Kitchen Confidential

When Daniel and Kathy Craft decided to update their kitchen, they found themselves looking more to the past than the future

By Billy Ingram

 

Has anyone ever been to a lively party where the most entertaining folks didn’t congregate in the kitchen? It’s the heart and hearth of a contemporary home, a place for relaxation and creative activity, the only room where the entire family daily congregates. That always presents a genuine challenge for interior designers, but even more so when they’re tackling one of the city’s most revered mid-century masterpieces.

“We knew we wanted a Loewenstein,” Kathy Craft says of her and husband Daniel’s search for the perfect home more than a decade ago. They had looked at almost a dozen houses in the Irving Park area designed by famed architect Edward Loewenstein before contacting Lee Carter about the status of the home he grew up and lived in. Was he willing to sell? “Lee contacted us six months later,” Kathy recounts. He told them he would consider an offer, but “wanted the house to remain as is — they wanted it taken care of,” she says. “I walked in, got six feet into the door and I’m like, ‘I don’t even need to see any more.’”

Katie Redhead of Tyler Redhead and McAlister Real Estate is not surprised by the Crafts’ experience. “It’s amazing how we are seeing more demand for the mid-century Loewenstein designed homes,” she says. Sadly, many of Loewenstein’s finest homes fell prey to the bulldozer over the last two decades as developers valued the acreage more than the heritage. “Right now we’ve got such high demand, if one did come on the market I think it would be very well received. And I probably wouldn’t have said that 10 years ago,” Redhead says.

Designed for Wilbur and Martha Carter, the Carter House, located on Country Club Drive, was the architect’s first fully realized Modernist design. Completed in 1951, Loewenstein’s signature can be seen in the integrated carport, slate floors in the common areas front and back on either side of a spacious dining room, the enormous fireplace serving as a load bearing wall, and an array of picture windows encircling the home to allow the majesty of the verdant outdoors into every room.

“We replaced all the windows,” Kathy Craft says. “We’ve been here 16 years and it took us that long to do all of that.” Organized around an L shape, exterior flourishes, repeated in the interior, include native bluestone, brick walls and wormy-chestnut siding. The yard is so large, extending all the way to Cornwallis, there was space for a horse stable.

Influenced by the Usonian houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, the Carter House is literally a work of art, recognized so by the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. “I would say the Carter House, for Loewenstein, put his signature on the map in terms of what he could accomplish,” says Patrick Lucas, director of the School of Interiors at the University of Kentucky and author of Modernism at Home: Edward Loewenstein’s Mid-Century Architectural Innovation in the Civil Rights Era.

According to Lucas, who was on faculty of UNCG from 2002 to 2013, there are probably 20 or 25 of Loewenstein’s houses still standing, “Sprinkled here and yon through the Greensboro area,” he says. “Some in Irving Park. There’s a great one in Pleasant Garden. There’s one in Sedgefield.” In his opinion, the Carter House is one of Loewenstein’s finest, “certainly in terms of the big ones that he was known for. It’s a really splendid home because it has an extra room on the front that is sort of a double living room. It’s a pretty brave space and, as a result, the house is quite open.”

“It had good bones,” Kathy Craft says of the home when they took possession. Because of the engineering bent of Loewenstein’s firm, his homes were almost overbuilt, so solid they don’t have a lot of issues that modern buildings develop over time. “It needed a lot of cosmetic work, ripping the shag carpeting out, stripping and painting, phone lines and curtains, while trying to keep everything as minimal as possible,” Kathy says.

Other than updated appliances, the kitchen hadn’t changed significantly in nearly 70 years. “We lived with the original kitchen the entire time,” Kathy Craft says. “And I was fine with it but Daniel said, ‘Let’s blow it up.’ I wasn’t the instigator there, for once.”

That’s when Emma Legg and Sydney Foley of Kindred Interior Studios were brought in to reimagine that space. “One of the reasons we named our company Kindred,” Legg says, “is that it’s really important to us that each and every project reflects our client’s style and taste, their wants and needs. When someone walks into a space we’ve designed, our goal is for that person to say, like in this instance, ‘Oh, this looks perfect for Daniel and Kathy Craft.’”

“We were just both so excited about the project,” Foley says. “When we pulled up we knew it was going to be really fun because we could get really deep into a project like this because there is such a specific look.” Not only were they going for a mid-century Modern look, “We’re also looking to do the whole house justice because it’s a historic home, it is going to be noted, and we want to make sure we’re doing old Ed [Loewenstein] justice, as well as the Crafts.”

“One challenge that we had is, Kathy and Daniel are both minimalists,” Legg says. “The wall that their range is on backs up to their dining room and it’s rather long. They were pretty adamant that they did not want to fill that wall with upper cabinets.”

That’s when they came up with the idea of adding a thin wedge of shelving above the range that rounds the corner into the housing for the oven and microwave. “This gave us an opportunity to bring the countertop up as a backsplash without going to the full wall,” Legg says. “This keeps the lines very clean but at the same time gives it just a little bit of interest, to keep from being boring. We also added wall sconces for additional cast lighting while they’re cooking and also if they wanted to display any objects, to highlight those as well.”

“We can make anything beautiful,” Foley says. “But for us the measure of a successful kitchen is about function, and how the work flows.” That’s why they worked in tandem with Pat Parr of Classic Construction. There’s a rule of thumb for interior designers called the “Work Triangle” that incorporates a room’s three main items — in this case the refrigerator, sink and range — and how that space functions within the floor plan. “Are you able to get from A to B without having to climb over your island, that kind of thing,” Foley notes. “We get very detailed with our clients about what’s going to be in each drawer, what kind of features do they require, do they need peg storage for dishes, layered storage for silverware?”

The original floors were concrete topped with vinyl-asbestos tiles, all the rage in the fifties. “The Crafts wanted a real terrazzo floor,” Legg says. “Based on the quality of the concrete and the amount of work that they were going to have to do, real terrazzo was not feasible. After a lot of research, we came up with a porcelain tile that looks like terrazzo and, once installed, we felt like it was really beautiful and it did mimic the real thing.”

The result is an oasis of luxurious simplicity with inviting lines reflected in flooring that shimmers in the light. “A lot of other kitchens we’ve seen had a kind of identity crisis,” Foley says. “People try to cram too many design features into a kitchen. Sometimes we just find that less is more in some situations.”

As for the Crafts, they love their sleek, state-of-the-art kitchen. “Oh my gosh, I had no idea it would change my life so much,” Kathy says. “I always liked the old kitchen but now that it’s all new, it’s like, wow, this is really nice. We spend a lot of time there and I haven’t gotten at all tired of cooking over these last few months. It makes day-to-day life much easier.”  OH

Billy Ingram is a former Hollywood movie poster artist and the author of five books.

 

 

When the Carter House won the American Institute of Architects’ N.C.  design award in 1951,  Edward Loewenstein explained his design process to a colleague:

“We started working with the Carters on an extremely contemporary house . . . A local contractor estimated the house and they decided they would rather have a traditional Georgian house. We completed drawings on this, through the working drawing stage and obtained an even more outrageous estimate . . . [Ultimately,] the Carters decided to let us carry the project through as a contemporary project. As it progressed, their parents, who were very conservative, had become very enthusiastic about it and we have received violent comments in both directions from neighbors and friends.”

Loewenstein wasn’t just a mid-century master but a civil rights pioneer in Greensboro. In the early 1950s, he became the first white architect in North Carolina to employ African-American designers to work alongside him. In addition, he also offered opportunities for women to enter the field.

 

Photographs courtesy of David and Lauren Clark.

The Pied Piper of Latham

How Jimmy Donaldson has endeared himself to his four-legged neighbors

By Nancy Oakley   •   Photography by Sam Froelich

 

 

It begins much like the Twilight Bark described in The 101 Dalmatians children’s book and the later Disney film adaptation: As the sun sets, the story’s canine protagonist, Pongo, sounds the alarm to the dogs of London that his litter of puppies has been stolen. His barking signal is picked up by Danny the Great Dane at Hampstead and his smaller yappy sidekick, then transmitted via water pipe by a Scotty to a normally sedate Afghan hound, who emits a howl from an attic window to a pet shop bulldog whose baritone woof is transmitted by a prissy French poodle atop a Rolls Royce . . . and so on until the evening air echoes with the sound of barking and howling. A similar phenomenon occurs every morning in Latham Park as the neighborhood pooches — Scooter, Milly, Archie, Cullen, Dixie and scores of others — respond to a familiar bird call with a chorus of “Woof! Woof! Woof!” that rises to a crescendo of “Roo! Roo! Roo!”

Their excitement stems not from the urgency of a dognapping caper, but the approach of the local Pied Piper, Jimmy Donaldson, his pockets laden with dog biscuits. “I’ve been feeding most every dog in the neighborhood for over 10 years, says the longtime resident who also sees “repeat customers” when his neighbors and their dogs walk by his house up the hill from the park.

Growing up in the Gate City, Donaldson has always enjoyed walking, having been part of an informal group that included the late Gene Johnston, a Greensboro businessman and U.S. House rep who lived on Granville Road. “We were called the G.I.R.L.S.,” Donaldson says with a chuckle: “The Granville International Relations and Lecturing Society. The Republicans would walk on the right side of the street, the Democrats on the left; we’d walk the golf course [at Greensboro Country Club],” he fondly recalls. But over time the group dissolved, and Donaldson, after enduring six bypass surgeries, knew he had to keep moving. His four-legged neighbors provided him with a solution.

Armed with dog biscuits, typically peanut butter-flavored, and a crow call used in turkey hunting (“The turkeys will gobble when they hear it,” Donaldson explains), the Pied Piper of Latham announces his approach. Babe, a black Lab who belongs to Sterling and O.Henry contributor Susan Kelly, serves as hostess of the neighborhood Welcome Waggin’ Committee, as she trots down the driveway, her tail beating like a metronome set on its highest speed. She stops to extend a paw as Donaldson leans down to give her a biscuit. He says Charlotte, David and Martha Howard’s Labradoodle, is arguably the most enthusiastic: “She wags not just the tail but the whole body!” Donaldson notes. “She’s more interested in the lovin’ than the biscuits.” Across the street is Jackie Prevette’s collie, Mokie. Once, when another dog had escaped the confines of his electric fence, Donaldson tracked him down with the crow call. He describes Tilly, the bird dog, as “standoffish,” but to see her bound across the yard at Donaldson’s call, you’d never know it.

Sandra Kay Reynolds’ three goldens, Gunter, Lucy and Lily “only need to hear me utter [Donaldson’s] name, and they rush to the door,” Reynolds says, adding that they once mistook real ducks paddling in Buffalo creek for his signature birdcall. “He’s like the ice cream man for dogs!” Reynolds observes. And indeed, the three cream-colored beauties fairly leap the fence at the sight of their own personal Good Humor Man. The admiration is mutual. “They’re so sweet and beautifully behaved,” Donaldson says with a wide grin.

On each excursion Donaldson clocks about 2 miles as he dispenses biscuits and affection to his community of canines — from Tim and Cameron Harris’ golden, Macy, to Kelly Rightsell’s dog who eagerly seeks out the biscuits through the slats of a fence. Charles and Kay Ivey’s beagle, Beau, is all wiggles when Donaldson ambles up the driveway. “I call him Elvis,” Donaldson says, as he bends down and commands, “Sing for me, Beau!” On cue, the aging dog launches into a strained but continuous baying. He ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, after all.

On rainy days Donaldson makes his appointed rounds in his Jeep Cherokee, always stocked with treats; he estimates that he goes through 4 pounds’ worth a week. The dogs, he says, have all come to recognize the sound of the car’s engine. While en route to a recent fishing trip, he passed Reynolds’ house without stopping — much to Gunter, Lucy and Lily’s great disappointment.

All told, Donaldson says he’s fed and befriended some 45 dogs over the years — and a handful of cats, too — marveling at the distinct personalities of each. His routine “encourages me to live a healthy lifestyle,” he affirms. Perhaps more important: “It’s my joy in the morning.” And without a doubt, the dogs’ too.  OH

Nancy Oakley is the senior editor of O.Henry.

Almanac July 2020

By Ash Alder

 

Weeks ago, before what felt like endless days of rain, two flats of tomato plants mysteriously landed on your porch (how’d they get there?), and so you planted them deep in the sunniest patches of your garden.

A Cherokee Purple here; two Lemon Boys there; a Park’s Whopper by the lush trough of sweet and purple basil; and sundry grapes and cherries scattered about in various pots and planters.

Now, the earliest fruits are ripening, and each new tomato is simply miraculous. One catches the sun, drawing you near — an heirloom cherry among a small cluster of green and yellow fruits. You hold it gently between your thumb and forefinger, can almost feel the life force pulsing inside. Days from now, that tomato will be ready for harvest. Patience, the garden whispers, and you know it’s true: Nature never rushes.

On the other side of the yard, where the Cherokee Purple is soaking up the earliest rays of light, you admire how strong and healthy the plant looks — how fully supported. The advice you were given echoes back like a dream: plant deep; don’t be afraid to bury a few of the leaves; the stem will sprout new roots.

Plump fruit heavy on the vine, you contemplate, is the gardener’s crystal sphere. It tells of the future, yes (tomato pies and homemade salsas). But it also tells of the past — the sunlight and rain; the good fortune; the “invisible” strength, growth, and magic that took root beneath the surface.

Patience, you whisper, reminding yourself that you, too, have much to offer, even if you can’t yet see it. Sunshine or rain, there is wisdom taking root. Be generous with yourself. Allow whatever space, care and time you require. 

The cicadas have mastered this art form. Seventeen years underground, and here they are, screaming out in glorious ecstasy. Not a moment too late or too soon.

 

Homegrown Gourmet

If you find yourself with two pounds of homegrown tomatoes, and none of the following ingredients make you shudder (flour, mayonnaise, milk, cheese and butter), do yourself a favor and look up Laurie Colwin’s Tomato Pie. Summer supper seasoned with scallions and chopped basil, and can you say leftovers?

 

 

 

 

The Goddess Tree

On more than one occasion, I have gasped at the crape myrtle’s likeness to a Greek goddess. The smoothness of its multicolored bark. How its trunk and slender branches seem to embody such poise and grace.

Now through September, the crape myrtle blooms, its bright pink flowers fragrant in the thick, summer air.

Although its English name derived from its myrtle-like leaves and crinkled, tissue-like petals, this ornamental tree is native to China, where its name means “hundred days of red.”

While the crape myrtle is not a true myrtle, the myrtle is known as the flower of the gods, and is specifically associated with Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.

Makes perfect sense to me.

 

The Grand Emergence

If you happened to hear — or are still hearing — the deafening hum of the million-plus “Brood IX” cicadas predicted to emerge in our state per acre after 17 years underground, then you have witnessed one of the fullest, most jubilant expressions of life on Earth.

Sometimes we forget how miraculous it is just to be here. And how wild. 

This dreamy month of summer, when the Earth is pulsing, buzzing, screaming with life in all directions, we remember. Ripe peaches and wild blackberries. Cornsilk and crickets. Butterfly weed and hummingbird mint.

Ripe whole peach fruit with green leaf isolated on white background with clipping path. Full depth of field.

It’s all a gift. 

The garden is ripe for harvest, and everything we need is here. Our only requirement, from time to time, is to celebrate our great fortune.

Happy Fourth of July, friends.  OH

Rescue Me

A Loving tribute to the dogs that found us

Photographs by Bert VanderVeen

Moose

Fourth time’s the charm

Lauren Riehle and her husband, Josh, are veterans of the animal rescue circuit. She serves as executive director of Red Dog Farm Animal Rescue Network, a remarkable organization started in 2006 by Garland and Gary Graham that has saved and placed, through its network of volunteers and foster families, more than 50 different species and 4,000 different animals, ranging from emus to cats, hedgehogs to dogs, into new homes.

Two years ago, the Riehles lost their beloved German Shepherd mix, Harley, a wonderful dog that served as a therapy dog and helped Lauren teach about animal rescue in the classroom. “We were heartbroken to lose Harley,” she says. “We absolutely adored that dog.”

They agreed to keep an eye out for another large breed dog that would  get along with Penny and Gibson, a pair of highly independent Shelties the couple adopted over the years.

A year ago, Red Dog Farm’s small animal specialist, Haley Garner, phoned Lauren to say that she’d found the Riehles’ next dog — a 4-month-old male German shepherd puppy that had already had three different owners. “Naturally, my question to Haley was what was wrong with the dog?”

The short answer is nothing. The pup had been with potential owners who, for reasons ranging from work schedules to personal allergies, simply could not give the young shepherd the kind of home he deserved.

Lauren and Josh decided to take in the pooch as a foster case. “We were frankly blown away when we met him,” Lauren picks up the tale. “He was almost the spitting image of Harley and such a really sweet dog. We decided to add him to our family.”

The first thing the pup needed was a permanent name. “We sat on our back deck and considered a lot of different names. Josh, who is 6-foot-8, wanted a big-dog name, and so did our son, 7-year-old Drew.”

“The boys,” as she calls them with a laugh, settled on the name “Moose.”

Since that time, Moose has lived up to his name in numerous ways. In just one year, he weighs in at 85 pounds, growing so rapidly the couple decided to have his DNA tested to determine if he might have some Great Dane in him. The test confirmed that aptly named Moose was a pure German Shepherd — just a very large one.

“It’s uncanny how similar he is to Harley,” she reports. “He loves to run and tumble in the yard with Drew and Penny our younger Sheltie, though she makes it clear who is really in charge. Gibson, who is 15, prefers to simply ignore him — which is hard to do since he’s still growing and is really one big goofball, always ready to play.” Lauren reports that Moose has become Drew’s favorite playmate. “They love to lie together on the couch watching movies. He doesn’t grasp the whole social distancing thing,” she adds with a laugh.

Like his beloved predecessor, Moose is also very gentle and smart. Lauren envisions him possibly someday becoming an outstanding therapy dog himself.

“He seems to have the perfect personality for it — loves people and other animals. Everyone is his friend.”

Moose is living proof, she adds, that rescued animals often find their way to the place — and the people — where they were meant to be.

— Jim Dodson

 

Amazing Gracie

100 proof Bull

Maybe we can blame it on very good bourbon.

Two years ago this November, as my wife Wendy and I were returning by car from Chicago where we’d shared Thanksgiving with my daughter and her fiancé’s family, we decided to stop at the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky, to pick up some Christmas spirits and toast our expand family.

During the sampling tour, we fell into conversation about our first meeting with Walnut, a muscular brindle pit bull that Maggie and Nate rescued from a city-run animal control center in Chicago just hours before the dog was scheduled to be put down. Walnut’s previous life on the embattled streets of the Windy City’s South Side left him emotionally scarred and with few options. He had twice been adopted only to be sent back to the shelter for aggressive behavior.

As a desperate final gambit to save him, friends who worked as volunteers at the shelter — “a place full of stray street dogs nobody ever comes to see, much less adopt,” as Maggie describes it — placed Walnut’s otherworldly face online for Valentine’s Day, prompting my daughter and her squeeze to swoop in and rescue the big fellow in the nick of time. The addition of Walnut expanded their family to four, including a sweet beagle mix from Tennessee named Billie Holiday that Maggie rescued during her years in New York City.

Walnut quickly bonded with his new owners and Billie Holiday, yet his emotional issues, perhaps a form of doggie PTSD, a propensity to lose control at sharp noises and around certain kinds of people and small yappy dogs, led to a year of challenging rehabilitative work with a trainer.

“In truth, he kind of flunked out of the class,” Maggie concedes with a laugh, “because he never really learned the difference between play and aggression. But we weren’t about to give up on him. On the plus side he turned out to be very loving and responsive, a big needy child.” Their experience with Walnut seems to confirm the wisdom of top dog trainers that there’s no such thing as bad dogs, only bad owners.

In any case, as we headed for our hotel in the beautiful Kentucky hill country, my bride mused: “You know? Seeing Walnut and Billie makes me think maybe we should adopt a rescue, too.”

I reminded her that we already had two terrific dogs — a wise old gal named Mulligan (I call her “The Mull”) that I found running wild and free as a pup beside a busy highway a dozen years ago, and a sweet-tempered purebred, middle-aged golden retriever named Ajax (a.k.a. “Junior”) that I’d given Wendy for our 10th wedding anniversary. Mully was almost 13. Junior was now 8. Did we really need a third — and a rescue?

“Wouldn’t hurt to look,” she came back.

Not 40 seconds later, she showed me a photo on her iPhone. “So what do you think of this dog? Her name is Cardinal.”

I saw a chocolate-brown dog with a bright white chest, intelligent eyes and alert ears. Festively draped with colored Christmas lights, she was the shelter Dog of the Month sponsored by Lucky’s Pet Resort & Day Spa in Greensboro.

“That looks like a pit bull,” I warily pointed out.   

“I know.” Wendy said. “Doesn’t she look sweet?”

Cardinal had been a resident of the Guilford County Animal Shelter for months, a refugee from the streets of south Greensboro, assumed to be roughly 2 years old, “sweet-tempered and loves to play,” read her police file, er, shelter profile. “Good with other dogs.”

Wendy gave me what I call The Look. “I think we should save her.”

And so, one week later, I drove out to Lucky’s to pick up my wife’s Christmas present, wondering what kind of challenge lay ahead. I’d spent the week reading up on pit bulls on the American Kennel Club’s website  and other sources and was surprised by what I learned.

Pit bulls were created by cross-breeding traditional bulldogs and English terriers, which produced a tenacious animal used in pit fighting until the British government outlawed the sport in the mid-19th century, at which point dog-fighting went underground. In his fascinating 2006 New Yorker essay on what prejudice against pit bulls can teach us about racial profiling of both human beings and dogs, writer Malcolm Gladwell pointed out that though pit bulls have been responsible for numerous well-publicized attacks on humans in recent years, not to mention becoming the targets of civic bans, evidence is overwhelming that the breed is no more aggressive and dangerous than other large breeds — unless trained to be so.

The line that just jumped out at me from a leading expert in canine behavior: “A mean pit bull is a dog that has been turned mean, by selective breeding, by being cross-bred with a bigger, human-aggressive breed like German shepherds or Rottweilers, or by being conditioned in such a way that it begins to express hostility to human beings.”

In Britain, I also learned, pit bulls are especially prized for their gentleness with children and are often trained to be therapy dogs for their keen intelligence, devotion and responsiveness to positive human interaction. Also, not every pit bull is the same breed.

Young Cardinal turned out to be a Staffordshire bull terrier. I read up on her type, too.

“From his brawling past,” noted the breed’s American Kennel Club profile, “the muscular but agile Staffordshire bull terrier retains the traits of courage and tenacity. Happily, good breeding transformed this former gladiator into a mild, playful companion with a special feel for kids.”

That was promising. Sort of.

Then there was this from the Staffordshire Bull Terrier Club of America:

“They are tough, courageous, tenacious, stubborn, curious, people-loving and comfort-loving, protective, intelligent, active, quick, and agile . . . Staffords love to play tug-of-war and to roughhouse, but YOU must set the rules and YOU must be the boss.” SBTC goes on to say that the Staffords’ alert, muscular appearance is very striking. They look tough, and that can be a positive deterrent to thieves. But because of their natural fondness for people, most Staffords tend to protect people and not possessions. “A Staffordshire bull terrier desires, more than anything else, to be with its people.” Quoting a chapter from Steve Eltinge’s The Staffordshire Bull Terrier in America, the site concludes: “From the time he awakens in the morning until the quiet of night, a Stafford lives life to the fullest.”

Cardinal seemed worth the risk, though she did have one major issue.

Though young, she suffered from an advanced stage of heartworms that was being kept in check by monthly medication. We were warned that if we adopted the dog, she would need an expensive and lengthy treatment regime to save her life. Among other things, her movements would need to be restricted and she should not be allowed to run for months for fear of sudden cardiac arrest.

Truthfully, as I drove out to Lucky’s to sign the papers and pick her up, I was still having a little debate in my head. Did we really want to bring a damaged pit bull of unknown origin into our happy dog family? Did I mention that we also have a cranky old cat, saved as a kitten from the gentrified streets of Southern Pines? His name is Boo Radley, and he’s highly independent and not just a little pushy. How would Boo take to a pit bull? Or worse, vice versa?

The first thing we did was give her a new name. A new life warranted a new name. I lobbied for “Santa Claws” but we settled on “Gracie,” a name we hoped she would grow into.

And grow she did.

Over the next year, she put on almost 20 pounds, indicating she was much younger than believed.

After some initial tension with our two resident dogs, they quickly settled into a friendly routine with Gracie actually deferring to the household grande dame, Madame Mully, who only grows agitated and rushes in to nip the newcomer whenever she sees me rough-housing or playing tug-of-war with Gracie, her two favorite games. We took to calling Mully “The No-Fun Nun.” The funny thing is, if she wished to do so, Gracie could inflict terrible damage on the old girl. But she doesn’t. Gracie politely defers every time.

Junior, on the other hand, became Gracie’s best pal, the two of them typically sharing a couch — or their owners’ marital bed — whenever possible.

Even Boo Radley has developed a guarded affection for “The Bull,” as I often call her — especially during morning walks when she drags me around the neighborhood on her leash, striking fear only into the hearts of fleeing rabbits and squirrels dumb enough to invade our backyard. I even trained her to snap carpenter bees out of the air.

Almost everything about this once-lost dog, I must say, has proved heart-warming and amazing.

In short, she is everything a Stafford is said to be: tough, courageous, tenacious, stubborn, curious, people-loving and comfort-loving, protective, intelligent, active, quick and agile as a world-class athlete.

Thank God she doesn’t care for good Kentucky bourbon.  
— Jim Dodson

Pilot

Seen in Mississippi, Herd in N.C.

Having flown in from Greensboro, there I was at the Sonic Drive-In in Pearl, Mississippi.

“You sure came a long way,” said a guy who’d struck up a chat, “just for a dog.”

Yep! About four states and 750 miles. Suddenly I felt rather stupid about it. Just what was I doing, adopting a dog I hadn’t even met, in a place so far from home?

I was a bit lost, honestly. Three months before, I’d seen my beloved border collie, Sully, get hit by a car on Church Street. Later at the vet, I stroked him and said goodbye before he was put to sleep. Not long after, in a round of layoffs, I lost the job I’d loved for 10 years.

Now, two weeks into unemployment, here I was, tired and anxious and worried that I’d made a very foolish mistake.

It was all my friend Teresa’s fault. Several weeks after Sully died, she saw an online posting for a beautiful, 7-year-old tricolor border collie in Dallas. He was a much-loved pet, but a family situation was forcing the owner to rehome him. (And, key fact: A rescue group had volunteered to deliver the dog.)

I was intrigued. A good dog is like a good husband: Hard to find. I love border collies — herding dogs bearing an intelligence and loyalty that make them trustworthy, playful and affectionate. But with no sheep to keep them busy, I need that rare border collie blessed with a calm temperament — an “off switch,” as folks say. In short, I like a working dog whose favorite part of the day is lunch hour.

On a video the owner sent, the dog appeared smart and strikingly laid-back. His eyes, though, sealed the deal. I saw a kind, eager-to-please nature in his gaze. I’ve had collies since I was a child; this, my instinct said, was a good one. 

When the rescue group’s delivery offer fell through, there I was, my heart pounding as I waited to meet my new best friend.

Now, I’ve done enough online dating to know that photos, even videos, can be deceiving. The “real thing” is often different, often a disappointment.

An SUV with Texas plates drove up, and the dog jumped out. I took one look and saw the intelligence, the graceful herder’s gait, and most of all those kind brown eyes.

I knew: I’d come a long way, and it was worth the trip.

He had a name, of course: Pilot. And in the year since he’s been my companion, my hiking buddy, my solace, my guide. When we walk, he’s always ahead of me, leading the way. And each time he cranes his neck around to make sure I’m still following, then flashes his happy grin, I know I didn’t go too far for a dog.

Life works funny sometimes. We don’t always know where we’re going and sometimes we’re surprised at where we end up. Sometimes that spot is the Sonic Drive-In in Pearl, Mississippi.
But if we’re lucky, we get a Pilot to guide us home.    — Lucinda Hahn

Bundle of Joy

Christine Catania gives a new meaning
to dog-boarding

Christine Catania’s widely known as the Triad’s Ice Queen, a shortened version of her mobile business, Ice Queen Ice Cream. But she is, in fact, a softie who serves frozen treats and saves rescues.

Catania was content with her pack of two that included Moxie, an “adorable and super smart” 12-year-old mixed breed found in 2008 wandering in the snow, and Lulu, the American Staffordshire terrier/boxer/beagle “steamroller of love,” who was down on her luck when Catania adopted her through Dr. Janine Oliver and Alison Schwartz of All Pets Considered. “I never wanted three dogs, but thought I could foster a puppy,” says Catania.

Then along came Joy.

Primarily American bulldog, with a distinctive black-and-white mask, which is all-natural, and a perfect foil during a pandemic, Joy, who will be 1 year old on July 12, was born while being fostered by another family. “Her mom was at the Forsyth County Animal Shelter and was being fostered while she had her puppies. Her family fell in love and adopted her” Catania explains. Having grown up among animals in her native New Jersey (“Our childhood friends were parrots, parakeets, horses, dogs, cats, guinea pigs . . . we had a zoo!”), Catania was no stranger to fostering dogs. She regularly volunteers with Merit Pit Bull Foundation in Greensboro whose mission, she says, is one of rescue and outreach for pit bulls.

“I’ve always loved pit bulls since my sister adopted one from the shelter in New Jersey in 1998,” she recalls. “She had her throughout her life; she was an extraordinary dog.”

She has since sought rescue organizations after her move to the Gate City to study art at UNCG and began fostering some nine dogs ago, her first attempt being her most ambitious: a 130-pound Great Dane.

Learning to work with socially anxious animals and those with separation anxiety or fear aggression, Catania takes advantage of “so many resources and training online, with free websites on YouTube.” Patience is also key.

“I’m calm and patient, and take little steps,” she explains.

Not that she needed to worry about anxiety or aggression in her newest charge, who even accepts her rescue cat, Steve. “She was so perfect!”  Catania recalls, her affection for Joy palpable.

At 44.9 pounds of “pure muscle,” Joy — named for Joymongers craft beer — is athletic and “also the smartest and most endearing, the most incredible puppy,” Catania says. Joy is also agile and sufficiently fearless enough to have begun mastering paddle boarding. Catania’s partner, by the way, has a standup paddle boarding business.

Catania says the dog likes to hit Lake Brandt and “jumps right on the board” kitted out in her own lifejacket. Joy even has a Facebook page dedicated to her water sporting fun: Joy, the SUP Synergy SUP PUP.

It’s a good life for the pooch and her two stepsisters, especially when Catania, a self-described “homebody,” prepares unusual flavor combinations for Ice Queen in her home time. Her treats are many and varied, but Ice Queen’s specialty are 15 varieties of handmade ice cream “sammiches” with whimsical names such as King Kong, Big Bird and Midlife Crisis — sized petite or Mac Daddy.

And for canines?

Pupsicles, of course, made of yogurt, honey and peanut butter. Catania creates them for dog-related events and has occasionally sold the treats for the benefit of animal rescue. During the pandemic she has sold human and dog treats through her web site,
www.icequeenicecream.com, and made donations of “sammiches” to front-line workers at Cone Hospital, when she wasn’t tooling to planned stops throughout the Triad in her gaily painted converted short buses, Snow Drop and Shortcake. One hopes, with warmer, humid days approaching, she’ll be able to tour randomly, selling “sammiches” to humans and keeping a supply of pupsicles on hand “to give to puppers.”

Catania doesn’t charge for these, she quips merrily, “because dogs don’t carry money.”    — Cynthia Adams

A Rose by Any Name

David and Pamela McCormick’s new addition

If Charles Dickens had written dog stories, the unlikely journey of a redbone coonhound named Mocha that became a Rose would make a true page-turner.

Just over 18 months ago, the young female dog wandered up to a house in southern Virginia, emaciated and pregnant. The stray was pitifully hobbling on three legs, probably the result of an unhappy run-in with a car.

The next day, the folks who took her in served as midwife for the birth of eight puppies. Through their family connections to Sedgefield Animal Hospital and Red Dog Farm Animal Rescue Network, the pups are placed in foster homes. All were soon successfully adopted.

Their sweet mama was treated at Sedgefield Animal Hospital, undergoing a procedure that removed the damaged ball and socket of her shattered hip, allowing new cartilage to form a “false” ball joint as the hip heals. The prognosis was good. In time, even her limp would fade.

As all of this was happening, David and Pamela McCormick were thinking their 12-year-old, female Cairn terrier, Coco, could use a new companion following the recent demise of their older male Cairn terrier, Charlie.

With the assistance of Alison Schwartz of All Pets Considered, the McCormicks brought home a young rescued female Dachshund only to find that the match was not a good one. “She was a little too wild for Coco’s tastes,” says David, an IT specialist who works at UNC-Chapel Hill. Wife Pamela is a schoolteacher.

A short time later, however, the McCormicks checked out the Facebook videos of Schwartz’s weekly Pet of the Week segments with Lora Songster of WMAG-99.5 radio. When they heard Schwartz describe Mocha as “about the sweetest dog imaginable,” they decided to go have a look — and found, in January of last year, the perfect rescue to adopt.

There was only one apparent problem.

“We couldn’t have a Coco and Mocha under the same roof,” says David with a laugh, “so we gave her a new name that really seemed to suit her: Rose.”

Early on, Rose was extremely shy with her new owners, however, preferring to initially stay in the large fenced backyard of the McCormicks’ house off Fleming Road. She also suffered nightmares. “Blood-curdling screams two or three times a night. We would sit down and hold her,” David provides. “It probably took six months to get over those.”

The McCormicks’ patience eventually paid dividends. As Rose’s hip healed, the nightmares ceased. “It’s funny,” he adds, “It’s almost as if one day she woke up and realized she was where she really belonged. Ever since then she has been a joy in our family; even Coco, who had no interest in another dog, accepts her. She’s a big goof, actually, loves to run and play, sometimes spins crazy circles. She howls with pleasure for her supper. And every day she wakes up delighted to see us — even if we’re away only a few minutes.”

The McCormicks report that Rose adores her daily 2-mile walk around the neighborhood. “The transformation has been amazing to see,” adds David. “She is healthy and full of energy and really one of us now.”    — Jim Dodson

 

Abiding with Bella

Paw de deux

Mary Cole has always been an inveterate walker. “It’s what I enjoy,” she says. Growing up in Leicester in the Midlands region of England, she was accustomed to taking “long walks and treks” by herself. In those days, she kept a cat around the house for companionship, but it wasn’t until her late husband, Trevor, presented her with a golden retriever as a wedding present that dogs became central to Mary’s life. “I’m a shy person,” says the self-professed loner and animal-lover. “Give me a good book and I’m happy. Give me a drink and you don’t know what’s going to come out of my mouth!” she quips. “But I love my own company — me and me. Me and me get on just fine — and Bella, of course. She thinks I’m wonderful.”

Thanks to Bella, a tail-less, 8-year-old dachshund/beagle mix with perhaps a touch of terrier, Mary never walks alone. The two often stroll through the green expanse of Guilford Hills Park and its suburban environs, and before the pandemic struck, along the wooded trails of Military Park. Its closure, along with the local libraries’, was “a great sadness” to Mary, who would often drive by the closed gates hoping to find them open again. In the interim, Country Park would have to do. “I walk Bella a lot, Mary explains. As in, three times a day. “We both like to eat,” she adds. “I can’t imagine what we’d look like if we didn’t!” 

Mary and her current husband, Ervin, whom she met while working as a receptionist at PBM Graphics (“because of my accent,” she jokes. “Open my mouth. Get a job.”) adopted Bella four years ago through Thomasville’s Ruff Love Rescue. Then called Esther, owing to a star-shaped marking on her chest  (“I can’t imagine calling her Esther!” exclaims Mary), they had noticed the dog, as well as a whippet on the organization’s web page. At the arranged meeting in High Point, Ruff Love’s representatives introduced three dogs, Bella being the last. “She came trotting in and sat between Ervin’s legs. So we said, ‘Well, that’s it, then,’” Mary recalls. A bonus was the fact that Ruff Love would return the adoption fee after two weeks, should dog and owners be incompatible.

But that’s hardly the case with Bella, “a very mannerly girl,” as Mary describes her genial sidekick, though she’s cautious around other dogs during their turns around the neighborhood (and, of course, the Coles’ other rescue, a feral cat named Nala). “People approach you and say, ‘My dog’s friendly.’ Oh? Good for you. Mine’s not,” Mary says, explaining that Bella has been known to “rear up” around aggressive canines, especially if they’re unleashed.

Ervin sometimes ribs Mary about her lax dog training, especially while she’s watching reruns of Cesar Millan’s Dog Whisperer. Mary’s retort: “We’re happy as we are. We don’t want to be too good. Good people are boring. Good dogs are boring as well.”    — Nancy Oakley

 

Baxter

A port in the storm

We were in Lowe’s in Southport, as our condo seems ill-fated with storms frequently hitting the tiny town, requiring us to make constant repairs. 

Our dog Patch has been going on these hardware store forays and anticipates the treats from Lowe’s staffers.  

He was in the cart, munching happily on a dog biscuit, when I felt a tap on the shoulder.

“Is that a wirehaired fox terrier?” a young woman asked. I explained that Patch was a Schnauzer, though liver-colored. You might mistake him for an overgrown hamster. He appeared in O.Henry two years ago when he was a mere pup.

 The young woman, Melissa, had several boisterous, chatty red-haired children hanging off her cart. Small hands grabbed for Patch. She told me they, too, had a terrier. Then, her face crumpled. Hers had to stay out in the yard because he sometimes snapped at the children.

“We won’t be able to keep Baxter,” she said sadly. “We want a situation for him like your dog’s.”

I digested this. “You mean, you want to place him?”

“Yes,” Melissa said. “Baxter’s been living outside the last four years. He’s 5.”

I asked for contact info and pictures, explaining we had sometimes helped place dogs.  

“Maybe you’ll want to try keeping him inside again?”  

She shook her head doubtfully.

My husband had been investigating wirehaired terriers. This seemed providential.

That same night, lightning flashed and rain lashed as thunder reverberated. I thought of a little terrier relegated to endure it alone. Sleep was fitful.

We reluctantly returned home the next morning, knowing Baxter deserved help. 

Was I insane? There was no calm in the inner storm of our family life. Work was intense; more important, my mother was dying.  

In a few days, messages arrived with a picture of Baxter, appearing too thin and in need of a bath. But he was a beautiful animal.

We exchanged texts. She had him groomed, and when I saw the picture of the little guy all spiffed up, my heart sank further. How could she possibly give him up?  

I assured Melissa we would help place him, urging her not to surrender him before we could return. I asked friends if they might be interested in adopting Baxter. No dice.

Meanwhile, my mother was worsening.  

While I was with her, my husband, Don, drove back to Southport to pick up Baxter but was conflicted. “What if this dog is a problem?”

Of course, he has problems, I thought privately.

Days later, Don had a list of offenses: Baxter was having accidents in the house. He was aggressive over toys.

Would he harm easygoing Patch? 

We arranged to have Baxter neutered. Diana Singleton, a trainer, met with us to evaluate him. 

“Don’t leave the two alone for six weeks,” she advised, looking at Patch. “You need to be sure this dog can be trusted.” 

Don was grim about Baxter’s potential. “He’s a jerk,” he pronounced. “He growls at me. Offers to bite me. He chews up all of Patch’s balls. Takes every single stuffed animal outside. He doesn’t obey.”  

What I saw was a dog who had been shoved outside to fend for himself. He feared everything: even a gentle rain caused him to scuttle back through the dog door. Baxter, like me, was overwhelmed. When I hugged him, he stiffened, offering a low, ominous growl, and I fought back tears of frustration.

My mother died within weeks. Baxter had to have absorbed that tumult, possessing exquisite animal sensitivity.

As I see it, Baxter and I are both in recovery.  

Seven months on, Baxter is slowly relaxing. He’s eating, walking and playing with more abandon. His limbs are looser. He offers me occasional licks on the ankle before shyly looking away.

“He’s smart,” says Don. “And is settling down really well as his tension lessens and he understands us. And, we are learning to understand him. He’s a vocal dog, not an angry dog. He loves to lick and chew and hang on to his toys. But,” my husband concedes, “He does not bite. I misread him as a biter.”

He acts more and more like a dog who belongs to someone.  

He belongs to us.

And we are going to be OK.

– Cindy Adams

Stay-At-Home Improvement

Minus social dates, many folks updated their digs
during COVID-19 closures

By Maria Johnson   •   Photographs by Amy Freeman

 

 

Every time one door closes during a pandemic, another door opens at a paint store.

For many homeowners, the combination of spare time, bored children and a $1,200 stimulus payout from the feds has led to a serious outbreak of home-and-garden projects.

Several of our readers took the opportunity to zhuzh their surroundings — maybe because things you can tolerate during the normal sprint of life make you go ARRRGHHH! during a lockdown.

But as these readers prove, when life gives us ARRRGHHHs, it’s possible to make them into AHHHHHs!

A Moveable Makeover

“Home is Where We Park It.”

So reads a playful decal on the refrigerator inside the Mercer family’s camper, a 2008 Trail-sport that has transported them to many beautiful places, geographically and emotionally. Deb Mercer, husband Andy, and their three kids pulled the 29-foot trailer on a tour of the United States when Andy retired from Air Force active duty in 2012.

With extra downtime this spring, Deb focused on beautifying the camper’s overwhelmingly brown interior because, as she puts it, “It was ugly when we bought it. Most campers really are.”

Guided by a blog post (“My $500 Camper Remodel That I Did All by Myself,” at proverbs31girl.com), the Mercers spent two months transforming beige blah to farmhouse fresh.

Thanks to gallons of paint and yards of peel-and-stick surfaces (vinyl hardwoods, wallpaper and countertop contact paper) plus “shiplap siding” cut from lightweight floor underlayment, and new upholstery stitched from canvas drop cloths, the kitchen perks in crisp black and white. Ditto the bathroom, now gleaming with vinyl tiles and punctuated by a turquoise cabinet.

The camper no longer appears tuckered out from its travels. Neither do its travelers, who crash on new mattresses and bedding, which means the family can once again let the good times roll.

What the Deck?

You’ve heard of lake life — the kicked-back lifestyle of people who live at water’s edge?

Well, Liz and Greg Pendergrass embody deck life, the al fresco aesthetic of people who regularly walk the planks.

“We bought the house for the deck,” say Liz Pendergrass. “It’s almost the full length of the house.”

Every few years, the couple spends two weekends washing and staining the weathered boards. But COVID-19 — and its captive audience — presented another option.

When grown sons Christopher and Peter came home for little brother John’s drive-through graduation from St. Pius X Catholic School, the Pendergrasses summoned all hands on deck. Then they passed out brushes and rollers.

The weekend after John’s Thursday graduation from 8th grade, the family of five sealed the deal, working as a team to apply a new color of semi-transparent deck stain: natural cedar.

Turned out, it was orange. Really orange.

“My youngest son said, “This is like rolling on macaroni and cheese,” according to Liz, who panicked. Silently.

“It’s kind of like a woman who colors her hair a totally different color, and she looks at it and says, ‘Oh, my God, what have I done?’ Then a couple of days go by, and she says, ‘You know, I kind of like it.’”

Now, Liz loves her hair. Er, deck. It’s so much brighter than before, partly because she bought some cushions for the deck, and son Peter helped to arrange the potted plants differently. Liz especially loves the palms that decorated her church during the Easter season.

To be clear, and to keep Liz from going to “heck” for swiping palms, we should say that Liz works in the office at St. Pius X, and she waited until the plants went into the trash after church’s highest holiday. “That’s when I snatched them — and resurrected them,” she says.

New life for the palms.

New life for the deck.

And no one goes to heck.

 

Beachy Keen

The family that stays (and stays and stays) together, renovates together.

At least that’s true in the home of Annie and Mike Vorys.

“It’s how we bond,” says Annie, O.Henry’s digital content manager.

When the lockdowns snapped into place, she and Mike decided to overhaul three adjoining rooms: foyer, living room and dining room. The project became a family affair with daughter Liv, 8, and son Matt, 7, using a chop saw and nail gun (under Mike’s close supervision) to help make board-and-batten wainscoting, a new side table, two end tables and side-by-side coffee tables.

As a Mother’s Day present, Mike built a round table for the dining room. Annie’s mom scored some white grommet drapes from Goodwill. A repainted chandelier and new can lights illuminated the room’s improvements.

In the living room, Mike crafted two floor-to-ceiling bookcases with interior lighting. Annie livened all three rooms with bright blue paint, cinching the nautical feel of the project. “Our favorite place in the world is Lakeside, Ohio,” Annie says, referring to the resort community on Lake Erie. “Everything is very beachy in the house where we stay.”

Family photos and mementoes adorn the walls: a fly-fishing rod Mike’s dad made; red-and-white Boy Scout signal flags from Annie’s father; a poem penned by Annie’s late sister; and sheet music autographed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, composer of the hit musical Hamilton, a favorite of Annie and her mom.

From the living room ceiling hangs a mobile of ginkgo leaves by Greensboro sculptor Jay Jones, reminding Annie and Mike of their son Carpenter, who died at birth in 2012. The hospital put ginkgo leaf symbols on the doors of bereaved families as a sign of strength, peace and hope.

“We took things that reminded us of the most important people in our lives and put them up,” Annie says.

 

Backyard Bliss

Around Christmas, architect Steve Johnson drew up plans for several backyard projects that he and his wife, Erin, figured would take a year to complete.

Then came a pandemic, and suddenly the Johnson family was awash in time and children with no after-school plans (read: free labor).

“I looked at my wife and said, ‘Maybe it’s time to teach them how to spread mulch,’ ” says Steve, director of design and construction for Presbyterian Homes, an organization that builds and runs retirement communities.

Steve worked from home and office this spring. Arriving home mid-afternoon to relieve Erin — who was also working from home, overseeing the kids’ online schooling, and chipping away at a doctorate — Steve pulled 15-year-old Emma-Claire and 11-year-old Nolan off their Xbox, TikTok and cell phones and into the yard for a few hours of “sweat equity”.

Together, they created planting beds, tucking in flowers and shrubs plucked from local nurseries and from Erin’s parents’ yard. Steve built a beefy cedar frame for one hammock and draped another sling from frame to tree, creating a hangout duplex.

“My wife and I like to sit out there and talk in the evenings,” he says.

For the kids, he designed and built an elaborate support for a stand-on Swurfer swing. The kids lobbied for a swimming pool — motion denied — but they did score a trampoline with sprinkler attachment atop a cushy mulch pad.

The result was a private playground that the whole family can take credit for. “We’ll sit out there on the back deck, and the kids will be like, ‘You know, I remember the day we put that in,’” says Steve.  OH

Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. She can be reached at ohenrymaria@gmail.com

Simply Summer

Seven local chefs serve up easy-to-prepare courses for seasonal eating

By Maria Johnson

 

Feeling the heat of summer? It’s a good time to head for the kitchen and KISS:

Keep It Small and Simple.

Because gatherings this time of year are likely to be modest and trips to the store less frequent, we asked local chefs to contribute summer recipes with eight or fewer ingredients. We were feeling generous, so we spotted them the salt and pepper.

Whether you’re slaking a single appetite or schlepping your family’s chow to a well-spaced picnic, these recipes are easy to assemble and can be scaled up or down. Several of our hometown pros went off-menu to create new dishes for O.Henry readers, so don’t be surprised if these courses taste as good as something you’d get in a restaurant — and remember the chefs’ generosity in these customer-starved times.

 

 

Pasta Perfect

Pastabilities

Cindy Essa, noodler-in-chief at Pastabilities, collaborated with

Chef Jason Dingman (picture right), a 20-year veteran of the restaurant, to come up with this light and refreshing orzo salad. It’s a knockout with fresh basil and tomatoes, but dried basil and sun-dried tomatoes work just fine. This versatile salad may be served as a meal — add chicken, fish, shrimp or any protein and spoon over your favorite greens — or as a side dish or light lunch.

Mediterranean Orzo Salad

Servings: meal for two or side dish for four.

1 3/4 cups uncooked orzo pasta, prepped according to directions and cooled

3/4 cup finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes (or 1 1/2 cups diced fresh tomatoes or halved cherry tomatoes)

1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

1/4 cup finely-diced red onion

1/4 cup toasted pine nuts

1/4 cup chopped fresh basil (or 2 teaspoons dried basil)

1 tablespoon fresh minced garlic

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Gently combine all the above ingredients in a medium size bowl and chill for two hours.

 

 

Salad Days

The Well Cafe and Juice Bar

Jessika Olsen (below, left) of The Well Cafe and Juice Bar in downtown Greensboro incorporated some pantry staples with fresh leafy greens and green beans to create this filling salad. She added a sweet, tart, earthy dressing to create a symphony of summerflavors. She and cafe co-owner Veronika Olsen (below, right), her identical twin sister, give four-thumbs-up to this salad. They recommend serving it with a fresh baguette slathered in the cafe’s roasted red pepper Romesco sauce.

 

 

 

Fresh Spring Salad

Servings: 2

14 ounces marinated artichoke hearts. Drained and quartered.

Mixed spring lettuce (or arugula, Jessika’s favorite)

About a cup of green beans, trimmed and blanched

1 can cannellini beans, drained 

 

Dressing:

1/4 cup olive oil

1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice 

2 teaspoons whole grain mustard

2 teaspoons maple syrup (or honey)

To make the dressing, combine the olive oil, lemon juice, mustard and maple syrup. Layer the lettuce, green beans and artichokes on serving plates. Spoon over the cannellini beans. Drizzle dressing on top of salad and serve. 

Instead of blanching the green beans, you could sear them with reserved oil from artichoke hearts, salt, pepper and a squeeze of lemon.

 

Soup’s On!

Reto’s Kitchen

Caterer Reto Biaggi, who operates Reto’s Kitchen, jumped at the chance to make a simple summer soup. This tomato-based recipe is made in a standard size kitchen blender, which warms the soup so you don’t have to use your stove. A touch of tarragon gives away Reto’s upbringing in France, where the seasonal duo are often paired. A whirred slice of bread thickens and adds creaminess to the soup. Reto says that fresh tarragon is better, but dried will work, too. Likewise, fresh tomatoes at the height of the season are wonderful, but a can of peeled whole tomatoes will suffice.

 

Tarragon Tomato Soup

Servings: 2     

1/4 cup  extra-virgin olive oil

1 clove garlic

1/2  cup onion, roughly chopped

1 1/2 teaspoon tarragon, preferably fresh

1/2  teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 slice white bread, crusts removed, torn into rough 1/2-inch pieces

1 can peeled whole tomatoes packed in juice (28-ounce) or 3 large fresh tomatoes

1 cup water

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Combine olive oil, garlic, onion, tarragon, red pepper flakes, bread, tomatoes with their juice, and water in the jar of a high-powered blender.

Turn blender onto low speed and slowly increase speed to maximum.

Blend 4–6 minutes, until soup is warm and smooth.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Blend.

 

Bottom’s Up!

GIA

When we asked Nino Giaimo — the proprietor of GIA: Drink. Eat. Listen. — if he could gin up a cocktail for us, he turned to his beverage director Dan Lis (right), who designed a drink for Nino’s father, Sal, co-owner of the GIA Distillery in the town of Madison, north of Greensboro. The drink is based on the distillery’s aged FJW Solera Style American whiskey, which is available in local ABC stores. Dan reports that Sal takes his drinks straight up, so this one is served with no ice, gently stirred. The smoky whiskey balances the blanc vermouth. The gin adds a subtle spice, and the drink is rounded by house-made coffee-and-cocoa bitters. Readers can substitute coffee-and-cocoa bitters made by the Crude brand. Lemon peel lends a touch of brightness. 

 

 

 

Sal’s Choice

Servings: 1

1 1/2 ounce FJW Solera Style aged American whiskey 

3/4 ounce Dolin blanc vermouth

1/2 ounce Ransom Old Tom gin 

2 dashes house-made coffee-and-cocoa bitters 

Combine, stir and garnish with a lemon peel.

 

Burger Bliss

Big Burger Spot

Fine dining veteran Jesse Mitchell has been showing his chops ever since he signed on with Greensboro-based Big Burger Spot in 2013. Mitchell, who worked at Green Valley Grill for eight years, is behind the restaurant’s popular slow braised short rib sandwich and the pot roast cheddar melt. BBS owner Guy Bradley challenged Mitchell to create a burger with an entirely different flavor profile for O.Henry readers, and Mitchell delivered this gem.

 

Le Fromage Burger

Servings: 1

8 ounces fresh ground chuck

3 strips thick-cut applewood smoked bacon, fried

2 ounces Boursin brand garlic-and-herb cheese

2 ounces onion jam

1 ounce mixed greens

Salt and pepper

Brioche bun

Form ground chuck into 5-inch diameter patty. Salt and pepper both sides. Cook over high heat on grill or skillet until desired temperature is achieved. Medium is recommended.

For onion jam, julienne one whole red onion and place in sauce pan. Add 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar, 1/4 cup brown sugar and 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Bring to boil ten minutes, then reduce heat and simmer for an hour.

Butter brioche bun and toast in skillet. Remove toasted bun and spread Boursin cheese on bottom bun. Place grilled burger on top of cheese, then add bacon and mixed greens. Spread onion jam on top bun and complete the burger.

 

Smoothie Sailing

Manny’s Universal Cafe

The smoothie menu at Manny’s Universal Cafe, in the heart of downtown Greensboro’s South End, is extensive and creative, ripe with selections such as Mango Mashup, Pomegranate Punch and Goji Power. But owner Manny Polanco and his mother Margarita Delgado, the maker of menu magic, still wanted to create a new drink for the pages of O.Henry. A few pulses later, Kiwi WE Strong was born. “We like it because it has vitamins, protein and antioxidants — perfect to help us stay ready and strong to get through these times of adjustments. We have to stay healthy,” says Manny. If that doesn’t make you want to quaff a kiwi, nothing will.

 

Kiwi WE Strong

Servings: 1

2 hands-full fresh spinach

2 fresh kale leaves

1 gala or Granny Smith apple, peeled and cored

2 kiwis, peeled

1/2 frozen, peeled banana

2 tablespoons peanut butter, thinned with 1 tablespoon water 

1 teaspoon lemon

1/4 teaspoon turmeric

1 cup of ice

In a standard kitchen blender add spinach and kale first, then other ingredients. Start blender at medium speed, finish at high speed. You’re done when your smoothie is . . . smooth.

 

Keep Pounding!

Pound by Legacy Cakes

If you’re looking for a cheap hit of aromatherapy, walk into the bakery called Pound by Legacy Cakes for a whiff of happiness. Visual yays won’t be far behind, as you take in more than a dozen glazed and frosted pound cakes that are baked daily in a riot of colors and flavors: caramel, strawberry, chocolate, pineapple, apple-walnut and the ever-popular banana split. Founded by Pleasant Garden native Margaret Elaine Gladney, the bakery — which opened last year in an inconspicuous space on Spring Garden Street near Holden Road — is a sweet memorial to Elaine’s late mother and master baker Margaret Shoffner Gladney. The family offers this recipe for their vanilla pound cake, a customer favorite that’s “simple, delicious and one of the best comfort foods,” according to Margaret, who runs the bakery with help from sons Brandon and Anthony Tankard.

 

Glazed Vanilla Bundt Cake

16 tablespoons (two sticks) unsalted butter

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

4 eggs

3 cups all purpose flour

2 cups milk

2 tablespoons vanilla extract

Mix the butter and sugar together then add salt and the baking powder. Add the eggs next, mixing them in one at a time. Add flour and milk alternately. Once this mixture is thoroughly blended, add vanilla extract and beat until batter is smooth. Grease a 10-inch bundt baking pan and pour in batter. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately one hour. You can use a toothpick or small knife to check to see if the cake is done. Once baked, flip the cake onto cooling rack and let cool before glazing.

Glaze Ingredients:

2 tablespoons milk or water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar (powdered sugar)

Add ingredients into a small bowl and hand stir until consistency is creamy or at desired thickness. Pour over cake.

A Visual Feast

Area artists serve up a smorgasbord of food-inspired works

 

We eat with our eyes, the old maxim goes. For visual artists, truer words were never spoken. And what better muse for the visual imagination than the myriad shapes, colors and textures of fruits and vegetables: the jagged stripes on a melon’s rind, the pinwheel sections of an orange’s pulp, yellow corn kernels neatly aligned on an oblong cob, and a perennial favorite among artists, the curves of a pear sheathed in a smooth green — or sometimes rosy —  skin? A still life of a set table can suggest familial harmony or discord, silent gratitude or the moment that a romantic spark ignites between two souls. A Falstaffian feast laden with game and fowl tells a story of prosperity, conviviality — or gluttony. The proverbial sweat on a wine bottle, the steam rising from a cup of coffee create quiet reflective moods. The red-and-white swirl on a candy cane, the wavy crimps of a pie crust elicit warm childhood memories, while the larger-than-life label of a tomato soup can raises questions about consumption. We invited several artists — many of them familiar to readers of the magazine — to submit works celebrating food. For, after all, to celebrate food is to celebrate life. And life, as you’ll see on pages that follow, is a banquet. Bon appétit!  — Nancy Oakley

 

 

Chip Holton, untitled mural, Green Valley Grill

 

Agnes Preston-Brame, Bosc and Anjou, 14.5 x 15 inches, charcoal on paper

 

Alexis Lavine, Good Fortune, transparent watercolor on cold pressed paper, 15 x 11 inches

 

Rachel Campbell, Still Life with Bread and Confectionary After Flegel, oil on canvas 30 x 24 inches

 

William Mangum, Ham’s, oil

 

Bethany Pierce, Cherries Macabre, 16 x 20 inches

 

Richard Fennell, Still Life, 2008, oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches

 

Rachel Rees, Untitled, oil on canvas, 8 x 9 inches

 

Scott Raynor, Study in Teals and Green, oil on paper

 

Bethany Pierce, Happy!, 2011, oil on panel, 24 x 36 inches

The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of

Fantasy houses near and far

By Cynthia Adams

Illustration by Harry Blair

 

When I asked a wise and close friend who had just bought a townhouse whether she’s found her dream house, she replied:  “Ha ha. My dream home fantasy comes with a secretary, or is self-vacuuming.”

My own fantasy property is old enough to have weathered several epidemics, including the cholera outbreak in the 1830s. Its location is somewhere warm, where languid breezes lift the curtains at the French-style windows that open from the floor to nearly the top of the 16-foot ceilings. I picture it in the Garden District of New Orleans, home to some of the best Southern writers who have ever drawn breath. (With enough ruin, moral decay, absinthe and jazz to inspire volumes.)

Limestone bearing the dint of age would extend from the foyer throughout the first floor, a light-flooded expanse thanks to an oculus at the top floor. The generous staircase would also feature limestone; worn by the generations of feet who have traveled it.

This dreamscape has grounds to roam, reflect.

A classic colonial home in an upscale urban neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Even a house landlocked on a city square like the Harper Fowlkes House in Savannah would do — the gardens are dense with plantings, and its stature elevates it above the fray. Sweet Savannah, with the largest historic district in the United States and Lowcountry cooking — and more than its share of turpitude, as revealed by John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.)

House-lover Jackie O. visited nearby Mercer House when Jim Williams, the central figure in Berendt’s book, lived there. Williams was a huge preservationist and died in his downstairs library. Ironically, no Mercer ever lived there, but Williams saved it from ruin.

In the blue hour of a Savannah evening, high above the Bonaventure cemetery, a dove cries as I pour myself another.

As with any great fantasy, the grounds and setting are vital, recalling Jefferson’s Monticello or Vanderbilt’s Biltmore. Much of the dream builds on itself: tightly clipped boxwood hedges are involved; also, a pea gravel front courtyard. And burbling fountains, olive trees in ancient pots, and Floribunda roses. 

A reflecting pool lies at the end of a wending, mossy rill. The rill leads the eye from the stone terrace, which is beyond a generous pergola. 

Preferably, all flowers are white, much like the ones writer Vita Sackville-West preferred. Moonflowers open in the twilight.

But meantime, my reality is not that vision no matter how much I squint my eyes. 

Dream projects never completed and dream houses haunt us. My father’s dream house, his home place, burned down before its restoration was finished. 

Even for some who’ve built their fantasy home, the dream lives in perpetuity. Take retired anthropologist Tom Fitzgerald, who built an architect-designed house with an inner courtyard in Sunset Hills. 

“This home about captures the fantasy,” he says. But he’s not hesitant to add a dream setting: “I would also have liked to be in a warmer climate and have a house facing the sea or a body of water, but like this house — open, airy, tall ceilings, small yard to look after.”

Like Fitzgerald, Sharon James, who lives in Stoney Creek, is a house-lover and collector. James built a dream home when she lived in Chargin Falls, Ohio.

From her home and garden in Whitsett, she’s quick to describe her imaginary abode in minute detail:

“A beautiful early 19th-century Greek Revival, all white with columns and furnished perfectly of the period! Fourteen-foot high ceilings, heart-pine floors, beautiful windows that raise from the bottom. Wonderful crown moldings and door surrounds and gorgeous staircase to second and third floors,” James writes.

As for the grounds? “Surrounded by beautiful lawns and French parterre. Large veranda front and back. How is that for starters?”

Those of us who literally dream of houses, and by the way, I am one, thank you very much Sigmund Freud, hunger to glimpse how the other half lives.

News junkies took advantage of a virtual oculus (Latin for “eye”) opened by Covid-dictated broadcasting from celebrities’ homes. 

Twitter’s Room Rater, developed by a bored Washingtonian who felt we needed a little laughter during quarantine, had over 200,000 followers at last count. Feeding a public obsession with fame — not to mention the human tendency toward voyeurism — the site ruthlessly rates celebrity spaces. Art, bookcases, light placement, even wall color determine a score on a scale of one to 10. As the site’s viewership soared, celebs began to take notice and took measures — often in vain — to up their scores. 

Not unlike the novice Zoomer who inadvertently revealed her most private of privates when she carried her laptop along to the powder room, many A-listers demonstrated they were not quite ready for prime time.

We Zoomers-and-doomer preppers, cats and kittens living in TV Land, discovered even our idols who hold a lofty position on a pedestal may or may not inhabit a dream house. 

News celebs had to strike a balance in their choices of settings: professional without being too aloof. Attractive without looking too personal. Or just less messy and distracting. 

Anderson Cooper fueled viewers’ home fantasies when he briefly broadcasted from what looked like his den/study. Design bloggers were in seventh heaven, commenting on the malachite wallpaper (or was it faux painting?) and the gold bound tomes on his bookshelves. CBS anchor Gayle King moved around her Manhattan apartment, plunking down at her ritzy dining room table, using real wallpaper — not virtual! — as her backdrop. The dining room’s beautiful yellow paper (Harlem Toile de Jouy) blew up the blogosphere.  Sheila Bridges, the wallpaper designer, was thrilled when excited clients phoned, identifying the pattern. It continued to make ongoing guest appearances as King cycled through settings.

Other broadcasters, like CNN’s Chris Cuomo, reported from the all-white and neutral basement of his Long Island home while in a fever dream state induced by COVID-19. The space was spotless — but more lab than fab. It lent a devastating veritas as Cuomo’s illness progressed. But it might as well have been a set from a sci-fi flick. We learned from these makeshift home setups how these people actually live. Without stylists, lighting experts and  makeup artists, they’re just schmoes in their basements! And like Cuomo’s, uninspired basements at that.

Talk about unfulfilled home fantasies!

Over years, I’ve kept a file of clippings of houses I considered ideal. To review it is to travel back to a time when I thought living in a great English pile and swanning around in a Laura Ashley number was the peak of chic. (I still own a pink Laura Ashley jumpsuit, by the way.)

Time was, when I would have given a kidney to meet Mario Buatta, the Prince of Chintz. Fans of Bravo’s Southern Charm and Charleston, South Carolina, maven Patricia Altschul know she was a devoted Buatta client. 

He died in 2018. But chintz, dear readers, lives on.

Dreams, when realized, not so much. When I was younger, and going through a primitive furniture phase, I dreamed of owning a true saltbox — having taken too many trips to New England, Williamsburg and Old Salem. 

Tragically, I got my wish, building a version of a saltbox in a brand-new development.

The outcome was rusticated, homespun madness, with interiors so dark they probably contributed to my need for counseling. The house sat on a cul-de-sac nicknamed Knot’s Landing after the 1980s melodrama, as one by one couples divorced and decamped.

My rustic dream home on Knot’s Landing wore rough-hewn barn siding with actual knots in the “great room” and wide pine floors throughout the downstairs. The end effect was more of a Great Gloom.

Coveting the dinged or dull pewter pieces of yesteryear I decorated with salt glaze pottery, rag rugs and quilts — except for the crazy quilts I inherited, which were too colorful. Distressed furniture, either real or reproduced, was my jam. It was a time when people actually beat floors and furniture with chains in order to achieve a weathered appearance. 

I owed much to Ethan Allen for inspiration and Country Living magazine whose interiors I memorized. New England’s Country Curtains provided the tab style curtains that I hung onto wooden rods, successfully blotting out the little light from the house’s very narrow windows.

The result was unique in a way that had made my younger self proud. In retrospect, my tastes evoked Ethan Frome more than Ethan Allen.

Sedgefield Realtor Pickett Stafford called me to candidly discuss the light-starved house after a showing when my marriage collapsed. “Were you depressed there?” she asked diplomatically, knowing it was a rhetorical question.

Once the faux saltbox was sold, I escaped cul-de-sac purgatory, got contact lenses and realized I hadn’t been able to see very well for about five years.

Designer Todd Nabors’ fantasies focus on a weekend/vacation retreat: “A vintage mountain cottage covered in chestnut bark at Linville.” Although the coast would also do as Nabors’ dream setting, specifically “one of the original shingled houses from the 1920s near the Carolina Yacht Club on Wrightsville Beach. I have the decoration for each all worked out in my mind’s eye!” And the designer also entertains fantasies about European villas.

Then there is the ultimate fantasist: Furlow Gatewood, who lives the dream on a small compound. You may be in the Furlow fan club if you too own a copy of One Man’s Folly: The Exceptional Houses of Furlow Gatewood, the book that fueled my own fandom.

Gatewood is known mostly among preservationists like Pratt Cassity, who visited the designer in his home base of Americus, Georgia and praised Gatewood’s genius for a sense of place. “The middle Georgia landscape is one that is rewritten by the order of row crops, orchards, and engineered grids of small towns. Settled quietly in one of these ordered yet oddly natural landscapes is a collection of handsome architecture,” Cassity writes from splendid isolation in his own historic home in Athens, Georgia.

“The Gatewood residences,” he continues, “are each perfectly balanced but work as a whole much better. They support the total design of this little bit of evolved landscape. The interior design is the creamy and sweet surprise inside. Everywhere you look you see very familiar objects, art, views, plants and buildings but somehow you’ve never seen them this way before.”

For Gatewood has moved not one, not two, but four formerly ruined homes to his 14-acre property and restored them. To perfection. I first read about them 13 years ago in a piece by Julia Reed for Veranda magazine and was instantly mesmerized. Because Gatewood is quite literally living out his dream. He has my heart.

He resides in “the Barn,” which is anything but, and once a carriage house. The “Peacock House” featuring bewitching French doors and columns were chief among the reasons he simply had to have it.

The “Cuthbert House” was trucked 65 miles to Gatewood’s compound in order to rescue the beauty from a wrecking ball. This mid–19th-century Gothic house had to be sawed in half in order to transport it. 

Where others saw a ruin worth trashing, Gatewood saw the faux stone exterior and beauty in its vernacular design, the 16-foot ceilings and moldings. 

He sponsored trucking the “Lumpkin House” a mere 40 miles to save it, as well.  Again, Gatewood explains it had doors he could not resist. Also irresistible to him were the original transom windows.

One should approach Gatewood’s compound driving a British Racing Green MG with the top down, a gentle summer breeze stirring, to best appreciate the potted blue hydrangeas lining the drive, their mop heads bowing in gentle greeting. 

Peacocks stroll through the property, the namesakes of said Peacock House. 

But even for someone like Gatewood, reality intrudes on the platonic ideal of home. Where he falls down: the kitchen.

The one kitchen photographed for the book is nondescript. An afterthought. Ditto for baths. 

Having cooked considerably more in the past few months, I renew my wish for a proper AGA stove. Also, limestone flooring in the kitchen, which would not have fixed cabinetry but be outfitted like a room in the manner of the best European kitchens. A wonderful French table, bearing the scars of years of use would stand in for an island. Limed walls, perfectly aged would show patina, as would an enormous fireplace. Casement windows and French doors open to the rear garden. An antique greenhouse, painted deep green, does double-duty as entertaining space.

White cozy tropical bedroom interior in attic, Scandi-Boho style, 3d render

Despite an initial cleaning, fluffing, and rearranging spate, during the shelter-at-home mandate, there were days when I strongly considered some kindling and a match. The downstairs bath’s ceiling plaster has begun a curious blooming; the gray tile walls need to go. My laboriously painted stripes above said tile now bore me stupid. 

Demolition is my current obsession. The thing most needing demolishing taunts me:  our termite-riddled 94-year-old garage. 

Just imagine it transformed into a gabled board and batten carriage house featuring a Dutch door and ribbed metal roof! Envision the interior with a mini kitchen and sitting room, brick flooring, and beadboard paneled walls! White-washed beams and salvaged architectural flourishes. An outdoor shower would allow for splashing off after tending an idyllic white cottage garden. 

There would be an outdoor fireplace and wisteria-heavy pergola for entertaining. 

Wait — make that exterior stone, with a moss garden, and a low wall perhaps? 

Can’t you just see it?  OH

Contributing Editor Cynthia Adams admires house-mad Edith Wharton, who wrote to “decorate one’s inner house so richly that one is content there, glad to welcome anyone who wants to come and stay, but happy all the same when one is inevitably alone.”  

June 2020 Almanac

By Ash Alder

 

June is the ink that flows from the poet’s pen — sweet as gardenia and ephemeral as a dream; the fountain of everlasting passion.

If ever you have read the love letters from John Keats to Fanny Brawne, the girl next door who was to Keats “so fair a form” he yearned for finer language, then you can understand.

“I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair,” Keats wrote his dearest girl one long-ago summer morning. And then, the famous line:

“I almost wish we were butterflies and lived but three summer days — three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”

Imagine landing love-drunk in the thick of glorious June:

The ecstasy of a world bursting forth with fragrant blossoms.

The sweet nectar of each inhalation.

The utter intoxication of existence.

June is a medley of aliveness — brighter than bright, fairer than fair, and butterflies in all directions.

Be still in the June garden, where love letters between hummingbird and trumpet creeper flow like honey, and you will learn the language of the heart. 

June is the poet and the muse. Keats and Fanny.
Butterfly and bloom. 

Suppose you lived but three June days as rose, coneflower, poppy or phlox.

What you might receive as the giver of such resplendence . . . the true delight of life.

Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly.
 — Pablo Neruda

Squash blossom isolated on white background

Pick (and Fry) You Some

Something about edible flowers feels both deliciously wild and, well, just plain fancy. And since that bumper crop of zucchini comes with a holy explosion of yellow flowers, it seems fried squash blossoms are what’s for dinner — or at least the first course.

If you’re a squash blossom newbie, here’s one thing to keep in mind: There are he-blossoms and she-blossoms. The male blossoms, which grow on long stalks, don’t produce fruit; they pollinate. Female blossoms grow closer to the center of the plant; you’ll spot them by their bulbous stems (they’re sitting on fruit). Leave them to grow. Pick the male blossoms but leave enough so that the harvest may continue.

Another tip with the blossoms: Pick ’em the day you want to fry ’em. Check the petals for bugs and bees before removing the stamen or — if you picked a she-blossom — pistils. Wash, dry, and sauté or fry. Or if you want to take your summer dish to the next level, Google stuffed squash blossom recipes and see what happens next.

Growing vegetables in a pot. Set of potted plant. Home garden. Tomato, onion pepper and celery growth. Isolated vector illustration on white background.

The Victory Garden

Among the positive effects of stay-at-home orders, at least in this neck of the woods, is that more people are growing their own food (see page 21). Raised beds built from scrap wood and old pallets in late March are now turning out sweet peppers and pea pods, zucchini and summer squash, green beans, cukes, melons, eggplant, you-name-it.

Haven’t started your own kitchen garden? It’s not too late. This month, sow bush, pole and lima beans; plant cukes, corn, okra, eggplant, peppers, basil and — your sandwiches and neighbors will thank you — tomatoes. Start Brussels sprouts and collards for mid-July transplant, and don’t forget flowers to call in the pollinators. 

When your bumper crops arrive — you’ll know when you can’t pick ’em fast enough — find ways to share and save the summer harvest.

Bunch of blueberries on a white background

Blueberries

Blueberry juice is not blue — it’s purple. I recall making this casual discovery on a summer day in my youth when, not sure why, I smooshed a plump one into the page of one of my journals. But that isn’t the only magical quality contained within this wonder berry. They are slam-packed with antioxidant health benefits, for starters. One handful contains 10 percent of your daily-recommended vitamin C, and did you know that a single bush can produce up to 6,000 blueberries a year? That’s 153 heaping handfuls.

Among the many health benefits associated with eating blueberries (lower blood pressure, reduced risk of cancer, increased insulin response, reversal in age-related memory loss), they’re also known to brighten your skin. I’m not surprised that Native American indigenous peoples called these scrumptious berries “star fruits.”

Father’s Day lands on Sunday, June 21 — the day after official summer. Consider planting a bush in Pop’s honor. Container; moist soil; full sun. Two or more bushes are better than one.  OH

June Poem 2020

We Trade Eggs and Olives

Salads arrive. We wince.

I do not like olives,

black or green, and you know it.

Sliced hardboiled eggs

seem to make you gag.

So we trade them. . . .

Citronella and burlap

both seize my breath.

You resuscitate me

with lilac and silks.

Me the morning person

and you wasting midnight oil.

You buried within books,

me searching for rhetoric.

Fault lines in our wiring,

timelines synchronized tonight.

Common ground tilled,

reseeded in one another’s gasp.

—  Sam Barbee