The Santini Brothers Gene

If you have to ask, you probably don’t have it

By Joyce Reehling

Most people will look at a space, say a living room, and either like it or not. If they like it the way it is, it stays that way . . . forever or nearly forever. I, however, come from a line of women on both sides of my family who have what I call the Santini Brothers gene. When we were growing up there was a moving company called the Santini Brothers, so my dad used that name to refer to my mother’s never-ending desire to change things around in the house. One day the living room was arranged in one way, come home from school and it was another way altogether. The dining room became the den and then flipped back again. Don’t even get me started on curtains.

Science has not been able to isolate this gene but the anecdotal evidence supplied almost entirely by wives, mothers or female lab partners is overwhelming. Though not unheard of, men seldom have it unless they are very lucky and very arts minded. Those of us with the Santini Brothers gene walk through a space and just “feel” something is off, something is not right. Could it be the placement of the lamp? The chair? Maybe if I just switch those two paintings. Most men walk through a space and see the kitchen door.

And then there is the advanced case of the gene when nothing will do but everything in the room must go. No, not out and buy more, but out of this space and into another. I recently switched my living room for the dinning room. No longer as young as I once was, I hired two wonderful guys to come and help me — my Southern Santinis, gentlemen who have a keen eye for how to move things and how to place them correctly. These were no “wham-bam-you’re-moved-ma’am” laborers. Rugs were centered. A 200-year-old dining table from my husband’s grandfather — with six heavy chairs and a sideboard — all got shifted seamlessly and safely, proof that there is art in all trades.

For the cost of a glass of wine, two pals came over that night and we re-hung all the art from the picture molding. We had to restring some of the paintings to adjust for different hanging heights but we accomplished in a little under two bottles what would normally take one person three days.

The odd little tweak here and there can make your space seem new without all the bother of picking up and moving to a new house. Our eyes get so used to what we have that we stop seeing our own world. By switching a few things around we start to see all of it in a new light.

Moving the paintings highlighted what I loved but no longer really saw. Some of them were not hung to their best advantage. Others just needed a little more space around them or to be paired with an aesthetic pal, something that highlighted both.

The next part is where my husband comes home from a trip and sees the change. We had discussed the possibility of trying this but I know he needs to see the deed done before he can relax with it. My husband would hot glue the world in place if left unsupervised. He has no Santini Brothers gene at all.

Many years ago, I devised a rule that saves our sanity in the face of change. It is called the Three Day Rule. Either of us can change anything we want and the other person has to live with it for three days before saying, “put it back.” It has saved us from icy glances, bitten tongues and ill humor and to tell you the truth the “put it back” option has yet to be exercised.

The Santini Brothers gene can give everyone a new lease on life. Change. Try it.  PS

Joyce Reehling is a frequent contributor and good friend of PineStraw.

Sunday Man

’twixt Heaven and Earth

By Jim Dodson

It’s Sunday morning in the
kitchen, two hours before the sunrise.

A welcome silence fills the house, and at this hour I often hear a still, small voice that may indeed belong to God but is more often than not the mewing of young Boo Radley, eager to be let out in order to roam the neighboring yards.

On the other side of the door sits old Rufus, balancing a universe, home from his nighttime prowlings, the crankiest cat of the known world, complaining to be let in and fed. The noisy one comes in, the quiet one slips out.

I am a butler to cats.

On the plus side, Sunday morning lies like a starry quilt over the neighborhood at this hour. A thin quarter moon hangs on the western horizon like a paper moon in a school play and Venus shines like a jewel in an Ethiop’s ear. Somewhere, miles away, a train rumbles by, a reminder of a world that is always going somewhere. But luckily I am here on Earth, a Sunday man beneath a hooked moon, for the moment going nowhere except the end of his driveway to fetch the Sunday paper for reading over the week.

Back inside, I sit for spell with my first coffee, reading one of what I call my Sunday morning books that run the gamut from the sonnets of Shakespeare to the essays of Wendell Berry, from Barbara Brown Taylor to Pierre Teilhard De Chardin — with a dash of Billy Collins and Mary Oliver for proper spiritual seasoning.

This particular Sunday is a gem long out of print, one man’s memoir of spiritual rejuvenation first published the year I was born, the story of a successful big-city writer who was forced by reasons of health and age to return to the small Wisconsin town of his birth. There he built a big house on ancestral land but initially struggled to find his place on the ground.

“A man, faced with the peculiar loneliness of where he doesn’t want to be,” writes Edward Harris Heth in My Life on Earth, “is apt to find himself driving along the narrow, twisting country roads, day or night, alone, brooding about the tricks life can play.”

Life is lived by degrees. Little by little, the author’s lonely drives along country roads yield a remarkable transformation of the angry city man. Heth gets to know — and admire — the eccentric carpenter who builds his house. He drops by a church supper and meets his neighbors, including the quirky Litten sisters “who play a mean game of canasta,” know all the village pump gossip “and have an Old Testament talent for disaster.” The ancient Litten girls both feed and inspire him to broader exploration.

His neighbor Bud Devere, a young and burly farmer who always shows up uninvited just to chat, insists that Heth see the Willow Road.

“I did not want to see what Bud saw. But the reluctance began fading away in me, that first time we went down the Willow Road. It covers scarcely more than a mile, but in that mile you can cover a thousand miles.” Traveling along it, the author sees spring wildflowers, undisturbed forests, a charming farmhouse with narcissus and hyacinth in bloom. He feels his pulse slow, and something akin to simple pleasure takes root.

“Bud kept silent. He wanted me to open my own eyes. . . . Since then, I’ve learned how many country people know and enjoy this art of the small scene and event, the birth of a calf, a remembered spot, the tumultuous labor and excitement of feeding the threshers, who come like locusts and swarm for a day over your farm and disappear again at night, the annual Welsh singing competition in the village — these are the great and proper events of a lifetime.”

Funny thing is, I have no idea how this little book, something of a surprise bestseller when it first appeared in 1953, got into my bookshelf, and now into my soul. It just magically appeared, a gift from the gods or perhaps a wise friend who knew I might discover it

Now the sun is up and so are the dogs. I am a butler to them, too. Despite a late frost, birds are singing and there is a new angle to the light — not to mention the first green tufts of daffodils rising like green fingers from the Earth.

Anticipating their Sunday walk, of course, the dogs think every day is the first day of spring. Mulligan, a black, flat-haired retriever I found as a pup a decade ago running wild along a busy highway, trots ahead off the lead, our tiny pack’s alpha girl, while Ajax — whom I call Junior — a golden retriever far too good-looking for his own good — lumbers along toting his own lead, deeply impressed with himself.

The neighborhood is old, with massive hardwoods arching like cathedral beams overhead. A man in his bathrobe steps out and shuffles hurriedly to the end of his sidewalk to fetch his Sunday morning paper. He gives a quick wave, bobbing a neighborly head, and hurries back inside to read.

The news of the world can wait. Because it never really changes, a story as old as cabbages and kings. Besides, we are briefly off the clock of the world all of Sunday, footloose upon the Earth, officially out of range, in search of an earthier divinity. Truthfully, I’m a bit sad to see winter’s cold and prospects of snow give way to the advance of daffodils. I am a winter’s boy, after all, but happy for a wife who is an endless summer girl dreaming of white lilacs in bloom.

“What is divinity,” asked Wallace Stevens in his lovely poem Sunday Morning

“if it can come

Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,

In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else

In any balm or beauty of the earth,

Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?

Divinity must live within herself:

Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;

Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued

Elations when the forest blooms; gusty

Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;

All pleasures and all pains, remembering

The bough of summer and the winter branch,

These are the measures destined for her soul.”

By the time we reach the park, Lady Summer Bough and Lord Winter Branch, the strengthening sun has melted away the year’s final frost. Across the way stands an ancient oak I peddled by a half a million times as a kid on his way to the ball field; it looks like a lighted candelabra, limned with golden morning sun.

Funny how I only recently noticed this.

It is middle Sunday morning at church, our usual pew back right. The young preacher is named Greg. Not long ago we attended his ordination as a priest. My cheeky wife thinks Greg is almost too good-looking to be a priest. Lots of women in the parish seem to share this view.

The gist of his Sunday sermon is the need to look with fresh eyes upon Matthew’s Beatitudes. But the true strength of his Sunday morning message lies in the suggestion that we all should aspire to become our true selves and Christian mystics: “Don’t be scared by that word mystic. It simply means someone who has gone from an intellectual belief system to actual inner experience.” The journey from head to the heart, Greg says, means we are called to be mystics — to chuck rules-based, belief-system Christianity in favor of something far more intimate and organic as the Earth around us.

To coax the point home, he mentions Franciscan friar Richard Rohr’s observation that religion is largely filled with people who are afraid of Hell, and spirituality is for people who have gone through hell.

And with spring on the Sunday doorstep, Father Greg provides the perfect metaphor directly from renewing nature — the mystery of how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, how becoming our true selves is not unlike the chrysalis that must crack open in order for the butterfly’s wings to gain strength and allow it to fly.

“And as we struggle,” notes the bright new associate rector, “it breeds compassion within our hearts. Just as the butterfly pressed fluid into its wings, our struggle enables compassion to flow through our bodies, a compassion that allows us to empathize with the suffering of others.”

I’ll admit I am a Sunday man who digs a good sermon. And this was a mighty thoughtful one. Young Greg is off to an excellent start, even if — like Junior — he is a tad too good-looking.

Speaking of digging, after a Chicago-style hotdog, I’m home for full Sunday afternoon working in my new garden, digging in the soil and delving in the soul.

Having pulled down an old pergola and cleaned out a handsome brick planter long overgrown with ivy, I lose complete track of time in the backyard planting Blue Angel hostas and a pair of broadleaf hydrangeas, repairing and raising a much-loved birdfeeder, hanging chimes high in a red oak and transplanting ostrich ferns. If one is closer to God’s heart in a garden, then perhaps I am a backyard mystic with dirty hands.

By Sunday sundown, my knees are aching but the healing is real. Renewed for a week of cabbages and kings, we settle down with the Sunday paper and a bit of Netflix before bed, though I tend to doze off halfway through the program.

Old Rufus goes out; Boo Radley comes in. The dogs follow us to bed. For some reason I seem to sleep so well on Sunday nights.  PS

Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com

Shadow Market

A fanciful dealer in dark wares

By D.G. Martin

When Fred Chappell writes, multitudes of fans stop and read. Now retired, he was for more than 40 years a beloved teacher of writers at UNCG, where he helped establish its much-admired Master of Fine Arts in Writing program. He served as North Carolina poet laureate from 1997 until 2002. He is revered by many for his fiction, especially his early works based on his years growing up in the mountains. But his 30 some-odd books show his determination not to be limited to any genre, geography or time.

His latest book, A Shadow All of Light, demonstrates the wide scope of his imagination and talent. It is a magical, speculative story set in an Italianate country hundreds of years ago. Chappell asks his readers to believe that shadows are something more than the images people cast by interrupting a light source. These shadows are an important, integral part of a person’s being. They can be stolen or given up. When lost, the person is never the same.

In Chappell’s tale, an ambitious young rural man, Falco, comes to a big port city (think Venice), where he attaches himself to a successful shadow merchant, Maestro Astolfo. Over time Falco learns the trade of acquiring and selling shadows detached from their original owners. The business is a “shady” one because the acquisition of human shadows often involves underhanded, even illegal methods, something like today’s markets in exotic animal parts or pilfered art.

But Maestro Astolfo and Falco, notwithstanding public attitudes, strive to conduct their business in a highly moral manner. Although losing one’s shadow could be devastating, the situation is mollified if a similar replacement can be secured from shadow dealers like Astolfo or Falco.

Chappell, in the voice of Falco, explains, “No one likes to lose his shadow. It is not a mortal blow, but it is a wearying trouble. If it is stolen or damaged, a man will seek out a dealer in umbrae supply and the difficulty is got around in the hobbledehoy fashion. The fellow is the same as before, so he fancies, with a new shadow that so closely resembles his true one, no one would take note.

“That is not the case. His new shadow never quite fits him so trimly, so comfortably, so sweetly as did his original. There is a certain discrepancy of contour, a minor raggedness not easy to mark but plainly evident to one versed in the materials. The wearer never completely grows to his new shadow and goes about with it rather as if wearing an older brother’s hand-me-down cloak.

“Another change occurs also, not in the fitting or wearing, but in the character of the person. To lose a shadow is to lose something of oneself. The loss is slight and generally unnoticeable, yet an alert observer might see some diminishing in the confidence of bearing, in the certitude of handclasp, in the authority of tread upon a stone stairway.”

After introducing his readers to the complexities of shadow theft, storage and trade, Chappell takes Falco, Astolfo and their colleague Mutano through a series of encounters with bandits, pirates and a host of other shady characters. Mutano loses his voice to a cat. Bandits challenge Falco’s efforts to collect rare plants that eat human shadows. Pirates led by a beautiful and evil woman battle the port city’s residents for control.

Similar to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Chappell’s A Shadow All of Light is fast-paced, mythic, and unbelievably entertaining.  PS

D.G. Martin hosts North Carolina Bookwatch, which airs Sundays at noon and Thursdays at 5 p.m. on UNC-TV.

Walking with Dinosaurs

A winter beach is just the thing for soothing the shock of the new

By Serena Kenyon Brown

Here we are in February. It has been one shipping container, seven months, 3,843 miles and 88,632 still-unpacked boxes since the Sandhills of North Carolina.

It is 2 o’clock in the afternoon. The dogs, who normally eat at about 4 o’clock, have climbed into my lap as I sit down to write in order to remind me of their dinner time every minute for the next two hours. They are not lapdog sized and they are inconvenient to work around. Please forgive any resulting errors.

They’ve been somewhat unhinged, the dogs, since we left the pine-scented breezes of Moore County for the salty air of England’s south coast last summer. They’ve never much liked suitcases, and the rearrangement of our entire household on May Street into plastic boxes was a bridge too far. Or so they thought until they were driven to Atlanta, bundled into crates and wheeled onto an aeroplane bound for Heathrow.

As we took our seats on the same plane we asked the air hostess if she would tell the captain that there were dogs on board, so that the hold could be kept at a reasonable temperature.

“Yes,” replied the stewardess, with all the tact of one blissfully unaware of how it feels to have put a pet on a trans-Atlantic flight, “We know. We can hear them. One’s barking, the other’s howling.”

Oh.

It was rather a long journey.

Have you ever had a dream where everything’s completely normal but for one thing that’s starkly out of place? That’s how it felt when the dogs joined us at our friends’ house in London. And there they were again, popping up unexpectedly at my parents’ house, in the back of our old car, which had been mothballed in a barn for nearly five years, as we set out for our new home. (Shortly before the car broke down and we had to be towed the remaining 140 miles. Not quite the first impression we had hoped to make as we rolled in at 10 o’clock at night on the back of a tow truck like the Beverly Hillbillies.)

Our current residence, a red brick villa of elegant Georgian proportions, is resolutely bearing the indignity of having been reduced to a confluence. Here it’s not just the spaniels’ presence that is jolting. It’s everything. Southern family life meets big city youth meets classical art school. Paintings are jostling for space with bicycles and laundry baskets, resting three deep against desks overflowing with anatomical studies and much-put-off paperwork.

A grill that looks like Stephenson’s Rocket dominates the English garden. The red toddler car is cheek by jowl with a Victorian kitchen table piled high with wine bottles, silk peonies, board games, teapots and Ordnance Survey maps, all crowned by a set of red deer antlers and overseen by an effigy of Dewi Sri, the Balinese goddess of rice and home, who is looking very stern in the face of such domestic disharmony.

We have learnt that we are in possession of a vast library of much splashed and scribbled-in cookery books and another of tomes on art history. The downstairs loo is stuffed to the gunwales with fishing tackle. There’s a 1950s Power Trac in what was once the dining room. A bat is hanging off the chandelier.

But for clearing the mind, if not the sitting room, there’s nothing like a bracing winter march along a beach. Known as the Jurassic Coast, 185 million years of history lie in the black and golden cliffs that lour over the beaches here. Ammonite imprints stand out clearly in the rocks. Ten minutes of searching will yield a handful of fossils. We’ve found veins of wood and sea creatures galore, even a very happy clam.

The dogs and I walked along the bay this morning. As often happens, the wind dropped once we reached the shelter of the cliffs. The waves tipped gently onto the shore and retreated with a gravelly ssshhhhhhh. The sun seared through the bitter cold and sent long shadows dancing behind us. Herring gulls soared and socialised. Or perhaps they were pterodactyls.

Back in the States the spaniels would scent deer and flush wild turkeys. Now they’re startling seagulls and turning up Plesiosaurs. Quite an adjustment, and it feels like it’s taking a long time. But on a bright winter’s morning, when the stick the dogs are tussling over is 140 million years old, the turnover of a season or two fits perfectly into perspective.  PS

Serena Kenyon Brown is missing the PineStraw magazine deadline milkshakes. Even in the winter.  

Relishing Sparkling Reds

Put a little color in your Valentine’s Day

By Robyn James

During the month of Valentine’s our thoughts always turn to Champagne and other sparkling wines. Some choose white, some like pink, but how many take the road less traveled and sample a sparkling red?

My generation carries a heavy grudge toward sparkling reds because we remember the cheap, stomach-turning Cold Duck beverage and the fake bulk processed lambruscos like Cella and Riunite.

However, there are some gorgeous, quality sparkling reds in the market and the visual of the red bubbling froth in a flute is impressive and romantic.

Italy is definitely the mothership for sparkling reds. It’s a little ironic that one of the most famous sparklers comes from the Piedmont region of Italy, usually famous for the hard, tannic reds from Barolo and Barbaresco.

Brachetto is a dark-skinned grape grown almost exclusively in the Piedmont region but planted primarily in the provinces of Asti and Alessandria. It is often considered to be the red counterpart to Moscato D’Asti, although the grapes are not related.

Fizz 56 is one of my favorite brachettos and costs about $18. Although it is higher on the residual sugar scale, the acidity in the wine keeps it from tasting cloyingly sweet. This wine is truly a basket of berry flavors: strawberries, raspberries and touches of blackberries. There is even a nuance of candied rose petals, which is interesting because often Barolo can have a drier rose petal note. There is no wine that complements chocolate better than brachetto.

Not many American consumers are familiar with quality lambrusco; however, you will find them on the wine lists of authentic Italian restaurants in New York City.

Lambrusco is an Italian grape grown primarily in Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy. It is finished frizzante (sparkling in Italian). Mederfil Lambrusco Reggiano is labeled rosso dolce, meaning “sweet red.” This wine is about $10 and also has bountiful berry and violet flavors. Strawberries, cherries and blackberries are deliciously wrapped with an herbal earthiness that almost gives an impression of fruit in balsamic. Although sweet, it has a nice beam of acidity that would pair well with pizza or pasta.

There’s no way to talk about sparkling reds without a tip of the hat to Australia and its fabulous sparkling shiraz. When I visited Australia over 15 years ago, I was delighted to find that literally every winery I visited produced a sparkling shiraz. I predicted it would become all the rage in the U.S., and sadly I was mistaken. It’s still difficult to find sparkling shiraz in the U.S. when it is all over Australia. I guess importers lack faith in the marketability of the wine.

One of my favorites that is available stateside is The Black Chook Sparkling Shiraz, about $21 a bottle. The winemaker explains that his shiraz follows the centuries-old tradition of northern Rhone French syrahs by adding a very small amount of viognier, a white grape that actually deepens the dark color of the wine. He spotted a black chook (chicken) in the vineyard and compared the small white egg it came from to their small white addition of viognier to the wine. Hence the name Black Chook. This is a serious sparkling red.

Sourced from great vineyards in McLaren Vale, a premiere shiraz location, this wine is aged in small French oak barrels. The barrels contribute a smoky, slightly tannic edge to the black currant, blackberry and chocolate-cherry flavors. Try it as a party aperitif wine or with duck, grilled tuna or any chargrilled meat.

February is the month to branch out and experiment with a great sparkling red!  PS

Robyn James is a certified sommelier and proprietor of The Wine Cellar and Tasting Room in Southern Pines. Contact her at robynajames@gmail.com.

The Gull Next Door

Winter brings ring-billed gulls inland

By Susan Campbell

Gulls? Here in the middle of the state? It may be puzzling but, indeed, you may see a few soaring over the nearby mall or standing around on the local playing fields. Come late November — then through December and reaching their peak sometime in January — the most common species of inland gulls, ring-billed, predictably swells each winter. Highly adaptable, they happily hang out at landfills, parking lots and farm fields. Ring-billed gulls are medium-sized, easy to overlook — unless you are a birdwatcher. Flocks can easily number in the hundreds and, nowadays, are largely unaffected by human activity. Of course, it is the actions of people that have facilitated the species’ winter range expansion over the past century.

Ring-billed gulls are characterized by a white head and chest, gray back and black vertical band around the bill. When perched, their black wingtips, with white spots, extend beyond the squared-off tail. The legs, like the bill, are a bright yellow. Wintering adults will exhibit gray-brown flecking on the head. Immature birds will have varying amounts of brownish streaking as well as pinkish legs and bill. It will take three full years for individuals to acquire adult plumage.

Ring-billed gulls nest far to the north, on small islands across the northern tier of the United States and throughout much of Canada. They use sparsely vegetated habitat and are often found sharing islands with other species of gulls and terns. Ring-billeds are known to return to their natal area to breed, often nesting mere feet from where they nested the year before. They are also likely to return to familiar wintering grounds as well. They have a highly tuned sense of direction, using a built-in compass as well as landmarks (such as rivers and mountain ranges) to successfully navigate in spring and fall.

In the early 1900s, the millinery trade, egg collectors and human encroachment in habitats significantly affected the species’ population numbers. But with the passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 1917, ring-billed gull numbers began to stabilize. No longer was it legal to shoot adults for their feathers or collect their eggs for food. Additionally, introduction of fishes such as the alewife and inundation of new habitat in the western Great Lakes increased breeding productivity in the decades that followed.

Not only has the increase in garbage dumps and farmlands created more foraging habitat for these birds but also new reservoirs. Although ring-billeds prefer insects, worms, fish, small rodents, as well as grains and berries, they are not picky eaters — and therefore highly adaptable. Reproductive success, thanks to an abundance of food, has been even higher in the last thirty years — especially around the Great Lakes and the Eastern United States. As a result, this species has become a nuisance in some areas. Control measures (scarecrows, noisemakers, materials that move in the wind) have been employed but with very little success.

Large flocks of ring-billed gulls are likely to get the attention of birdwatchers come late winter. It is then that other species may get mixed in. It is possible to tease out a herring gull or perhaps a great black-backed gull from the dozens sitting on the pavement or floating on a local lake, if one has good optical equipment — and a lot of patience.  PS

Susan would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos. She can be contacted by email at susan@ncaves.com, or by calling (910) 949-3207.

The Quickening Time

Scratching the winter gardening itch

By Jan Leitschuh

This time of year, produce hunger often creeps in. After the heavy sugar, meat and cream-rich holiday indulgences, we often crave the clean, simple flavors. A squirt of fresh lemon juice. A crushed garlic clove. Fresh, tender young greens.

If salad is wanted, the usual option is to head to the grocery store. A few gardeners may be lucky enough to have a raggedy collard patch or a frost-pounded row of kale or chard nearby, but those are the more hearty greens; best for stewing and steaming, harder to incorporate mature leaves into a fresh salad.

But for the Kitchen Gardener with itchy fingers, the first thought is . . . what can I grow? Well, even in February, there are ways.

Winter gardening guru Elliot Coleman of Maine, famous for his northward winter market garden, calls these long night/cold times “the Persephone days.” One need not be a Greek mythologist to decipher the meaning: tough times for outdoor plants, even in the sunny South.

Clearly, it’s cold enough to inhibit growth, but icy temps are not the only factor. Many growing things require 10 hours of sunlight to flourish. Active plant growth slows down dramatically during the low-light months, even sturdy, cold-hearty items with lesser light demands — greens such as fall-planted spinach or arugula.

Luckily, we gain almost an hour of daylight in February. The Earth, though not fully throwing off slumber, will quicken throughout its second-month days. Eager gardeners may then plant February sugar snap peas mid-month — if brave and willing to replant. It’s normally an excellent late-winter strategy. Peas can come through some nasty hard freezes surprisingly well, especially in our well-drained soils that prevent rot.

Some brave gardeners might even venture to sow some — not all their seeds, but some — Asian greens, fava beans, lettuce, turnip greens, mache, arugula, carrots, chard, green onions, beets or spinach at month’s end. That’s for the eager. The more cautious/time-pressed can wait until later in March.

One fine strategy takes forethought in September. Grow a sturdy fall greens crop to healthy adulthood, then simply protect it from frost with low tunnels of spun fabric, making a handy, backyard fresh market or “living refrigerator” you can dip into at will. Fresh spinach in January? It can happen, but not without care. But, we didn’t do that, did we? The 2016 barn door has already closed. And we’re hungry now.

The solution is easy enough. Grow a bowl of greens now. Indoors. In a bowl, a small window box or pretty container. Use ordinary plastic flowerpots if you want, and tuck them in an old basket with a dish to catch drips. Greens require a bit less light than other veggies, are packed with vitamins K, A and C, have that sweet fresh crunch and offer a satisfying, off-season chlorophyll hit — besides scratching that kitchen gardening itch.

Besides fresh greens, best thing about it? No deer ravages! Sorry, Bambi — go graze the neighbor’s pansies instead.

Start by ensuring your container has a drainage hole and a dish to catch excess water. Folks have grown greens in fancy urns, tin cans, moss-lined mesh circles, old yogurt cups, black nursery pots and more. As long as it holds a small volume of soil — three or four inches, as lettuces are shallow rooted — and has a good drain hole, it will work.

Fill with a simple potting soil, preferably one with a little fertilizer. If you are going to harvest right from the bowl, the plants will need nourishment over their two-month lifespan. Moisten the soil, let it expand and drink for a while. You can also use organic fertilizers, but this is trickier.

You can plant a variety of greens — lettuce, arugula, mache, chard, kale — in your container, but they will have different germination rates. For the most gratification, try a lettuce mix first. Lots of color and variety and similar growth patterns, lettuce should satisfy that salad lust.

Once soil is evenly moist, sprinkle your lettuce seed on the surface. Press the seed into the soil gently with a thumb. Seed-soil contact is critical. Then scatter the slightest dusting of soil atop. Too deep will smother the fine seeds, and too shallow will allow them to dry out. Like Goldilocks, you want it “just right.” Like sprinkling salt on popcorn, use about that much soil.

You’ll need care when watering, or these tiny fine seeds will wash into a clump and compete for space. A daily gentle mist from a household sprayer should suffice. Keep damp but not soaking, and don’t let them dry out. Once plant growth takes off, check soil regularly, as the growing roots will be pulling moisture hard to make new leaves.

A cool room in the house is perfect for germination. It doesn’t need a lot of light until the seeds sprout. Lettuces won’t germinate well above 80 degrees, so skip the water heater or heat pad where you start your tomato, eggplant and pepper seedlings. A sunny windowsill makes a perfect growing spot.

The good news is you can be a slacker on many of these suggestions and still grow a crop.

On pretty, sunny days, you can set your lettuce container outside and let it dress up your porch. On bitter, bone-cracking cold nights, you pull it inside. With the right container, it’s a visual asset as well as a culinary one. I’ve been to spring parties where, in a pretty container, a bowl of greens served as a terrific and heartening buffet or centerpiece.

Baby leaves are the most tender. Thin out the leaves for salads as the container begins to fill out. Just snip a few leaves down low on the stem and add them to your existing salads while waiting. I admit, I often just graze my pots, eschewing bowls and salad dressing. Sweet young greens are delicious in their own right.

Thin the heavy spots, to ensure continued production. When the weather warms, you have options. You can harvest right from the bowl, or break up the party and plant clumps in the garden in later March, when the weather softens. There, you’ve got a head start on spring!

If you plant outdoors, you’ll need to “harden” the young plants off so that they may survive. If you’ve been putting the container outside in the sun on the nice days, you’re practically there anyway. Lettuces are even fairly freeze-hardy, if protected.

Unlike tomatoes, squash, eggplant and other heat lovers that would live in a container during challenging and extended conditions, you won’t be keeping your plants indoors or confined long. Lettuce grows to baby-harvest size in as early as 30 days for some varieties, 45 days for others. Better to harvest early, rather than late, for sweetest taste.

Remember, you can sow directly in the garden about six weeks before the last frost date, which is around mid-April here. In March one can attempt to begin sowing, or replanting, outside. Sow a little every two weeks, rather than all at once.

Cold soil will cause slow germination and growth, so I propose that the avid gardeners, eager for spring, do both. Why choose? Doing both will get you maximum production. You can have your indoor garden and eat it too.  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

The Time of Her Life

A beautiful ring, an elegant watch, and memories of a girl in a world at war

By Joyce Reehling

Time ticks away, and now my mom is 91 and living on her own for over 17 years, not far from my youngest sister in Pennsylvania. In the last several years she has taken to divesting herself of things now rather than waiting for the “Will” to do it for her. “Why should I miss the look on your face when I give it to you?” she rightly asks. Each of us “girls,” of which there are four, has received items from her ranging from very old cookie cutters to beloved jewelry.

And so it is that I was given two items, both of which held memories and surprises.

Mom asked me to close my eyes and hold out my hand. I felt a small box. I opened my eyes and saw my Nana’s engagement ring. I burst into tears because I had not thought of the ring ever being mine. I was stunned to have it, a lovely old-cut diamond sitting in a setting that screams early 1900s.

My Nana wore it all the time. She could sit for what seemed like hours and stroke my hair while we listened to radio soap operas and lulled me into a state of bliss. She had the most beautiful hands, which I can see to this day. And she was always wearing this ring.

Mom wore it for many years until arthritis made it too difficult. Linked by this ring, I feel both women with me more keenly. I love it and it will go to one of my nieces in what I hope is about 30 years. Like Mom, I will do it in time to see the look on her face.

I always try to get Mom to talk about old Baltimore, the life of the city, her family and her life before me. For some reason on my last visit she wanted to talk more about her youth. Then she went into her bedroom and emerged with a little bundle of tissue. Inside was a watch. Her parents had given this to her when she graduated high school. It was without a strap and no longer working.

“Please have it. If you can get it to work, fine, but it is such a lovely old thing.”

And so it is that it traveled home to Pinehurst. I took it to Cotes Watches in Southern Pines and presented it. The gentleman said, “Oh, an Eska, that is lovely. So, your mom was a nurse.”

“No,” I said, “but during the war she worked for a photographer in Baltimore developing prints.” Another vocation that required seeing and timing in the dark.

Well, he held it like a newborn babe and said it needed either new hands or, for a little more money, he could send it to a place that would restore the original glowing hands.

“Let’s keep it as original as possible,” I said, and off the watch went to find its glow and be cleaned and ready to keep time for me.

I just got it back and bought a bright red strap to match the sweeping second hand and now wear it daily. A war watch that timed chemicals as they revealed recon photos, photos of friends, photos of young men off to war, photos of life. My mom timed life with this watch, her life as a young girl during a war. The lives of others. One photo at a time.

I asked her just yesterday to tell me more about that time, but her only ready memory was that sometimes going out to lunch or on her way to the streetcar to ride home, she would put one foot in the gutter and one on the sidewalk to bounce up and down like a kid as she walked.

“I wasn’t always serious, ya know; it was just fun. I must have looked crazy, but no one said anything.”

And who would? She was just 18 and it was a world at war. A good time for a good time.

Now when I look at the watch I see a young girl, as yet unmarried, then comes a tall Marine for a husband, whom she would outlive, and the young girl has reached the age of 91. And she keeps on ticking.  PS

Joyce Reehling is a frequent contributor and good friend of PineStraw.

Hold the Aioli

And don’t even talk to me about sweet potatoes

By Susan Kelly

My first fast food was pineapple rings served straight from the squatty green Del Monte can alongside Chef Boyardee little pizzas warmed in the toaster oven. This was fast food because my mother was having a dinner party and she needed to feed us fast. I loved that combo of metallic sweet and salty acidic crunch. Today those flavors would have some fancy pants term like “sweet and savory.” My foodie sister-in-law in Raleigh would understand. I don’t even understand her tweets.

Catawba rabbit w vibrant pureed cararots, bl trumpets with earthy cihianti….,,,

Long Johnw blubry+ricotta fr@monutsDonuts is my style; NC sweet potato+horchata are destined for my boys’ bfast

Jennifer, the sister-in-law, is one of those people who just know culinary minutiae: that adding crabmeat to an otherwise ordinary potato soup will be delicious, or that arugula marries well with watermelon. I have never been part of that cognoscenti. I can, however, use words like cognoscenti with confidence. I can also coin cooking words. Nart, for example. Nart is a verb that describes using a food processor, whose etymology stems from the proper noun Cuisinart. Correct usage looks like this: “I narted the rotten bananas for banana bread.”

My family as a whole expends a lot of time and effort — and opinions — on food. When we’re all at the beach together, my sisters take pictures of their lunches. Truly. It’s a competition of plate tastes and appearance. Some three-bean salad at 4 o’clock, crackers with pimento cheese at 5. A half chicken salad sammie, several bread and butter pickles, a wee dab of leftover tomato pie from the night before, ditto the cold shrimp with a light coating of cocktail sauce, some of those suspiciously slick pre-cut knuckle-sized carrots with hummus. “I am so bummed,” one sister will say, studying the other’s plate, because she forgot there was some roasted okra hidden in the far corner of the fridge. When I get home from the beach, the Fig Newtons in the cupboard have gone hard as bullets. I am so bummed.

At 9, my youngest sister said, “When I grow up, I’m going to make enough money to buy nice things.” Like what? I asked, expecting cars, clothes, jewels. “Heinz ketchup instead of Hunt’s,” she said. Talk about your worthy aspirations! While other budding scientists were building weather stations, my nephew’s eighth-grade science project was titled “What Method Works Best?” It featured various old chestnuts about how to chop onions without weeping: holding the onion under water while cutting (I ask you, who manages that feat?), and holding a wad of white bread in your mouth. The winner was simply to don swim goggles, always a fashionable kitchen look. My question is this: Why not just nart the dang onions?

As an adviser for the roundly dreaded college application essay, I was finally rewarded with the perfect prompt one year: What is your favorite comfort food and why? At last, something my students and I could metaphorically sink our teeth into. Why labor over Uncle Jimmy as my Most Respected Person or an Eagle Scout project as my Proudest Achievement when you could write about all the varieties of comfort food? The road trip comfort food of Nabs and a Coke; the getting over the 24-hour throw-ups comfort food of scrambled eggs and grits; the tailgate comfort food of fried chicken; the Christmas morning comfort food of Moravian Sugar Cake; the late night comfort food of cold pizza; the — wait. My pupil has fled. Was it the mention of the throw-ups? Or maybe he divined that leadership qualities can’t really be addressed by writing about barbecue. Well, it’s been said before: College is wasted on the young.

I suppose food can only be written about with authority by famous television cooks. Those celebrity chefs, however, are a fraud, and real cooks know it. Real cooks cuss when the gnocchi clots into one big soggy dumpling. Real cooks shuck, silk and shave a dozen ears of Silver Queen for stewed corn to take to a sick friend and cry when they realize the milk they added had gone bad, just as they realize that they accidentally used a candy thermometer instead of a meat thermometer and it melted inside the pork roast. Real cooks have kitchen shelves that look like mine, where the cookbooks are lined up like an exhibit on domestication, representatives of each era of my marriage and culinary efforts.

Here are the homely (dowdy, matronly) spiral-bound paperback Junior League volumes, the recipes featuring cream of mushroom soup and Velveeta, and titled “Ladies Day Out Stew,” laughable and tender. Then comes the new wave, the Silver Palates, with charming pen-and-ink drawings, when arugula and aioli were a different language altogether. All those good intentions — Try this! I’ve innocently written in the margins — still captive, still somehow alive, in those cookbooks.

But never mind the effort and fuss, here to save us is Martha Stewart’s Quick Cook, proving you can be gourmet and effortless too. Beside Martha are the cookbooks dedicated to a single topic: Pasta Perfect, Soups, Grilling, Desserts. Now, it seems, we’ve returned to the Junior League: fancier hardback versions with enticing, lush color photographs of Kentucky Derby Pickup Supper or Oscar Night Buffet. Still the party menus. Still the names of contributors. And still my hopeful handwritten intentions: Try this!  PS

In a former life, Susan Kelly published five novels, won some awards, did some teaching, and made a lot of speeches. These days, she’s freelancing and making up for all that time she spent indoors writing novels.

Whistling Wings

Return of the Hyde County duck hunt

By Tom Bryant

I was up in the roost, a little apartment above our garage where I go to write and hang out when I need to get out of the way of the vacuum cleaner and my bride, Linda. I was sorting through duck hunting gear from my last trip to Lake Mattamuskeet. Shotguns, waders, heavy waterproof hunting coats, shotgun shells, duck calls, hunting trousers — you name it and if it pertains to duck hunting, it was in a pile in the roost. 

Duck season ushered in a new kind of hunting for me in 2016 and January of the new year. In the past, I was used to running my own show so to speak. A group of us, six to be exact, leased impoundments right on the Pamlico Sound. Also included in the lease was a small house that served as our lodge. For a few years, the arrangement worked OK; but then a series of bad weather events flooded the impoundments with salt water, making them useless for growing corn, and the ducks went elsewhere. At the same time, our little lodge was invaded with a legion of mice, making the place uninhabitable, so we gave up our efforts, and I didn’t duck hunt in that area for a while.

I missed the wilds of Hyde County, though, so last summer, when my good friend Art called me after a visit to Engelhard, scouting for a new duck hunting venue, I was excited. “Hey, Tom, this is Art.  How you doing, sport?”

“Great, Art! Good to hear from you, old friend. What are you up to?”

“Jack, John and I have been scouting around Hyde County, looking for a spot for us to hang our duck-hunting hats, and we think we’ve found it. You interested?”

Needless to say I was, and they added me to the group. The hunt would be handled sort of the way I was introduced to the area. We would use a guide and his impoundments located right on the northern end of the lake. The guide would take care of all the details, which I wasn’t used to; but hey, I thought, I’m not getting any younger, and maybe an easy hunt like this would be nice.

The weeks rolled by and all of a sudden, it was time to round up all my duck-hunting stuff, load up the Cruiser and head east. The ride to Hyde County from Southern Pines was a trip of extremes, up through Raleigh and all the breakneck traffic trying to get nowhere fast, and then with a sigh of relief, I eased across the Pungo River onto the “Road Less Traveled,” which is the motto of Hyde County.

When I crossed the river, I pulled into a little gravel parking area right on the other side of the bridge and walked back to see if anything had changed since my last visit. An osprey was fishing, diving into the water with a splash, and with a fish in his claws, headed back across the tree line bordering the river to eat lunch. Then I heard them before I could see them. So high above were hundreds of snow geese, only little spots against the washed-out blue of the winter sky, their soft plaintive calls an indication of the altitude at which they were flying.

Excited, I fired up the Cruiser and motored toward Engelhard and the pair of cabins that would serve as our headquarters for the next four days. Art, John, Jack and Art’s son, Michael, were an hour or more behind me, so I got to the cabins first, unloaded some gear and waited for their arrival and the beginning of good times.

I had just sat down in a swing on the porch overlooking the Pamlico Sound when the troops pulled in the drive. In no time, all their gear was unloaded and John, the gourmet chef of the group, had staked out which cabin and kitchen he would use for his culinary efforts. I have been hunting with John for years and have been fortunate to experience many meals prepared by this excellent cook. We all looked forward to his expertise in the kitchen, always a high point of the hunt.

After completing the details of unloading and who was to use which cabin, Art called the guide to get our marching orders for the next day and also see if we could check out the evening flight into the impoundments. The guide said he would meet us at his barn and take us to the dike to watch, so we took care of some last minute details and everyone loaded into Michael’s big Suburban for the 15-minute ride to our morning rendezvous, hopefully, with ducks. The gray evening was heavily overcast with low clouds spitting rain, and although we couldn’t see the ducks, we sure could hear them. Our guide said, “If the weather holds, we should wear ’em out at sunrise.” We drove back to the cabins full of anticipation.

Five a.m. came early after an evening of good fellowship and John’s great cooking, but it didn’t take long to trudge to the Suburban, heavily loaded with guns and gear. On the way to the impoundments, Michael was commiserating about his lack of experience duck hunting. This was his first time in a blind. Michael has a very responsible position with Wells Fargo Bank and spends a lot of time on the job. The rest of the guys told him that duck hunting was a snap and he should be really good at it. Jokingly they said, “Just watch Bryant and try to do the opposite.”

We met the guide and trooped to the blind in good order. The weather was still blowing out of the northeast with a heavy mist. We hunkered down under cover and waited for legal shooting time. Whistling wings could be heard overhead as ducks started coming off the roost heading to the lake. You could almost taste the excitement. The guide whispered, “OK, it’s time, get ready.”

A pair of widgeons swung by out front, and one fell to our guns. Another pair, wood ducks this time, came from the right and flew straight out. Michael’s gun roared and both ducks fell. Two ducks, one shot. Even the guide celebrated and gave Michael a high-five. “See,” I said and laughed. “This duck hunting isn’t that hard.”

The morning went by in a blur as ducks came to the blind; but to me, the most incredible sight were the tundra swans coming off the lake, literally by the thousands. They were flying treetop high over the blind, and the sounds they made calling in those impossible numbers I’ll probably never hear again in my lifetime. It was one of nature’s most incredible sights, and I surely won’t forget it.

I looked out the window of the roost and watched as a pair of cardinals flew to the bird feeder. Well, I thought, here it is February, and there’s duck hunting stuff everywhere. Time to put it all away until next season and see if I can put together some fishing gear. We’re leaving for Florida and Chokoloskee Island soon, and the folks down there say the fishing is great.  PS

Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.