FEASTING WITH FRIENDS

LUCKY NO. 7

Lucky No. 7

A future custom-built for family

By Jenna Biter
Photographs by John Gessner

A checkerboard of grass and pavers leads to the glass-paneled double doors of Charles and Amy Crabtree’s white brick home. “Sebastian, come on, buddy,” says Amy, opening the doors. The 12-year-old miniature schnauzer skates across the wide oak planks running the length of the entry hall. To the right is a blue study lined with books and sports memorabilia. To the left is a music room showcasing a K. Kawai baby grand and a commissioned painting of Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

“This is how it’s supposed to be — I can see through the house,” Amy says, looking from the front doors all the way to sliding glass doors at the back.

The Crabtrees retired to their custom build overlooking Donald Ross’ masterpiece in 2020 after splitting time between Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and Bethany Beach, Delaware. The Holly Inn in Pinehurst would often be the couple’s stopover on road trips back and forth. The village charmed them off their feet and eventually out of their far-flung homes. “We sold both homes within a two-month period,” says Charles.

Pinehurst was the draw, but family was the clincher. Once the Crabtrees’ daughter, Courtney, moved to North Carolina and had their first grandchild, the future was set. “It was an easy decision,” says Amy. Now Courtney and her brother, Chase, both live in the Forest Creek community with their families. “We have our four grandchildren here, and they’re just a five-minute ride away,” Charles says.

Down the entry hallway, past a bellowing grandfather clock shipped to the States from Germany, the house opens up. A slate-blue built-in displays family photos beside one of the home’s five fireplaces. This one is in the living room. There’s another through the sliding glass doors in the outdoor dining room, which overlooks the wide landing, a grandkid-approved infinity swimming pool and ultimately the golf course fairway.

“We were on our last day looking for property, and we had kind of exhausted everything,” Charles says. “We thought, maybe this isn’t going to work, and then all of a sudden, the Realtor said, ‘These wooded lots here — I think one of them — we might be able to talk to someone to see if they’re interested in selling.’”

“We asked, ‘Well, where is it?’ They said, ‘This is No. 2.’”

They bought the .89-acre wooded lot and Huntley Design Build got to work combining favorite elements of their previous homes into one 6,850-square-foot dream build. It was the COVID era, but fortunately for the Crabtrees, their building materials had already been delivered, so construction wasn’t delayed by the supply chain crisis. “From the time we moved the first tree off the lot, which was July, 2019, to the time we were in the home on June, 2020 . . . ” Charles says.

“Eleven months start to finish,” says Amy, completing the thought.

Back inside the living room, turn in one direction to enter the Crabtrees’ personal sports bar with pine wood from the lot lining the ceiling and a wine cellar that holds up to 1,500 bottles. There’s a golf simulator, neon Putter Boy sign paying homage to the Pinehurst Resort and two signed, limited edition prints by sports artist LeRoy Neiman, one of Jack Nicklaus and the other of Cal Ripken Jr. breaking Lou Gehrig’s record for playing the most consecutive games in Major League Baseball. Turn the other way, and you’re in the dining room and kitchen. A long table seats 10, enough to fit the Crabtree family, grandkids and all. “We try to do a Sunday dinner, or some sort of event, once a week if we can,” Amy says.

The upstairs is home to three guest en suites, a gym and a bunkroom for the grandkids. “When they come over, this is where they hang out,” Charles says. There are two sets of bunk beds, a cushy sectional and TV, and plenty of floor space to play. “They’ll be up here having a big old time, all four of them, and then when we come up after they leave, it’s a complete disaster,” he says affectionately, like only a grandfather can.

The Crabtrees themselves don’t spend much time upstairs, only to play with the grandkids, work out or if they need to fix something. “Between the master and the kitchen and this room, everything is right here,” Amy says, sitting at the bar top. It’s as if they built an apartment within a house, enabling maximal time together.

They drink early morning mugs of coffee in the master bedroom and slip out a side door to the hot tub. When they play golf it’s as a couple, and they’re even together in the art on their walls. Mixed-media collages by British artist Tom Butler dot the house, and if you look closely the likeness of Charles and Amy can be seen in many of them. “We said we’re retiring early, and when we retire early, we’re going to be together,” Charles says. Here they are in front of the Eiffel Tower. There they are in New York. It’s a personalized Where’s Waldo. The only thing missing is Sebastian the miniature schnauzer, who has yet to make a cameo.

2026 Feature Lucky No. 7

Backyard Breaks

BACKYARD BREAKS

Backyard Breaks

A miniature Himalayas at home

By Jenna Biter • Photographs by John Gessner

In the neighborhood of Pinehurst No. 9, Bob and Maria Milligans’ white stucco house lounges near the back of a lot shaded by mature pines, oaks and flowering dogwoods. Rhododendrons, hydrangeas, azaleas, camellias — the front yard is a gardener’s dream. The backyard is a golfer’s paradise.

“I love to play golf, so you’ll notice we’re walking from the patio to my . . .” Bob motions with his hands like he’s unveiling the grand prize on a game show “. . . putting green.”

This mini-Thistle Dhu, or micro-Himalayas, was fashioned from a seamless 20-by-20 piece of artificial turf, molded for a natural roll and sped up with hundreds of pounds of sand worked into the surface. There are three cups to aim at and enough contour to keep a tour pro scratching his head. “Sometimes it breaks left, sometimes it breaks right,” says Bob. The longest putt is roughly 15 feet.

McNeill’s Landscaping Services of Aberdeen installed the green when they overhauled the Milligans’ backyard in 2025. Upgrades included a rock garden, patio and walking paths, the continuation of a retaining wall, and in addition to the green, the replacement of the yard’s grass with turf. “I can’t stress enough how good of a job McNeill’s Landscaping did,” says Bob, surveying his domain. The backyard’s facelift was the final step in a home makeover that began just after the Milligans purchased the home in 2021.

“This is our Florida . . . I guess you call it a Carolina Room here,” Milligan says. The outdoor living space is situated on a deck they converted from a split-level to a single tier in 2022. Later they installed a pergola with remote control-operated louvres that can divert the sun any time of day and even keep out the rain. Four or five seating arrangements spill off the deck and into the backyard, ready to accommodate the Milligans’ frequent entertaining. A teakwood dining table seats 14. There are two gas-powered fire pits, plus a grill. “It’s the only thing he’s good at besides golf,” says Maria, grinning.

“We love to have more than just two or three friends over,” she says. They regularly commune with a group of six couples, the self-proclaimed “dirty dozen.” “Our new friends all love to come here because they can just chill, unwind and open a few bottles of good wine,” says Maria. “It’s relaxing.”

Dark blue cushions, pillows and pots finish the backyard. It’s a fitting color for a Navy family. Bob served 27 years in uniform before retiring as a captain in 1999. After their first life moving around the country, overseas and on the seas, followed by a second life in northern Virginia, the Milligans finally settled in Pinehurst. Their home sits across the street from the fairway of the fifth hole of No. 9, the Jack Nicklaus-designed course originally known as Pinehurst National.

“It was fate,” says Maria. Friends were moving to the area and the Milligans traveled south for a visit. “I walked into a shop, and the owner gave a hello-how-are-you,” says Maria, still dumbfounded. “I don’t get that in northern Virginia.”

Pretty soon the Milligans were searching for their own place in Pinehurst. “It took us three months,” says Maria. They liked the floor plan of their now-home and could see the property’s potential. “We could make it our own,” she says.

The Milligans moved into the nearly 4,000-square-foot house in 2021 and immediately got to work updating bathrooms and the kitchen, painting from top to bottom, essentially redoing everything indoors except for the layout. Then they shifted their focus outdoors.

“It was overgrown. It looked more like a jungle than anything else,” says Bob. “The backyard was nothing but pine needles, so it wasn’t really usable.” They hacked, trimmed, shaped and reshaped the potential they saw into reality. Thirteen trees were removed, so the surviving stand could flourish. They left the sprawling azaleas untouched.

“I love flowers. I want flowers,” Maria says. “I have these gorgeous azaleas throughout, I have rhododendrons, I have camelias, I have jasmine, roses, gardenias.” Whites, reds and pinks color the scene. “During the spring, this place is unbelievable as far as the color goes,” Bob says. Plus the Milligans’ home is just under a mile from the clubhouse. “Why do you think we moved down here?” Maria teases as Bob cracks a smile.

“The people I play with say that I have an advantage over them,” he says, eyeing the backyard’s crown jewel. A golfer-gnome watches the emerald turf from his home in a garden bed, lanterns illuminate the playing surface for after-hours practice and a pair of loungers offer respite to tired putters. “They’re older, I keep reminding them, so they putt and they sit,” says Maria.

Pathways puzzled together from geometric pavers circulate guests to and from the main attraction, and a golf-themed bird bath completes the scene. The yard’s full of robins, blue jays, woodpeckers and hummingbirds, especially when the flowers are out. It’s nearly a private aviary. “You can barely see our neighbors through the trees. You can’t see our neighbors at the back. We love it here because we’re in the community, but we can also get up early in the morning, have a cup of coffee on the deck and not worry about golfers.”

Unless they’re playing at Milligans National.

2026 Backyard Breaks Feature

Celebrating Poetry

CELEBRATING POETRY

Celebrating Poetry

Spurred on by the success of Black History Month and Women’s History Month, the American Academy of Poets organized the first National Poetry Month in April 1996. Over its 30 years of existence, it has grown into the largest literary celebration in the world, involving readers, students, teachers, librarians, booksellers, publishers, events and, oh yes, the occasional poet. It’s possible to sign up to receive a “Poem-a-Day” in your inbox (curated by Dorianne Lux), request a National Poetry Month poster, encourage participation in the “Dear Poet” project for students in grades five through 12, and consult a “Poetry Near You” calendar. To quote Emily Dickenson, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” You may feel free to lose your head every month of the year, but April
is a good place to start.

I first read Naomi Shihab Nye’s poetry in the mid-1990s. I quickly became a fan of her work, and “Valentine for Ernest Mann” has long been one of my favorites. The quirkiness of the first stanza — the idea of ordering a poem like ordering a taco — made me smile and want to read on. Then in the second stanza comes the kindness and generosity that shine through all her work. Instead of dismissing this rather audacious request (which was an actual demand from a middle school student), Naomi leads him, and us, into an exploration of how we too can find our own poems. “What we have to do/is live in a way that lets us find them.” She reminds us that we all have poetry in us, if we are attentive to the small meaningful moments in our lives. She doesn’t lecture us about it; instead, she gives us that wonderful example of the man who saw skunks as beautiful, and her images make them beautiful too. Her gentle and genuine words make us realize there is beauty everywhere if we are open to seeing it.

This poem has stuck with me over the years. When I was teaching both children and adults, I would share it to encourage students to make lists of where they could find their own poems. When I was writing my first book of poetry I came back to the line “Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us/we find poems” and realized that was exactly what I was doing. Naomi’s work shows us that poetry is a way of accessing our true feelings, be they of beauty or wonder or moving through difficult times. Born to an American mother and Palestinian father, Naomi Shihab Nye captures in her poetry the humanity that connects us all. She has spent over 40 years traveling the world leading poetry workshops with both children and adults that spread that humanitarian spirit. I am grateful for her presence through poetry.

— Joanne Durham

Valentine for Ernest Mann

By Naomi Shihab Nye

You can’t order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two”
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, “Here’s my address,
write me a poem,” deserves something in reply.
So I’ll tell a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn’t understand why she was crying.
“I thought they had such beautiful eyes.”
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

I’m sure I had read persona poems before I encountered Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s debut collection, but certainly none had struck me the way this one did. The excerpt I’ve selected is the last of 10 sections in the poem, which is also the title of the book. Each section is written from the poet’s imagined first-person perspective of an individual who was touched by Amelia Earhart’s final flight and disappearance, beginning with an ordinary bystander in section I all the way to her husband in section X. The facts of Earhart’s story (which I vividly remember learning in elementary school) are compelling enough. But when Calvocoressi filters them through the eyes of carefully curated characters — some who knew her personally and some who didn’t — those facts simultaneously gain dimension and become more intimately human. I had been under the impression that contemporary poetry was generally supposed to derive from personal experience, influenced on occasion by outside research. Reading The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart and the other suites of persona poems in this book allowed me to see just how a poet could use their imagination in service of their work, bringing fictional narrative into lyrical verse and giving the reader an even deeper insight into something we thought we already knew. Though it’s taken me years to come around to it, it’s given me permission to do the same.

— Morrow Dowdle

The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart

(An Excerpt)

By Gabrielle Calvocoressi

X. George Putnam, husband

Afterwards she was everywhere:

a map in the glove compartment,

shoes on the stairs, her wedding ring

on the bathroom sink. I found

her house keys by the phone

and wondered how she’d get back

inside. Of course I wasn’t the only

one: everybody thought they’d seen

her, especially children

who wondered if she was hiding

from me. One girl wrote,

When my father yells

I hide in the barn. Do you have a barn?

The last time I saw Amelia Earhart

she was three steps ahead of me,

crossing to the other side

of the street. I almost died trying

to reach her, called her name

over the traffic and when she turned back

it was a young man, startled

by my grasping hand, saying sorry

but I was mistaken. Then she was gone;

clothes sent, car sold, nothing left

to look for. Except airplanes

where are everywhere now

and take me back to her, turning

away from our expectant faces.

Excerpt from The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart by Gabrielle
Calvocoressi, Persea Books, 2005.

I am a graduate of SUNY Brockport, where I chose to continue my study of reading and writing poetry after finding my way to it in community college. As it happened, two poets who’d become, for me, extremely important influences, preceded me at Brockport, Michael Waters and Li-Young Lee. Style-wise, these are different poets entirely, except for the attention to poetic craft and texture both bring to their work.

The recipient of many awards and honors, Li-Young’s backstory is as extraordinary as his poetry. He was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents, and his father had been a personal physician to Mao Zedong while in China.

Eating Together is a poem in which his father figures prominently, and the poem’s title presents us with an irony. That is, the family is not together as the recently deceased father is absent.

Rooted in Confucian principles of respect, it is a common and traditional practice in Chinese culture for the head of the household (often the father or the eldest member) to be honored with the head of the fish. Therefore, this is a poem of transition. The mother now assumes the father’s role as head of the family and is afforded that respect.

Like so much of Lee’s poetry, this selection is notable for its quiet tone and sensory texture. Grief is in the poem, of course, but the fact need not be uttered. Instead, the reader is provided a closure of beauty and, at its core, an extraordinary simile. The dead father is compared to a snow-covered road in a pine forest, and we understand that here, death is blessed relief, as he is “lonely for no one.”

— John Hoppenthaler

Eating Together

By Li-Young Lee

In the steamer is the trout

seasoned with slivers of ginger,

two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil.

We shall eat it with rice for lunch,

brothers, sister, my mother who will

taste the sweetest meat of the head,

holding it between her fingers

deftly, the way my father did

weeks ago. Then he lay down

to sleep like a snow-covered road

winding through pines older than him,

without any travelers, and lonely for no one.

This poem, from the volume In the Lateness of the World, eloquently speaks to the work of witness both externally and internally. “Early Confession” resonates with my own work as a documentary poet whose work also questions and engages in the interior domains of political, social and personal struggle. Carolyn Forché has always evoked and amplified beauty in the difficult and often traumatic everydayness and ordinariness of life, mirroring ourselves in the webs of each other’s experiences and humanity. I’ve never known how to walk away from suffering, and I too have asked, what might my path have been if I had not chosen this path? What if I had lain down in the drifts to finish a dream? The pastoral imagery and metaphors create a wisp of a trailing scent; an invocation, or a lamentation for life, death, consciousness, and our intimate lives. “Early Confession” is an invitation to seek clarity, declare purpose, and assume agency both given and liberated. This poem is an affirmation for my ethic of wonder and need to focus my creative intentions and resolutions on the wonders and realities of the world. Forché has always written poetry that returns us over and over again to how to purposefully witness wonder and humility as wholesome emotions that will never exist with destruction. “Early Confession” reawakens a primal portal for becoming receptive to what lies around us in our communities that are inherently worth preserving and protecting. The poem draws me personally to bear witness to my own self-cultivation for learning how to fully inhabit the path that I’ve chosen and that chooses me back. I am grateful for the vast landscape this singular poem constructs, reminding the reader to forge new connections with the self that guide us to inhabit and forge new connections on the path, guiding our sense of wonderment outward toward full radical amazement.

— Jaki Shelton Green

Early Confession

By Carolyn Forché

If I had never walked the snow fields, heard the iced birch,

leant against wind hard toward distant houses, ever distant,

wind in the coat, snow over the boot tops, supper fires

in windows far across the stubby farms, none of them

my house until the end, the last, and late, always late, despite how early

I’d set off wearing gloves of glass, a coat standing up by itself.

If I had never reached the house, but instead lain down in the drifts

to finish a dream, if I had finished, would I have

reached the rest of my life, here, now, with you whispering:

must not sleep, not rest, must not take flight, must wake.

When I was at NC State in the late 1960s, Guy Owen was already a legend. The journal he founded and edited, the Southern Poetry Review, was well-established. His second novel, The Ballad of the Flim-Flam Man, had been made into a movie. His collection of poetry, The White Stallion and Other Poems, won the Roanoke-Chowan award. There wasn’t much he hadn’t done or wasn’t doing. At the time there was an active revolt against traditional forms, against poetry for the ear. I felt that revolutionary spirit too. But having had a grandmother who would, at the drop of a hat, recite verse, I wanted the sounds, the music, as well. When I read Owen’s poem, I was taken by how different it was than the early 20th century verse my grandmother loved and how different from the writings of the Beats that so attracted young poets like me in the late 1960s. The poem is so full of sound and surprise. In just 16 lines, it manages to be psychologically complex and simple, dream-like and real, innocent and wise, showing tension between father and son. Although I was a computer science major who had failed introductory English (I am a terrible speller), Guy talked with me a little and was kind. Not long after, I published the longest poem ever in the student literary journal, the Windhover. (Someone else checked and corrected my spelling). Guy remembered that. A few years later at the first North Carolina Writers Conference I attended, he remembered me in the best way; he invited me to share his whiskey. We talked about poetry. I mostly listened. The horse, he admitted, had been black, but at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference the editor of Poetry told him that if the horse was white as a ghost or as dawn it would be a better poem and would be published in his respected journal. It was published in Poetry as “The White Horse.” Somewhere along the way, the horse now white became a stallion. I learned a lot about how small revisions and particular details can greatly improve a poem. Today, 20 years older than Guy was when he died in 1981, I return to “The White Stallion.” It seems to me a masterpiece. So accessible and so mysterious. I can hear Guy talk about it again. I can taste his whiskey. Jack Daniel’s, since you asked. — Paul Jones

The White Stallion

By Guy Owen

A white horse came to our farm once

Leaping, like dawn, the backyard fence.

In dreams I heard his shadow fall

Across my bed. A miracle,

I woke up beneath his mane’s surprise;

I saw my face within his eyes.

The dew ran down his nose and fell

Upon the bleeding window quince. . . .

But long before I broke the spell

My father’s curses sped him on,

Four flashing hoofs that bruised the lawn.

And as I stumbled into dawn

I saw him scorn a final hedge,

I heard his pride upon the bridge,

Then through the wakened yard I went

To read the rage the stallion spent.

I once had a poetry teacher who said try and write lines so good someone will want to have them tattooed on their body. Quite a goal, indeed, but Joe Mills’ poems are full of such lines.

I could have picked a dozen of his poems but I chose Savings from his collection, This Miraculous Turning, which won the 2015 Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry. I’m a huge fan of what I think of as the classic Mills’ poem: accessible, personal, often funny and about family, with an ending that kicks you in the gut but also somehow lifts you up. Mills is the author of seven poetry collections and a professor at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he holds the Susan Burress Wall Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities. While his poems are smart, they are not the sort of poems that feel like a puzzle to be solved. Not that that means they are “easy.” You do have to do some work, but his poems pull you in and share something about his life that also feels universal.

One of the things that strikes me first about Savings is the conversational tone. It starts off with a narrator telling you a simple story of setting the clocks back for daylight saving, but it can’t just be about that, can it? By the second stanza, it’s becoming more personal as the poet brings in the scale and his wife’s blood pressure pills. The third and final stanza really gets to what the poem is about — family and how we want to hold on for as long as we can, whether it’s for an aging parent, a spouse, or in this case, your children. I have a friend who, upon reading a book he really enjoyed, throws the book across the room. Perhaps as a sign of respect, or awe, or I wish I’d written that. Whenever I read a Joe Mills book, I throw it good and hard across the room. But not too far, because I know I’ll soon want to pick it up and read more of his lovely poems.

— Steve Cushman

Savings

By Joe Mills

Last night we set the clocks back

gaining an extra hour to sleep

or drink or read, and I walked

through the house changing the time

in the coffee maker, the stove,

the VCR, the thermostat

then I went into the bathroom

to twist the dial on the scale

a few pounds lighter

and I moved the numbers down

on the blood pressure machine

so my wife wouldn’t need as many pills,

then to the children’s rooms

to erase the doorframe marks

and repencil them slightly lower,

not to the point we again would need

strollers or slings, just an inch or two,

to make these days last longer.

One of many things I love about reading poetry is seeing a poet’s thought process unfold as I read. How they move from wonder to thought to wonder. At the core of Taylor Johnson’s poetics seems to be making visible his thoughts, his concerns, and his loves. “Menace to” is such a great example of the Venn diagram of Taylor’s mind. The poem draws a diagram around the speaker’s enemies: money and plastic. On the other side of that diagram, comrades. As he does, Taylor complicates the speaker’s position. Wi-Fi is an enemy as well, allowing the speaker to reach out to those comrades. Thus, as the speaker states, “wifi is a money for me,” while Wi-Fi kills the houseplants. The speaker is aware of his complicity, as he states: “My enemy is distance growing dark, distance growing politely in my pocket as connection.” The Venn diagram becomes even more complicated as the enemy grows larger, into a drone that is literate, “well-read and precise and quiet,” yet is still connected to the “money” that opens the poem and the wifi in the second stanza. Taylor ends by turning the poem back on himself, the new computer, enemy as well, becomes a tool to destroy the enemy, to reach again, comrades.

— Tyree Daye

Menace To

By Taylor Johnson

after June Jordan

Nightly my enemies feast on my comrades
like maggots on money. Money being my enemy
as plastic is my enemy. My enemy everywhere
and in my home as wifi is
a money for me to reach my comrades
and kills my house plants. My enemy
is distance growing dark, distance growing
politely in my pocket as connection.
I must become something my enemies can’t eat, don’t have
a word for yet, my enemies being literate as a drone is
well-read and precise and quiet, as when I buy something
such as a new computer with which to sing against my enemies,
there is my enemy, silent and personal.

2026 Celebrating Poetry Feature

A Southern Pines Fairytale

A SOUTHERN PINES FAIRYTALE

A Southern Pines Fairytale

Whimsical blooms with an intoxicating scent

By Jason Harpster
Photographs by Paige Ramsey Moody

Fairies and fairytales hold a special allure in the hearts and minds of children and adults alike. We grow up enchanted by the possibilities of magic and often wonder if such possibilities are real. In Southern Pines, this question seems a bit less far-fetched. We are home to the world’s oldest longleaf pine tree and are known for our old-growth forest. What other towns have an annual festival celebrating a tree’s birthday? It seems only fitting that it should have a fairy named after it, too.

If fairies do exist, then their form surely would be fleeting and ethereal. Whether you call them woodland nymphs, pixies or sprites, one thing is certain: They are rare and special. Only the most fortunate may catch a glimpse. To capture one in a photograph, timing must be perfect. One such sprite has been seen, documented and officially confirmed by the Species Identification Task Force. No kidding.

When Dendrobium tipuliferum ‘Southern Pines Sprite’ was presented to American Orchid Society judging on Aug. 13, 2023, conditions were just right. Native to Fiji, this diminutive orchid is capable of blooming multiple times a year, producing flowers that are so delicate and ephemeral that they often go unnoticed. The whimsical blooms have an intoxicating watermelon fragrance. Like many other orchids, the more fragrant the bloom, the shorter its life. The flowers of Dendrobium tipuliferum last less than 24 hours, so it’s not entirely surprising that this was the first time this species had been exhibited for judging.

The plant received a Certificate of Horticultural Merit with a score of 86 points for its form, color, floriferousness and overall aesthetic appeal. The judges commented that the filamentous petals, serrated lip and brilliant yellow color were especially striking. The photos speak for themselves.

The clonal name ‘Southern Pines Sprite’ was chosen as the stellate flowers seem to wave and beckon you closer, just before hitting you with the magical watermelon fragrance. Since this was the first award ever granted to the species, one of the blooms had to be carefully dissected, measured and described for official verification by the Species Identification Task Force.

Some plants and flowers have anthropomorphic features that give them seemingly human qualities. Dracula flowers, or monkey-faced orchids, are one such example. Dendrobium tipuliferum is truly a special species as its flowers look like fairies gracefully dancing in the breeze. The flower chosen for the award photograph is especially cheerful as it looks like it is waving hello.

It seems the fairies in Southern Pines are rather friendly and have a propensity for making people smile.

2026 A Southern Pines Fairytale Feature

Poem April 2026

POEM

2026 Feature Poem

Open to Art

OPEN TO ART

Open to Art

The Sandhills Photo Club conducts six competitions a year. The last competition of 2025 was “open,” allowing the 115 club members to submit their best images on any subject. The photo club posts its themed topics — voted on by the membership and suggested, in some cases, with the aid of artificial intelligence — two years in advance, and any submitted image must have been taken within the last three years. What appears here are the results of the member-judged open competition when the camera is free to roam anywhere the photographer’s eye takes it.

Tier 3

Tier 2

Tier 1

2026 Feature Open to Art

The Inn Place

THE INN PLACE

The Inn Place

Return of the Magnolia

By Deborah Salomon • Photographs by John Gessner

In a mere 130 years the Magnolia Inn has gone from overflow to intimate, a destination within a destination. Completed in 1896, just one year after the Holly Inn, the Magnolia began as a boarding house — its rooms referred to as chambers — needed to comfortably house the servants, doctors, even some family members of people attracted to James Walker Tufts’ new health resort for consumptives built on 6,000 acres in the Sandhills of North Carolina.

Closer than Florida and located on a north/south rail line, with an adorable village layout designed by the firm of Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot — fresh from the completion of its work at Biltmore House in 1895 — and implemented by his right-hand man, Warren Manning, Pinehurst was positioned to attract those in need of a little R&R in the pine-scented outdoors. There was just one problem: The disease, as it turned out, was communicable. Hanging around in groups was contraindicated. Just two years after its founding, the resort’s raison d’etre had been undermined. Pinehurst needed to find another path.

As luck would have it, the timing more or less coincided with the arrival in 1901 (the year the Carolina Hotel, the “Queen of the South,” opened) of a Scottish golf professional named Donald Ross. There were already 18 holes to be tended, built by Dr. Leroy Culver and John Dunn Tucker, Pinehurst’s first golf pro. The game, growing exponentially in the United States at the dawn of the 20th century, would become the backbone of Tufts’ resort. The Magnolia, designed by architect Lyman Sise (the brother of Gertrude Sise Tufts and the man who also designed the Holly Inn), morphed into an annex, handling the overflow from the Harvard, Berkshire and Holly inns, ultimately adding the Carolina to the mix.

With deep Boston roots, Tufts knew how to attract talent from New England. He snared J.L. Pottle from the Highland House in Jefferson, New Hampshire, to be the first manager of Magnolia Inn. Pottle arrived with a complete staff of maids, janitors, cooks, handymen and other staff. An 1898 advertisement for the Magnolia in the Pinehurst Outlook touted “the finest Northern cooks.” Another boasted of amenities like steam heat, electric lights, bathrooms with hot water and “perfect sanitary arrangements’’ all for $8 to $12 per week.

In the 1920s the Magnolia was sold to Mr. E.J. Fitzgerald, manager at the Carolina, who used it as an annex to the main hotel. Fitzgerald’s wife continued to run the Magnolia after his death. Pottle’s son also remained in the area. During that period Dr. Francis Owens, who would become one of the founders of Moore Memorial Hospital, maintained his office in the Magnolia, even performing some minor surgeries and child deliveries on the premises.

If its occupants changed over time, so did its footprint. The lovely Queen Anne-style building with 14 bedrooms was originally five stories rising between the village and the Carolina. Porches, verandas and rocking chairs hugged the structure. Not long after the completion of the Carolina, the Magnolia underwent its most drastic alteration. The building was making it difficult to see the village from the grand, new Carolina — and vice versa — so the top two floors were lopped off. The Magnolia still contains an interior stairway that now leads, well, absolutely nowhere.

After a half dozen or so changes of ownership through the latter half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, the Magnolia was reacquired by the resort in 2023. It no longer answers to the name boarding house and instead is a stately presence overlooking village streets where well-dressed vacationers browse the shops and relax from days on the golf course. Inside, eight posh bed/sitting rooms, called spaces, each identified with a brass plate bearing the name of a village street, showcase period and early-modern furnishings. Colors are soft grays and pastels. Padded headboards, pull-across drapes, bay windows and angular upholstered chairs suggest the ’50s.

The enticing aroma comes from fine Italian dining at the in-house Villagio Ristorante & Bar, and the only surgery performed in the Magnolia Inn these days is stress removal.