plant refuge

By Ross Howell Jr.  •   Photographs by Lynn Donovan

Ever heard of a plant rescue?

Me neither.

Not until Kelly Gage toured me around her woodland garden.

Gage grew up on a tobacco farm in Davidson County, where her grandmother and mother were avid garden club members. After earning a degree in biology at UNCG, Gage took a job as an environmental manager for Guilford County, working with geologists and engineers to enforce surface-water and groundwater regulations. 

For more than 20 years, Gage and her husband, Bobby, had lived in the same house where she had, of course, designed and maintained all the landscaping. Fourteen years ago, they decided to build a new home.

The couple selected a 6-acre wooded site outside Kernersville that had been left untended for 75 years and was overgrown with poison ivy, Chinese viburnum, privet and Japanese stilt grass.

One of the first decisions the Gages had to consider was where to build on the property. They decided to remove a patch of loblolly pine trees and site the house there.

“That really opened up space,” Gage says.

And that’s where we’re standing, in dappled sunlight at the edge of a broad planting bed in front of the house. The trees resound with birdsong.

 “At first, we had a lot of sun, but now we have a lot of shade,” Gage muses. With the pines removed, overstory trees such as oaks, maples, poplar and beech have flourished, along with understory trees such as redbud, dogwood, sassafras and sourwood.

She points out a tree with shimmering, green leaves.

“That’s an umbrella magnolia,” Gage says. “It has the second-largest leaf in the magnolia family.” Over time, she’s found many of these natives on the property.

“This one just happened to be close to the house,” she continues. “It’s just the loveliest tree.”

Gage’s voice is calm and measured. It reminds me of one of my favorite elementary school teachers. As she describes the magnolia, you hear inflections of admiration and affection in her voice.

She’s discovered many other indigenous plants that had been overgrown or suppressed altogether, including swaths of columbine, creeping phlox and at least five different species of native fern.

“Once you disturb the soil, some of the seeds and spores that have been lying dormant start to show up,” she says. “Management makes a real difference in woodland areas.”

“I’ve always liked plants,” Gage continues. “But I got really interested in natives when we were settling into this property, trying to understand how to manage the invasive, non-native plants here.”

In 2018, Gage joined the North Carolina Native Plant Society (NCNPS), which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. Through education, conservation and advocacy, the organization works to protect native plants throughout the state.

“The members of the society are very generous people,” Gage says. “We do a lot of seed swapping and plant trading.” And they share a deep well of knowledge and experience.

Since 2023, Gage has served on the NCNPS executive board as membership chairman, recruiting new members, developing new chapters (there are currently 11 across the state) and producing educational materials.

On her property, she has cataloged more than 700 different species of plants, shrubs and trees, and estimates that about 600 of them are natives.

As we begin to stroll, Gage points out and names the plants, sometimes by the Latin name, sometimes by the common. The names flow from her lips like a familiar melody.

“Anemone, Phlox subulata . . . autumn fern, sensitive fern, Christmas fern, hosta . . . Monarda . . . Alternanthera, Baptisia . . . mountain mint, Solidago, Rudbeckia Henry Eilers . . .” she intones.

Gage tells me that she sometimes mixes hellebores among natives because they deter the deer. She’ll plant daffodils for the same reason.

Though some native plant purists might object, she enjoys introducing exotics like the pineapple lily, native to South Africa.

“I love them,” Gage says. “They’re really cool plants.” They produce bract clusters crowned with foliage that look like tiny pineapples.

“And here is my native amethyst falls wisteria,” she says. “It was beautiful last week. Coming up under that is native Clematis viorna.”

Gage explains that she prefers bedding her plants.

“People who are first learning about native plants tend to think only about meadow settings,” she says. “But meadows are hard to maintain,” Gage adds. “Organized beds are easier to control. And your homeowners’ association won’t be after you,” she says with a laugh.

As we walk, Gage points out more plant types. Then she pauses.

“That’s Amsonia hubrichtii, which has just finished blooming,” she says. “It has this gorgeous, golden-yellow foliage in the fall.”

“Growing next to it is silverrod,” Gage continues. “It’s a variety of goldenrod that’s white. It’s lovely. I got it on a plant rescue.”

“What’s a plant rescue?” I ask.

Ah, the perfect question for the NCNPS board member responsible for membership.

Plant rescues, as it turns out, represent an important society activity.

Following clear protocols, a long-time NCNPS member who specializes in rescues works out agreements on the society’s behalf with owners, engineers and builders to gain access to land slated for development. Some tracts span thousands of acres that will be built on over decades, while others are relatively small. Entities prefer working with the NCNPS because their rescue efforts are covered by insurance.

Properties are photographed and clearly marked by surveyors. Accompanied by experts to help with plant identification, a rescue team of about 15 volunteers collects native plants that will go to botanical gardens, art museums, school and community gardens, as well as to the properties of volunteers.

“The only rule is that none of the rescued plants can be resold,” Gage says.

Do volunteers need big gardens to provide sanctuary for the rescues?

“The typical volunteer takes plants home to a quarter-acre neighborhood lot,” Gage answers.

As we continue our tour, we come upon a couple of my boyhood favorites — jack-in-the-pulpits and trilliums.

Jack-in-the-pulpits are perennial natives that reproduce vegetatively by sprouts from their corms or sexually by their spadix (Jack) and spathe (pulpit), yielding bright-red berries in the fall. Plants can be male, female or both, and can change sexes season to season. The trained eye can detect the plant’s sex by the number of leaflets it produces.

As for the trilliums, Gage has at least half a dozen varieties.

“I purchased most of them at UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens sales,” she says. Others were gifted to her by friends.

“If you’re going to grow trilliums, you better have time,” Gage cautions. “It takes about seven years for them to get established.”

As we continue to walk, she points out blue wood asters, white wood asters, mayapples and another plant that came to her garden as a rescue — dittany.

“It’s a neat little subshrub that has these beautiful, tiny pink blooms,” Gage says. “It likes really dry soil.”

Growing in a shaded bed are yellowroot, wood poppy, glade mallow, wild ginger and phacelia. In a moist area at woods’ edge is a group of taller plants.

“Now these, I just pull out in handfuls,” Gage says. “There are always so many!”

Carolina impatiens — often called jewelweed — is an annual that produces prodigious amounts of seed. Deer love to eat them and they have medicinal value, as well.

“Occasionally, we have gentlemen who cut firewood come by and ask if they can have some of the impatiens,” Gage says. “Apparently, the fluid in the stems will prevent poison oak or cure a case of it.”

We start to head back toward the house. She continues to point out plants along the way.

“Joe Pye weed . . . rattlesnake fern . . . bear’s breeches . . . that’s partridge berry over there — it came from a rescue,” she continues.

“And this is native star hibiscus coming up,” Gage says. She pauses and smiles. “Everybody thinks it’s marijuana!”

Close by the path is a plant with paired leaves shaped like butterfly wings.

“That’s twinleaf,” Gage says. “I just love this plant. It has little white flowers.”

Finally, we pause next to a tree with a wonderful name.

“This is a Carolina silverbell tree,” Gage announces. “In spring, it has gorgeous, papery white flowers. This is my favorite tree.”

When I ask Gage about the future of her sanctuary garden, she smiles.

“Well, we’re in the process of buying 4 more acres from a neighbor, so we’ll have 10 acres,” Gage says.

“The new property is loaded with poison ivy,” she continues. “Some of the vines are as thick as your forearm. And I’m allergic!”

Gage acknowledges that she’ll probably have a half-acre cleared professionally before she starts gardening there.

She hopes one day to have created a sanctuary similar to the Emily Allen Wildflower Preserve in Winston-Salem.

“Our long-term vision is to stay on this land as long as we are physically able,” Gage says. “But we look forward to having the property serve an educational purpose one day.”

For now, she’ll keep tending to her acreage and adding more North Carolina native plants, one rescue at a time.

O.Henry Ending

O.HENRY ENDING

Farm to Fable

A handmade bench sings its story

By John Adamcik

Our family’s kitchen bench sings. Farm songs, mostly. Warm and friendly tunes, passed down through generations.

Some might think it’s the old wood and nails, creaking in protest after decades of heavy use.

Or North Carolina heat and humidity working on the wood Grandpa chose when he built the plank bench for his family of 11 to use in their Michigan farmhouse.

I know better. It’s what’s inside the bench that makes it serenade.

My mother was an upholsterer. When I was young, she’d pay me to remove fabric from heirloom sofas, loveseats and armchairs. By 10, I’d learned how to pull rusty staples and tacks from a frame without damaging the antique, hand-carved wood. I could look at a piece in Mom’s shop and tell you whether the innards were foam, straw or horsehair. 

Just as I can tell you what’s in almost any upholstered furniture, I know what’s in our family’s bench.

It’s stuffed with memories from family gatherings, where Grandma kept court at the dining room table. Her encouraging smile remains in my mind’s eye, a reminder of her unconditional love for all of us in her family. There’s residue from orange Kool-Aid she kept in the fridge for frequent visits by us grandkids. Dregs of the beer Dad and my uncles drank, the kind advertised on TV during Detroit Tigers games in the ’70s. Smoke from cigars the guys enjoyed while playing pinochle in the living room (once the farm granary, before the grandparents moved the family there in the 1940s).

There are echoes of laughter and prayers. Grandpa’s jokes, told in half-Polish/half-English. Silhouettes of the tornado of 1951. An undecipherable howl from an uncle struck by lightning as a boy (he lived). A soft groan of shock from another uncle when he got skunked as a youth.

My grandparents were humble people whose lives reflected their faith, love of family and commitment to our mid-Michigan community. The city’s main employer — Dow Chemical, at the time the world’s largest single chemical plant — emerged in the 1800s to mine and transform the area’s subterranean salt deposits into useful components. Grandpa worked there. Dad and my uncles, too. Salt of the Earth, some said. The area. The people. My grandparents.

The bench is packed with testimonies of their farm life.

Early in Mom’s career she lovingly reupholstered the bench for Grandma with embossed, golden polyvinyl chloride fabric jokingly advertised as the shed “hyde” of a mythical creature (but which came from a factory much like our town’s). Ornamental brass tacks still hold the fabric on the bench’s scuffed brown paint.

When Mom moved to Florida years later, she grew as an artisan. Her skill and work ethic built a client list of the retired, the wealthy and the famous. When a fashion model’s Siesta Key home was featured in a national design magazine, Mom’s work filled every page of that spread. 

My wife and I inherited the bench. I’m keeping it “as-is.” No repainting or recovering it. My kids can do that someday, if they want.

Mom stays with us now. She enjoys sitting on the bench, visiting with family and friends or keeping watch on the stove. The bench sings to her more than anyone.

I understand, because I know the song.

Life’s Funny

LIFE'S FUNNY

Holy Mole-y

Coping with tunnel vision

By Maria Johnson

A woman dressed in gardening boots, jeans and a hoodie, her hair stuffed under a ball cap, walks across her backyard gingerly, dousing the grass with the sudsy contents of a gallon sprayer.

Her cell phone rings in her pocket.

She puts down the sprayer and checks her phone. It’s her mom. She answers.

“What are you doing?” her mom asks brightly.

“Do you really want to know?” Gardening Woman asks.

“Mmhmm,” her mom says.

“I’m spraying the yard with castor oil,” Gardening Woman says.

Silence.

“For moles,” Gardening Woman adds, for context.

“I’ll talk to you later,” her mom says.

It’s late winter. The snow has melted.

The Gardening Couple’s backyard is bursting with promise.

The grass they sowed last fall is coming on, bright green, even in the shady spots.

The maples tease them with ruddy buds.

The crocuses are croaking. Not in a morbid way. No, rather in the tree frog way: cheerfully chirping notes of yellow and purple on the fringes of the natural area, which is landscape-talk for “places they don’t even try to grow things any more.”

Finally, the Gardening Couple has almost finished renovating their raised-bed garden, which had fallen prey to a cycle that many gardeners will recognize: wood rot, which draws bugs, which draw bug-eating critters, which draws a Gardening Dog, who tears the ever-living snot out of the frames.

Board by board, the couple’s Gardening Dog dismantles the frames so thoroughly and so quickly, the Gardening Couple conjectures later, that she must have a YouTube channel on the subject.

“Hi, everyone,” she would say merrily. “Gardening Dog here. Today, we’re gonna take down these raised beds in just a few hours.”

All this happens while the Gardening Couple “works” inside.

“Where is Gardening Dog?” one of them asks blithely.

“Oh, she’s dogging around in the backyard,” the other says.

“Oh, good,” comes the reply.

Lalalala.

This is how society crumbles. Good people tend to their daily lives while the paws of destruction dig away under their noses.

This is also why the Gardening Couple is very familiar with people who work at Lowe’s.

“How’s the family?” the Gardening Woman asks someone in a red vest.

“Good. You back for more cedar boards?” her vested friend asks.

“Yep. Hey, can we have some of these doughnuts meant for contractors?” Gardening Woman asks.

“Sure! You paid for them!”

Hahaha.

Like that.

Anyway, the Gardening Couple’s new, improved raised beds, made with slotted concrete blocks at the joints — burrow into that, critters — is almost finished and ready for the planting of cool-weather greens, flowers and veggies.

Proudly, the Gardening Couple walks outside laden with shovels and dreams. They anticipate the spring day, just a couple of months away, when they will host a small gathering to celebrate the marriage of their older son and his wife. Guests will stroll through the yard, marveling at the peacefulness of their little Eden, the beauty of springtime in the Piedmont, the craftsmanship of the raised beds.

“Did you see the slotted blocks on the corners?” they’ll whisper over their plates.

“And the way they chiseled the cedar planks — which were a tad too wide — to fit the slots snugly?”

“In all my days, I’ve never seen such arugula.”

“Breathtaking.”

These are the thoughts that fill the heads of the Gardening Couple as they walk outside one sunny afternoon to finish their project.

Suddenly, the reverie is shattered.

[CLANK] “OOOOOHHHHH-NOOOOOOOOO!!! ARGGGHHHHHHH!”

The Gardening Woman drops her shovel, grips her head in her hands, falls to her knees, and screams to the heavens.

Half the yard looks like a munitions-testing ground.

Craters yawn with freshly churned dirt.

Patches of new turf lie asunder.

Muddy trenches meander like . . . molehills.

Gardening Dog bounds up, tongue lolling, tail wagging, nose crusted with dirt.

“Yo, family, check it out!” she seems to say. “I took care of those moles for ya!”

Gardening Man looks crestfallen. According to his telling, his life has been one protracted battle with moles.

He retells his war stories: how, as a kid, he helped the maintenance man at his Catholic grade school dispense of moles in the lawn with poisoned peanuts, smoke bombs and pitchforks.

Gardening Woman frowns. She is not a poisoned peanuts, smoke bombs and pitchfork sort of person. Gardening Man knows this.

He continues his epic poem, telling how the moles found him again, early in his marriage to Gardening Woman.

Fortunately, their dog at the time turned out to be a “moler” who brought family members dead moles as gifts. Gardening Man rewarded the dog with bites of steak to reinforce the habit.

Soon, the tunnels and trenches disappeared.

If the current Gardening Dog has ever unearthed a mole, which she must have, she has never shared the bounty.

The thought occurs to Gardening Woman that the mole might have gone into another dark tunnel — Gardening Dog’s digestive system — only to be reintroduced to the yard as fertilizer.

Gardening Woman thinks of mole holes, in every sense of the term. She thinks of how Gardening Dog loves to lick people’s arms and legs.

Ew, she thinks.

There must be a better way.

Gardening Woman reads up on moles. They eat grubs and worms.

Yuck.

But OK.

She looks at galleries of mole pics, absorbing the details of their faces. They have bright red button noses, which sounds cute except the rest of them look like Freddie Krueger plushies, with knife-like fingernails and scrunched-up eyes.

Mole huggers says they’re helpful creatures that aerate your lawn.

Mole haters says they’re destructive pests that ruin lawns.

Gardening Woman thinks they are both.

She is fine with moles being moles, just not where she wants people to mingle, on level ground, and praise her arugula.

She is willing to coexist.

She reads about battery-powered lawn spikes that emit a low-frequency hum, supposedly repelling moles. The problem is, they don’t work very well. Like parents who don’t love, but get used to, their children’s music rattling the walls, it appears that moles don’t love, but learn to live with, vibrating ground.

The safest and most effective way to discourage them — moles, not children — seems to be by soaking the lawn with a solution of castor oil, liquid soap and water.

Like many creatures, it seems, moles do not like the taste of castor oil.

Gardening Woman wonders why any animal that eats grubs would be put off by castor oil, but she accepts the premise and orders a gallon of pure castor oil, enough to purge the city in preparation for a world-record attempt at Most Colonoscopies in a Metro Area in a 24-hour Period. But no. According to Amazon, this is “landscaping” castor oil, a mole and vole deterrent.

Whatevs, Gardening Woman decides. Either way, we’re talking mole runs.

She mixes the oil with lavender-scented Castile soap and water and applies the concoction to the tilled up earth. Never has so much laxative smelled so lovely.

It rains for two days.

On the third day, Gardening Woman ventures out. Gardening Dog follows her to inspect the moonscape.

No new hills.

No new trenches.

Gardening Dog seems uninterested in the wasteland.

Gardening Woman makes a note to buy top soil and grass seed and start over at ground zero. There’s just enough time for grass to sprout before the gathering.

She goes to the “natural area” to check on spring buds.

When she turns around, Gardening Dog is digging again, this time in the un-oiled part of the yard.

What’s that sound? A muffled, maniacal Freddie Krueger laugh coming from under the sod?

The castor oil has worked. Sort of.

Gardening Woman scolds Gardening Dog, marches inside, finds the sprayer and silences her phone. 

Sazerac April 2026

SAZERAC

Art to Heart

“What I’ve realized, regarding how long I’ve been doing it, is that you don’t get better, you just change,” says artist Matthew Micca, whose work will be featured at GreenHill Center for NC Art beginning April 10. Micca, an Asheville resident and contemporary abstract artist who breaks the mold, strives to always produce art that he’s proud of — even if it’s something that has completely strayed away from his norm. From drawing illustrations in his earlier years to falling in love with abstract art, Micca has decided to set aside his panel paintings and, instead, try out three-dimensional cubes that encapsulate his contemporary artist mind. “About a year and a half ago, I figured out how to merge my paintings and bring it to the 3D realm in a way,” he says. He found the switch from 2D to 3D to be easier than expected. His technique involves painting his design on one flat surface of the cube while the excess paint drips down its sides. Asked what he thinks about his previous work, he says: “I recognize that it’s good, but I can’t do that now because I’m past that.” Art, Micca says, is ever changing and constantly moving. He wishes more artists would take risks and evolve their art, which, if you can pluck up the courage to do so, can pull you out of your comfort zone and into daring and bold expression. “I think I’ve gotten braver through the years,” he muses. While his work has changed over time, one thing has remained the same: “My work has always been a mix of geometric and organic forms.” While his shapes, patterns and evolving mediums allow him to express himself, he’s fascinated by viewer interpretations as well. “I love to hear what people see in my work,” he says. So when you catch Micca’s solo exhibition of his 3D-cube work at GreenHill Center for NC Art through June 20, be sure to let him know what you see. Info: greenhillnc.org/exhibitions.

Just One Thing

Art is many things to Greensboro artist Jonathan Vizcuña, but quiet isn’t one of them. Vizcuña believes art should speak for itself — and loudly, at that. With its shiny, eye-catching embellishments, his art illustrates his feelings. “As an artist, that’s one of your goals. I want to have the opportunity to, through my art, fill with joy, touch with emotion and communicate many things to many people,” he says. Years ago, while working as a web designer, he started expressing himself through a hobby he didn’t expect to take off the way it did. “I’ve gone through every single title in web design. That has always been my world. Now, sculpting has become a more personal expression, much slower,” Vizcuña explains. For him, sculpting is a much more intentional process than working on paper. He describes himself as having quiet confidence, unassuming and never boasting but, instead, letting his art toot its own horn. He’s been often told by others that he “should be proud” of his art. “I’m not saying I’m not proud of it, but I never thought I would get so much exposure with my sculptures,” he says. From getting his first exhibition in Deep Roots to now exhibiting at The Center for Visual Artists, Vizcuña has put hours upon hours into sculpting because he believes in the power of his art. If you’re a sucker for art that speaks to — or, in this case, roars at — you, check out Vizcuña’s Apex Noir, seen here, at The Center of Visual Artists exhibit, We Art GSO, through April 18. Info: mycvagreensboro.org/WE-ART-GSO.

Window on the Past

For National Poetry Month, we wanted to highlight the work of a not-so-ancient poet — and no, we’re not talking about Shakespeare. Douglas Cartland, a Gate City resident in the early 1900s, wrote a poem about renowned Greensboro-born writer William Sidney Porter, better known as O. Henry. Cartland calls him “Greensboro’s hero, Greensboro’s star, Greensboro’s outstanding light, Greensboro’s sun in the darkest night.” With words like these, Cartland may have just fancied himself the ‘Boro Bard.

Welcome to the Wordshop

Wanna shake up your reading and writing? Greensboro Bound Book Festival returns April 9–11, celebrating diverse voices and stories with American Kaleidoscope as its theme. Three days of literary activities culminating in one full day of downtown events include perspective-shifting author chats, a palette of poetry, a collage of kiddo content and, of course, reflective — and perhaps refractive — writing workshops. That’s where O.Henry comes in to play.

We’ve teamed up with the festival to lead a few of Saturday’s workshops at the Greensboro Public Library’s Central Library. First, from 10–11:15 a.m., O.Henry editors Cassie Bustamante and David Claude Bailey will reflect on their own path of bringing back to life their personal experience. In a session entitled “That’s My Story,” they’ll offer tips and caveats about coaxing memory into words. Got a memoir ’bout to bust out of your brain? Chapter one starts here.

Then, from 11:30 a.m.–12:45 p.m., O.Henry contributor, author and TVparty! creator Billy Ingram takes you on a journey to your next career with “Writing as a Second or Third Act.” Billy’s worked in big-time advertising as well as entertainment. These days, he spends his time unearthing Greensboro gems in his monthly “Wandering Billy” column and writing gritty features for O.Henry. An actor at heart, he knows something about entering the scene stage, whoops, write after a completely different career

Do you panic when you have to interview a subject? Book your sesh from 1:30–2:45 p.m. with O.Henry founding editor and New York Times-bestselling author Jim Dodson, who leads “The Art of the Research Interview.” After spending years traveling, researching and interviewing along the the Great Wagon Road for his 2025 release, The Road That Made America, Jim’s more than got the chops to teach you how to ask the right questions that allow the conversation to flow freely from your interviewee. We’ve always found that free-flowing whiskey helps, but we’re sure Jim’s got better methods.

Putting a cap on the workshops, Erica Miriam Fabri, author of the 2025 Jack McCarthy Book Prize winner, Morphology, leads “Making the Public Personal: Writing Autobiographical Poetry Inspired by Current Events” from 3–4:15 p.m. Curious how you can use your own autobiography to provide future generations with the true — and poetic — story of the cultural movements or social and political conditions shaping your life? Learn to use your voice as a measure for the times.

No matter what skill it is you’re shooting to sharpen, we’re here to help you find and cultivate your story. After all, we’re writing prose.

And don’t miss out on a full line-up of talented authors, beginning on April 9 with No. 1 New York Times-bestselling author Casey McQuiston, whose book, Red, White & Royal Blue, was made into a 2023 film. Find the schedule of events here: greensborobound.com/2026-festival.

Unsolicited Advice

For the lot of us, 2016 was an era in itself. Groovy, new music albums and the upsurge of pop-culture references, thanks to rising social media, made the year nostalgic. And though it’s worth a scroll through our camera rolls, there is one part of 2016 we keep coming back to — the fashion trends. Some were iconic and some were not so much, but, you’ve got to admit it, no one was rocking ripped, high-rise jeans better than us. It was an experimental year to say the least and we’ve grown through our choices in clothing since then, but it’s hard to focus on current ‘fit picks when we’re mentally stuck a decade before. So we’ve provided a list of trends we advise you to stay away from this time around.

Skinny jeans? More like leg traps — bonus points if they looked like they’d been run over by a lawnmower. Hard to get into and even harder to get out of, these infamously tight jeans have burned a hole — bigger than the purposefully placed one on their knees — in our memory forever. Luckily, we’ve evolved to clothing with a little flare. Never again will we let skinny jeans reemerge from our bin in the attic and never again will we let our legs suffer in a vacuum-seal fit.

Fried, dyed and laid to the side, our hair was nothing more than a rainbow experiment. Arguably one of the most tedious trends — thanks to grown-out roots — ombré hair was a trend of self-expression and individuality. It’s not ridiculous to say that every once in a while we have the urge to grab some hair dye and bring the hot-and-hued hairdo back, but lest we forget the clumps of hair and the big chop that followed.

Paired with a denim jacket and a snapback, thigh-high boots were a sign of the times. Leather, suede or pointed, these boots were versatile and everywhere. We saw them on celebrities, family and even friends. What’s the downside, you say? These boots, turns out, were not made for walking — sure to bring blisters and callouses, but, luckily for us, this 2016 trend didn’t stick to us as tightly as these boots did.