Road Trip Playlist

Roll down the windows and turn up the volume: these Carolina tunes will keep you cruising

By David Menconi

Road trip season is upon us, which calls for some music to keep the momentum going. Whether you’re twist ing along the Blue Ridge Parkway or cruising the Outer Banks Scenic Byway, when you hit the road for points beyond, bring along tunes made by artists from the Old North State. Here is the ultimate North Carolina road trip playlist.

Chuck Berry

“Promised Land” (1964)

We begin with this classic from the great classic-rock elder Chuck Berry. Promised Land tells the story of a coast-to-coast journey with a roll call of cities along the way, including both Raleigh and Charlotte.

6 String Drag

“Gasoline Maybelline” (1997)

One of the best bands from Raleigh’s mid-1990s alternative-country boom, 6 String Drag was a powerhouse with old-school country harmonies and a soulful horn section. Nothing pile-drives like Gasoline Maybelline.

Blues Magoos

“Tobacco Road” (1966)

Durham native John D. Loudermilk wrote a lot of great songs, none greater than this oft-covered garage-rock classic. New York’s Blues Magoos cut the definitive version of Tobacco Road, which you’ll find on the 1972 proto-punk compilation Nuggets.

Squirrel Nut Zippers

“Put a Lid on It” (1996)

Hell, the big hit for the latter-day Chapel Hill hot-jazz band, could also go here as a good song for picking up the pace (or even speeding). But Put a Lid on It, featuring singer Katharine Whalen at her sassiest, is better for cruising.

Black Sheep

“The Choice Is Yours” (1991)

From Sanford, North Carolina, the hip-hop duo of William “Mr. Long” McLean and Andres “Dres” Titus would like you to know: You can get with this / Or you can get with that.

Don Dixon

“Praying Mantis” (1987)

After you’ve been driving a while and the caffeine starts to wear off, here’s a great sing-along pick-me-up. Praying Mantis dates back to the early 1980s and Dixon’s long-running band Arrogance. After Arrogance broke up, he had a solo hit with it.

Etta Baker

“One-Dime Blues” (1991)

Baker was one of the great legends of Piedmont blues guitar. That especially goes for her signature instrumental One-Dime Blues, which rolls on down the highway. If you can play it yourself and keep up, you’re “one-diming it.”

The “5” Royales

“Think” (1957)

Covered by James Brown and Mick Jagger, Think was one of the most enduring songs that the legendary Winston-Salem R&B band The “5” Royales left behind. It’s also a perfect cruising song — but keep your hands on the wheel, no air-guitar allowed.

Sylvan Esso

“Song” (2017)

Durham’s Sylvan Esso, made up of Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, makes folksy electronic music with a warm, beating heart. This one is a great song for the wide-open highway.

The Connells

“Stone Cold Yesterday” (1990)

Although they’re best known for the moody 1993 ballad ’74-’75, Raleigh’s Connells can pick up the tempo, too. This song’s call-to-arms guitar riff really should have been all over the radio.

Fantasia

“Summertime” (2004)

The High Point native and season-three American Idol winner has never been better than on her sultry performance of the George Gershwin classic. Perfect for long cruises.

Southern Culture on the Skids

“Voodoo Cadillac” (1995)

Once you’re close enough to your destination to exit the highway, here’s one to ease off the throttle, by Chapel Hill’s long-running garage-rock band. I got eight slappin’ pistons right here under my hood / Let’s ride.  PS

Out of the Blue

Bless My Mess

To ease my stress

By Deborah Salomon

I remember, as a child, “putting things” in a corner of my closet. They could be anything: a scratchy sweater; a comic book; last summer’s worn-out sandals. I wasn’t hiding them, exactly. I just wanted them safely out of sight. In a heap, not neatly stacked.

From time to time my mother told me to “throw that stuff out” or at least “straighten it up.” No way.

That pile initiated a long line of “junk” drawers, basement repositories, currently a spare bedroom where all the dishes, towels, lamps, magazines, boots, crutches, quilts and clothes that I couldn’t part with during the last move are stashed.

That “last move” happened 14 years and many dust bunnies ago.

This is neither hoarding nor collecting. It is, perhaps, the seminal clue that indicates failure as a crazy clean/neat freak — not that I aspire to either. Most of the genuine crazy clean/neat freaks I’ve encountered are driven . . . by a chauffeur named Freud. They rarely have pets, fonts of dirt and disorder. I feel badly for them.

This conundrum only matters when the traits travel to the workplace. The desk I occupied in a busy newsroom for 15 years, its drawers and the wall shelves above it, were obliterated by stacks of envelopes, printouts, clippings, press releases, notebooks, cookbooks, etc. — barely leaving room for the antique computer monitor, tower and keyboard. I couldn’t even claim “but I know where everything is” because I didn’t.

Every Friday afternoon I would straighten the piles, dust around them and fill a wastebasket with things I probably, hopefully, wouldn’t need.

When I retired, they brought in a dumpster.

A friend recently emailed me 50 historic photos from the past 100 years. Among the horrific war scenes and aftermaths of earthquakes was a photo of the Wright brothers’ liftoff and the first self-serve supermarket, a Piggly Wiggly in Tennessee. The photo that stopped me cold was Albert Einstein’s desk and shelves, taken on the day he died, in 1955.

They were a mess.

Please don’t think I’m correlating a messy desk with genius. I’m just saying the inability to maintain order is not fatal, cognitively or emotionally, something my mother didn’t understand. Every surface in her house was covered with stuff, neatly stacked and arranged, never messy, dusted frequently.

No wonder I, the rebellious daughter, kept a pile in a dark closet corner.

The other thing that struck me about Einstein’s desk was no electronics, not a telephone or adding machine or typewriter. Just papers, his pipe and tobacco. Numbers covered a blackboard behind the desk, which indicates most of his conclusions were reached manually.

Take a hike, Alexa! Adios, Siri! The cloud? Clear skies today.

Obviously, I’m trying to justify (excuse?) a bad habit. So, every few days I stack the notebooks neatly, dust behind my monitor. But don’t anybody touch my Word archives because every so often I really, really need a story from 2004. Besides, I’ve learned that anything resembling a purge is like feeding a stray cat that reappears same time tomorrow.

I should know, after adopting two strays who showed up at the same time 10 years ago. Wish I’d named one Albert.

Clean is glorious, necessary, fulfilling. Nothing puts joy in my step like pushing a vacuum. I’d rather sniff Mr. Clean than Chanel No. 5. But neat? A slippery slope ending, I fear, at OCD.

In the dark corner of my closet lie a few old sweaters awaiting disposal. Stray kitty found them, made this soft, quiet corner his bed. Which proves that a little mess left undisturbed goes a long way . . . in the right paws.  PS

Deborah Salomon is a writer for PineStraw and The Pilot. She may be reached at debsalomon@nc.rr.com.

Hometown

A Week in the Big City

Learning to clear, and run, the tables

By Bill Fields

It was a low moment when my beloved Baltimore Orioles lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1971 World Series after winning the previous season. As the seventh grade got started, though, I still had great memories from that summer and an adventure of the highest order.

Not long after the All-Star team from the Southern Pines Little League was quickly bounced from the post-season with a defeat in Warsaw (North Carolina, not Poland) in which I was hapless against the opposing pitcher’s curveball, Sadie, one of my two older sisters, invited me to spend a week with her in High Point.

Sadie had settled there after going to college at UNC Greensboro, marrying a restaurant owner named Bill Carter, and had an infant son, John. At 12, I was an uncle and, although I would make an attempt to play Pony League baseball the following year, essentially knew that I was a washed-up good glove/bad bat third baseman who would not be following Brooks Robinson to a hot corner somewhere in the major leagues.

I realized it was time to concentrate on other things, and the opportunity to hang out with one of my siblings in a place with about 10 times the population of my hometown wasn’t something to be missed. An intriguing aspect was that thanks to my brother-in-law this was a working vacation, and I would come home with some cash while also getting to enjoy the pleasures of the big city.

As a golf-loving kid fascinated by miniature golf, especially Putt-Putt, I knew High Point had a Putt-Putt facility on North Main Street, 36 holes of putting pleasure that wasn’t available in the Sandhills. A daytime, play-as-much-as-you-want pass was $3, and at least four days that week Sadie dropped me off and picked me up several hours later.

Round and round I would go, the sporting equivalent of an all-you-can-eat dinner, with no anxiety at seeing my colored golf ball go down the chute at the 18th hole because I knew there was a counter full of balls to choose from for my next round and no need to dig into my pockets to see if I had enough money to pay for it. There was also no wait to tee off on those weekday afternoons, the rest of the world obviously not into Putt-Putt as much as I was.

By the end of the week, I had gotten proficient enough to have broken 30 a few times on the par-36 courses, which made me think I could one day challenge professional putting champions like Vance Randall and Rick Smith on the carpet. I became such a familiar face to the proprietor that he let me skim bugs out of the water hazards for a pack of crackers. Unfortunately, he didn’t offer me a discount on the P.P.A. (Professional Putters Association) steel-center golf balls favored by the pros for sale in the kiosk, which I was convinced would drop my score by a couple of strokes. 

My nights were spent working as an apron- and paper cap-wearing busboy at Brinwood, one of Bill’s two restaurants. The menu was huge — steaks, seafood, sandwiches, chicken, spaghetti and much more — and the food was delicious, the latter the reason the place was much more crowded than the Putt-Putt on North Main. I clearly remember two of Bill’s edicts: Never dip a glass into the bin of crushed ice, and never sweep up while customers are eating nearby.

As a relative, I got special dispensation to order whatever I wanted for my end-of-shift meal. One night I picked fried flounder, which was as good as anything you could get at the beach. All the other evenings, though, I chose country-style steak, the waitresses kidding me for being a creature of habit. There were great desserts too, the homemade German chocolate cake being a favorite.

The metabolism of a 12-year-old is a wonderful thing, but I think I still came home with an extra pound or two. After closing Brinwood, we’d go to Bill’s other restaurant, Carter’s, a smaller place closer to downtown, to check up there. While he counted the money in the till, I was free to prepare myself a milkshake in a metal cup just like they made them at the Sandhill Drug fountain. I never looked at a carton of store-brand Neapolitan in our freezer quite the same.

I came home with $60 from my busboy shifts, most of which my mother “suggested” I use to start a savings account. I sure felt rich after my week of living like a king.  PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent.

An Oasis Renewed

Saving a cherished space

By Claudia Watson  •   Photographs by Laura Gingerich

Only a few steps from the street, you’ll hear the soothing sound of water cascading into a burbling stream. It’s a hidden waterfall carved from a niche in the land’s natural slope and artfully built of stacked stone, ancient river rock and boulders. Mosses mingle among ferns, while dainty tufts of violets peek out from rocks, eager for sunlight. Birds and the occasional dragonfly linger in this Zen-like oasis.

At the stream’s edge is a rugged piece of Tennessee slate engraved with the words Anniversary Pond 2002, marking the significance of the water garden. Built by Tom and Pamela Cochran of Pinehurst not long after settling here after Tom’s retirement, the garden celebrates their 25th wedding anniversary.

“It was a gift we gave to each other,” says Pamela, noting that while they had little interest in travel, they adored their new home. “I’ve always enjoyed listening to the water, and this is my haven and makes our time on the back porch special. It’s a place to wind down and meditate.”

When the Cochrans built the water garden, its centerpiece was a koi pond. They enjoyed the brightly-colored fish for years, but after problems with the pond and not finding someone to maintain it  they parted ways with the koi.

Tom says they considered taking the entire water feature out at one point, but quickly nixed the thought. “Pamela absolutely loves the sound of the water, so we decided to find a way to keep it.”

A landscape contractor thought the water garden was splendidly built. “He told us, ‘If maintenance is the problem, then remove the pond and keep what you like — the sound of the waterfall and the stream,’” recalls Tom. “Until then, we thought we had only two options: Either keep the stone walls and landscaping around them or rebuild the area, but without a pond.”

They hoped they could craft a solution — and at a reasonable cost. “If the price was right, then we were all in,” Tom says.

A friend passed along the name of their lawn maintenance contractor. The Cochrans called and were astonished when he showed up two hours later. That contractor, Barry Hartney of Zen Ponds and Gardens, became “very involved in the project from the moment he stepped into the garden.”

“I offered to do pond maintenance for them, but they really wanted to be done with the pond. They were considering removing the waterfall and stream, too. I was stunned,” Hartney says. “This water garden looked like it had been there forever, and it’s the type of work rarely seen.”

Hartney, who has owned his landscaping business for nearly 25 years, sensed that the water garden was very personal to the Cochrans. “It was their oasis, and they derived great pleasure from it. I wanted to help them find a way to keep the best part of it,” he says. So he dug a little deeper.

The Cochran’s pond problem stemmed from stormwater runoff. They don’t have gutters and downspouts, and stormwater rushed off their porch, washing mulch, soil and leaves into the pond. During heavy storms, which have become more frequent, the pond flooded, overflowed and washed out the area below it. The standing water was also a breeding ground for mosquitoes. In addition, the landscaped area behind their porch, eroded by stormwater, couldn’t support vegetation.

After a thorough review, Hartney recommended moving the stormwater runoff to an on-site rain capture area, where it would percolate into the soil, feeding nearby plant life.

“I’m practical and like to work with nature, not against it,” says Hartney, who is a graduate of the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College School in Tifton, Georgia. “Whatever the problem is, I look for the natural solution that will hold up over time.” 

Hartney’s solution was a rain garden. That, combined with the addition of a dry stream bed and some good old drainage work, would do the job, and at a price that worked. The Cochrans’ oasis would be renewed.

Work began by carefully removing a portion of the existing koi pond’s 4-foot-high stone wall and setting its river rocks and boulders aside. “That was tricky,” says Hartney. “Part of the stone wall held up the hillside, and we didn’t want to damage the integrity or beauty of the wall.”

The rock- and dirt-moving effort took place without the benefit of machinery that could cause packed soil, erosion and other damage, especially in a tight or landscaped area.

“I rarely use machinery,” says Hartney. “When we work around existing stuff, we want the honest feel of a shovel and pickax.”

To keep the existing waterfall and stream meant other modifications. In the old system, the waterfall recirculated water from the deep koi pond, which required biofilters for healthy fish. When Hartney removed the pond, out came the maintenance headache — its old liner, pump, biofilters and skimmer system. Then, he excavated deeply to install the reservoir for the new, low-maintenance, pondless pump system that keeps the water recirculating to the waterfall.

“A large in-ground reservoir pumps water up to the waterfalls, and then it flows back down to the stream and into the reservoir,” he explains.

Aside from keeping the aesthetics of the waterfall and stream intact, he also needed to direct and capture runoff from the porch area overlooking the water garden.

“That area under the roof’s drip line was pounded with rain and nearly bald from frequent washouts,” says Hartney. “It was important to soften that impact, so we put down weed barrier cloth and used rocks instead of mulch to cover it. Then we naturalized the area to blend it into the property.”

The Cochrans selected several shade-loving and decorative dwarf camellia sasanqua ‘Shishigashira’ that offer a profusion of rosy-pink blooms in the spring and fall. A glossy-leaf paper plant (fatsia japonica) anchors a corner, away from the midday sun.

When it rains, the stream may fill and overflow, but it’s no longer an issue. A dry stream bed, which serves as a shallow retention basin, is sited at the end of the stream. The basin is lined with weed barrier cloth and filled with river rocks and cobblestones. This porous area allows stormwater to filter through quickly, where it is absorbed into the soil and is a nutrient source for the plants. 

A young Japanese laceleaf maple (Acer palmatum var. dissectum) secures the sunny, raised bank, where rainwater can irrigate but not saturate its root area. English yews (Taxus baccata ‘Repandens’) spread undulating branches as groundcover, and several airy, pink muhly grasses (Muhlenbergia) provide an eye-popping effect.

If the basin fills during a heavy rain event, a concealed outflow device channels the water into the property’s drainage system, where it infiltrates the ground. “In the heaviest of recent tropical storms, we’ve seen the water dissipate within a couple of hours versus sitting here for days,” says Tom. “We enjoy our porch view of the garden now — in the sunshine and during the rain.”

The revived oasis provides a rich habitat for insects, birds, reptiles and mammals who find shelter, food, and water while veiled by the shady treetops. Nestlings twitter for attention. Yellow swallowtails drift on a light breeze, and a startled frog spontaneously leaps from a rock seeking the safety of the stream. Nearby, the luscious lime-green hue of emerging fern fronds enlivens a small but unique garden that draws attention.

“That’s the Friend’s Fern Garden,” says Pamela, pointing to the garden composed of assorted young ferns. Holly ferns (Cyrtomium falcatum) blend with the bronzy fiddleheads of native and colony-forming Netted Chain ferns (Woodwardia areolata) and Autumn ferns (Dryopteris erythrosora). All happily coexist under the protective shade of live oaks (Quercus virginiana), one of the most valuable trees to wildlife.

“Friends bring me ferns from all over,” she says. “And the rocks that surround the fern garden and other areas are the ones that Barry removed from the old koi pond. I didn’t want to lose any of them.”

Hartney brought in most of the earthen-toned boulders of many shapes and sizes, artfully working them into the landscape surrounding the stream. “He was meticulous,” Pamela says. “He has a creative eye.”

Some of the rocks, such as the Anniversary Rock, which they put in a safe place during the project, hold special meanings to the Cochrans. Others include the Sitting Rock (named for obvious reasons) and the Bread Rock, which resembles a loaf of Vienna bread with its rounded and tapered edges. It formerly stood on its end in the pond, a focal point for Pamela’s daily mindfulness meditation.

Hartney waited until the end of the project to place the final rock. Carefully searching the garden, his eyes fell upon the spot. He knelt on the dry stream bed and tucked the Anniversary Rock into place along the edge of a flat boulder. Its contours were a perfect mate with those of the boulder, making its placement a touching tribute on the Cochran’s 43rd anniversary.

Renewed, their oasis is a marriage of rock and water — a sustainable and serene combination.  PS

Claudia Watson is a frequent contributor to PineStraw and The Pilot. If there’s a garden that you’d like her to visit, please contact cwatson87@nc.rr.com.

A Time to Roost

Passing the musical baton

By Jenna Biter   •   Photographs by John Gessner

“These my mom made, if you have an interest,” says Janet Kenworthy, motioning to a stack of albums filled with newspaper clippings and concert fliers. Sitting on the wraparound porch of her historic home on Blue Street in Aberdeen, music playing softly, her Jack Russell Tootsie lolling about on a cushioned chair, Kenworthy flips through plastic-sleeved pages, rattling off the names of musicians and bands with encyclopedic ease.

“Laurelyn Dossett, another Grammy winner, she had a song on Levon Helm’s Dirt Farmer. John Cowan, the Voice of Newgrass. That’s Victoria Vox, she’s huge in the ukulele world. Here’s John Ellis.” Asleep at the Wheel, Scythian, Paul Thorn, Amythyst Kiah, Jeff Scroggins and Colorado — the list is almost unending.

As the one-woman force who is The Rooster’s Wife — the live music community-based organization that called Aberdeen’s Poplar Knight Spot home — Janet Kenworthy has curated about 60 shows a year since the organization’s inception. “See, this was the first outdoor show because we started in December 2006,” she says, pointing to a picture of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a well-known, old-time string band from Durham.

The inspiration for The Rooster’s Wife sprang from Kenworthy’s experiences volunteering in Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans after her daughter, Helen, was evacuated from Tulane University. “I went to work for the Red Cross and ran a kitchen at a shelter. It was a 400-bed facility, and it was my job to get three hot meals on the table a day,” she says. “You can imagine losing everything and then sleeping in a gymnasium with 400 other people. It’s brutal. It’s shocking, and you’re totally discombobulated.”

One day a woman came through the kitchen’s back door and asked Kenworthy if her teenage son could play his guitar for the shelter’s residents. Mother and son were parishioners from a West Mississippi church who wanted to help any way they could. Music was their offering.

It was a time for small generosities. Local beauty and barber school students were giving haircuts, beard trims and manicures. Kind gestures eased the shock of sudden homelessness. When the gangly boy — tall in that teenage kind of way, trying not to be tall — started playing New Orleans-style guitar and taking requests for old standards, people reconnected. He became a regular.

“Music spurs memory,” says Kenworthy. “People were talking. They were reminiscing. Some were singing. Some were dancing. I’ve always known about the redemptive nature of music, but this was really about the revitalization of the inner soul of these people. Hearing this music, their music, was really helpful. I wanted to bring music to this community.”

Jon Parsons, then the executive director of Sustainable Sandhills and one-third of the acoustic trio the Parsons, and Joe Newberry, a North Carolina songwriter and musician known for his clawhammer banjo-playing, introduced Kenworthy to the concept of house concerts. Within three weeks — “Well, maybe it was three weeks,” she says — The Rooster’s Wife took flight. She explains the name with a sing-song question and answer.

“We kept chickens. Who lays the eggs?”

“The hen.”

“Who raises the chicks?”

“The hen.”

“Who keeps the henyard straight?”

“The hen.”

“Who makes a lot of noise and has a lot of big feathers?”

She raises her eyebrows.

“The rooster.”

Ahhhh.

“I was doing all the work,” she says, “but I didn’t want my name on it, per se. It’s always been about the music, not about me.”

Her first venue was her home, a picturesque, turn-of-the-20th-century residence with a sprawling yard where she raised her brood of four. “We started here, right in this house. I put up fliers and sent postcards because we didn’t have a mailing list. My address book was my mailing list. We just called and invited people to come, and they did.” One hundred and five people showed up to that first house concert featuring the Parsons.

“People are listening to great music, eating my food, drinking my booze, and giving me money. Oh, it’s just business as usual, except for the giving me money part,” Kenworthy says with a laugh. “So, that’s how it started. We did four years of house concerts, and I concurrently started an outdoor series at the Postmaster’s House.”

It wasn’t until her bathroom door had to be wrenched from its hinges that The Rooster’s Wife renested at the Poplar Knight Spot, located at the intersection of Poplar and Knight streets, only three blocks from her house. “There was one show where a lady got locked in the bathroom. She was calling on her cellphone and beating on the door, but there was a big, rowdy show going on,” Kenworthy remembers. “At the set break, a couple of guys had to take the door off the hinges to get her out. It’s an old house, and it’s like, ‘Who locks the damn bathroom door?’”

The bathroom lockdown wasn’t the only reason for relocating. “The house, it was rockin’ in here,” she says, “but it was also moving furniture. The dining room table would come out here.” She motions to the porch. “And chairs would go in, and enough was enough. My mom and I had the opportunity to buy a building in downtown Aberdeen and renovate it.” And so, in 2009, the Poplar Knight Spot became the home of The Rooster’s Wife.

Sunday evening shows have been Kenworthy’s stock and trade, stretching back to the early days of the house concerts. “There wasn’t anything on Sundays, so I thought, OK, that’s my night. Lots of musicians were interested in having a night to play rather than a dead night,” she says. And it helped that the host and her mother, Priscilla Johnson, were hospitable. Johnson, who lives only a mile down the street, has been a mainstay of The Rooster’s Wife, cooking up sharp cheddar, apple and chutney grilled cheese sandwiches for the musicians, and baking cookies for every show. “I could house people, feed people, pay people and so, it just evolved from there,” says Kenworthy.

The early showtime with its idiosyncratic 6:46 p.m. start was also kid friendly. “There certainly wasn’t anything that welcomed families or small children,” Kenworthy says about live music in the Sandhills, “and I felt it was absolutely essential that they be exposed to good music. I figure, if you never had the flavor, you’re not going to develop the taste.”

Children under 12 were always admitted free at The Rooster’s Wife. A handful of families became Sunday night regulars. “One family had one child when they started coming; now they have three!”

Kenworthy’s own taste for good music developed at a young age. “I grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, and we certainly sang,” she says of her family. A relative was often on the piano and her Uncle Frank, Priscilla’s brother, was a jazz drummer and trombonist. “Music was just part of life,” Kenworthy says.

She attended Presbyterian-based Sayre School from elementary through high school and went to its live music performances every Friday at chapel. “It might be some old biddie from the DAR, or it might be your headmaster’s son’s roommate from Vanderbilt who is Rodney Crowell, multiple Grammy winner,” she says. “You had no idea, but you would be polite and attentive, regardless of who would be on stage.” She can’t quite remember the punishment for turning around to catch a friend’s eye, but she knows it wasn’t worth it.

“Musicians really appreciate an attentive crowd,” Kenworthy says. “I think it’s cultural, learning how to be a good audience. It was incumbent upon me to bring compelling enough programming that the audience would be respectful.” Precisely what The Rooster’s Wife has done for the last 15 years.

During the pandemic, Kenworthy had plenty of downtime to reflect on the future of The Rooster’s Wife and the Poplar Knight Spot. “Everything has its season, and being able to sit and not just be on the hamster wheel gave me time to think.” she says. “People say they’re leaving their job to spend more time with their family, but I actually am.” Her four children and six grandkids are scattered around the world, as far flung as Costa Rica and New York. Maybe it was time to pass her passion on to someone else who loves music.

That person is Derrick Numbers who, along with his wife, Dr. Malgorzata (Gosia) Kasperska, bought the Poplar Knight Spot from Kenworthy in April. “Derrick grew up going to the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, which is well known for singer-songwriters, and it’s always been his dream to have a venue. And they have a little boy,” Kenworthy says, referring to 8-year-old Logan.

“Every year in April, the Bluebird Cafe did this thing called Tin Pan South where all of the little music venues — a lot of them the size of The Rooster’s Wife — will bring in songwriters, and they’ll do two shows a night for the week,” says Numbers. “And so, you get these amazing people who write songs, and then six months later, you hear them on the radio. That started for me when I was about 14-years-old. I’d go with my dad.” Numbers developed the ‘taste.’

He earned his B.A. in music business from Malone College and interned in Nashville with Dualtone Music Group, the record label for the Lumineers. After his internship, he switched course and joined the military. “We lived in quite a few places, Hawaii, D.C., but I was always going to shows, always buying guitars, all that kind of stuff,” he says. “We ended up at Fort Bragg and found The Rooster’s Wife and Casino Guitars and made a home here.”

Numbers heads up marketing and videography for Baxter Clement’s Casino Guitars in Southern Pines. “As part of my video stuff, I try to shoot a lot of artists, interview them, get them on film. I’ve interviewed guys from Kiss to Paul Thorn,” he says. “I actually interviewed Paul Thorn when he played in Aberdeen, I think it was maybe four years ago. So, that was one of my first experiences with The Rooster’s Wife — seeing an artist that I really loved.” When the opportunity to buy the Poplar Knight Spot came along, the couple jumped at it.

“Hopefully, we can replicate some of the success that Janet’s had,” Numbers says. “A lot of that success derived from her ability to connect with those artists, make those artists feel at home. That’s a huge thing. Hopefully, we can continue to do that.” But with their own flair, of course.

“The name we’re going with is the Neon Rooster,” says Numbers. “I kind of wanted to have something cool and funky and ours, but with a tribute to the old.” They’re planning to open in September.

“We’re excited to be embraced by the community,” Gosia says. “It’s super important, right? We’re bringing something to the community, but without the community, it will not be a success. I’m hoping that we’re able to fill the gap that Janet created.”

As for the original Rooster’s Wife, Kenworthy is in the reinvention business. “People that came to shows in the beginning knew my dog well. His name was Bert.” He was a Jack Russell like Tootsie and Janet’s show dog. On Sunday nights, he’d lead the way from Blue Street to the Poplar Knight Spot, taking the shortcut over the train tracks.

“The next venture will be Dog-at-Large Productions,” says Kenworthy. “What I intend to be is just running amok . . . whatever the universe provides.”  PS

Jenna Biter is a writer, entrepreneur and military wife in the Sandhills. She can be reached at jennabiter@protonmail.com.

Simple Life

Death of a Green Dragon

A gardener’s bittersweet reminder of life’s impermanence 

By Jim Dodson

Last month, I returned from my first trip since the start of the pandemic to discover a baffling mystery at home.

The leaves of a beautiful Green Dragon Japanese maple I’d raised from a mere seedling appeared to suddenly be dying. Arching gracefully over the side driveway, the rare seven-foot beauty was the star of my garden. It had never been more vibrant than the day I departed for a week out West, lush and green with lots of bright spring growth. But suddenly, inexplicably, those delicate new leaves were limp and withering.

A friend who knows his ornamental trees pointed out that a freakish, late-season cold snap might be the culprit. The leaves of nearby hydrangea bushes were also severely burned, but with the return of seasonal warmth, were already showing signs of recovery.

“I think you should simply leave it alone. Give the tree water and maybe a little spring fertilizer and let things take their course,” he said. “Nature has a way of healing her own.”

His theory seemed plausible. I’ve built and maintained enough gardens in my time to know that nature always holds the upper hand. Sometimes unlikely resurrections happen when you least expect them.

So I waited and watered, trying to push the thought of losing my spectacular Green Dragon out of my mind. Perhaps by some miracle it would come back to life.

As I went about other tasks in the garden — mulching and weeding perennial beds and transplanting ostrich and woodland ferns to my new shade garden — I thought about how the sudden death of a spring pig provided writer E. B. White intense grief and something of a personal epiphany, inspiring one of his most affecting essays in 1948.

Following a struggle of several days to heal his mysteriously ailing young pig — such an ordeal blurs the passage of time, the author expressed — White, accompanied by his morbidly curious dachshund, Fred, walked out one evening to check on the patient, hoping for the best:

“When I went down, before going to bed, he lay stretched in the yard a few feet from the door. I knelt, saw that he was dead, and left him there: his face had a mild look, expressive neither of deep peace nor of deep suffering, although I think he had suffered a good deal.”

The young pig was buried near White’s favorite spot in the apple orchard, leaving his owner surprised by the potency of his own grief. “The loss we felt was not the loss of ham but the loss of pig,” White recounts. “He had evidently become precious to me, not that he represented a distant nourishment in a hungry time, but that he had suffered in a suffering world.”

Life, of course, is full of unexpected compensations. It’s possible that the guilt and grief E. B. White suffered with the loss of his pig was the literary world’s gain. Four years later, the author’s tale of a female barn spider that saves a charming young pig from slaughter by crafting upbeat messages about Wilbur the pig in her web became an instant American classic. Over the decades, Charlotte’s Web continues to rank among the most beloved children’s books of all-time.

I don’t know if a failed effort to save a spring pig bought “in blossom time” is anything like trying to save a young Japanese maple I’d raised from a seedling, but the sadness of its sudden loss combined with a palpable sense that I’d somehow failed my tree followed me around like Fred the dachshund for weeks, a reminder of life’s mystery and bittersweet impermanence. It didn’t help matters, I suppose, that I couldn’t even bring myself to dig up the deceased tree and cart it out to the curb for the weekly refuse crew. At this writing, as lush summer green explodes all around, the beloved tree stands like a monument to my botanical incompetence or simple bad luck. The autopsy is incomplete. The verdict is still pending.

Gardeners and farmers, of course, experience dramas of life and death — and sometimes unexpected rebirth — on a daily basis. Pests and disease are constant threats that interrupt the cycle of life at any moment with little or no advance notice. Too much rain or not enough, violent winds, summer hailstorms and unwelcome diners in the garden are simply part of the process of helping living things grow.

My longtime friend and former Southern Pines neighbor, Max Morrison, who is justly known for his spectacular camellias and probably the most abundant vegetable garden in the Carolina Sandhills, solved his deer and rabbit problem decades ago by transforming his edible landscape into something resembling a Soviet Gulag with ten-foot wire fences and electric monitoring systems.

On one of the first evenings I dined with Max and his wife, Myrtis, a gifted Southern cook, I noticed a large jar of Taster’s Choice instant coffee going round on the lazy Suzan. Attached to it with rubber bands was an index card covered with tiny dates written in pencil.

“What’s this?” I asked, picking it up.

Myrtis laughed. “Oh, that’s Max’s record of all the squirrels he’s dispatched with his pellet rifle over the years in order to keep them out of his garden.”

The death count went back decades.

Among other surprises, this cool, wet spring brought a noticeable uptick in the squirrel and chipmunk populations around the neighborhood, which made me briefly consider picking up an air rifle of my own.

For the moment at least, our young female Staffordshire Bull Terrier has taken matters into her own paws, nimbly standing guard over the back garden from atop a brick terrace wall, ready to leap into action at the sight of a furry invader. Our in-town neighborhood is also home to a sizable community of rabbits that appear at dawn and dusk to feed in the front yards along the block. The dogs pay little or no attention to them. For the most part, ours seems to be a remarkably peaceful kingdom with no need to resort to sterner measures of defense.

At the end of the day, this may be my form of post-pandemic compensation. My garden has actually never looked better, save for the untimely passing of a lovely green dragon.

This morning, after I set down a few closing words, I’ve made up my mind to go out and do what I should have done weeks ago — dig up my dead maple and send it on to the town mulch pile. At least its remains may eventually enrich someone else’s garden.

In its place, I’ll plant a border of peonies that will fill in nicely in a year or two.

I shall miss that lovely green dragon, though.  PS

Jim Dodson can be reached at jim@thepilot.com.

The Creators of N.C.

A Place Like Home

Wilmington’s Seabird restaurant and oyster bar has landed

By Wiley Cash
Photographs By Mallory Cash

Chefs Dean Neff and Lydia Clopton are sitting at a table inside Seabird, their recently opened seafood restaurant and oyster bar in downtown Wilmington. It is midafternoon, and sunlight streams through the high windows along Seabird’s west-facing wall. The hum of breakfast has passed, and the dinner crowd has yet to arrive. Reservations have been fully booked since opening night. In this rare quiet moment, the couple pauses to reflect on what brought them together, what brought them to Wilmington, and what has kept them in the restaurant business since their chance meeting more than a decade ago.

Given their shared history, it should come as no surprise that Neff and Clopton use the word “our” a lot. After all, they share a family, a restaurant and a past. But when the chefs discuss Seabird, it is clear that their use of the word extends beyond their personal and professional relationship to the place they now call home.

“Seabird is a small, community restaurant,” Neff says, “and I hope it’s a place that feels like part of our community.”

Partnerships with local farmers and small-scale fishermen support Seabird’s efforts to be good stewards of the environment, says Neff. The restaurant’s crew is treated like family, and menus vary based on seasonal availability. “Our food is going to develop from our relationships with the people in this community.”

Neff and Clopton’s relationship began 12 years ago in Athens, Georgia, where Neff was the new sous-chef at Hugh Acheson’s now-iconic restaurant, Five and Ten. At the time, Clopton was working toward a biology degree at the University of Georgia. “I was baking a lot at home,” she says, “and my roommate said, ‘You should try doing this professionally.’”

A friend of Clopton’s worked at Five and Ten. Neff remembers the day that Clopton came in for her interview. When owner Hugh Acheson asked if she’d ever baked professionally, Clopton admitted that she hadn’t. But Acheson must have seen something in the eager young baker. Neff remembers him saying, “Great. When can you start?” Neff must have seen something in her too, and, soon, she would see something in him as well. Romance ensued. From Athens, where Neff eventually became executive chef at Five and Ten and worked with Acheson on his first cookbook, the couple ventured to Western North Carolina, where Clopton and Neff both found themselves working with some of the South’s best known chefs and restauranteurs: Neff helped John Fleer open Rhubarb, a farm-to-table restaurant on the square in downtown Asheville. Clopton worked at Asheville’s Chai Pani, known for its innovative Indian street food, and also helped open Katie Button’s Nightbell, a cocktail bar beneath Cúrate, another Button restaurant lauded for its “curative” Spanish cuisine.

Next, Clopton was baking wedding cakes out of the couple’s home while Neff taught in the culinary arts program at Asheville-Buncombe Tech and coached the school’s competition cooking team. “I loved what we were doing, but I knew that the longer we did it the harder it would be to get back into a restaurant,” Neff says.

And that was when Athens returned to their lives in a surprising way.

A man named Jeff Duckworth had long been a regular at Acheson’s Five and Ten. Back when Neff was chef, it wasn’t uncommon for Duckworth to find his way into the kitchen after enjoying a meal. He would always say the same thing to Neff: “We should go open a restaurant somewhere.” Years later, Duckworth tracked Neff and Clopton down in Asheville to let them know he was leaving Athens for Wilmington. He said he was ready to prove how serious he was about partnering with Neff.

Although the couple had never visited Wilmington, it had been on their radar. “Back when we were in Athens, we had a list of places that we were considering moving, and Asheville and Wilmington were on it,” Clopton says. “And it just happened.”

The first time Neff and Clopton drove across the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, the river below and the city nestled on its banks before them, they knew this was where they would make their home, both in the restaurant business and in the community.

The partnership between Duckworth and Neff opened as PinPoint in May of 2015, and Neff immediately understood how important local support would be to the success of any small, community restaurant. “We thought that being downtown would get us a lot of tourists, but the space didn’t lend itself to that. You had to really know about it,” he says. Local support grew, and so did a buzz that carried beyond the city and state. While Neff loved his time at PinPoint, he grew eager to strike out on his own.

“I sold my shares to Jeff in 2019, and I wasn’t sure at that moment what I was going to do,” Neff says. “We’d just found out that Lydia was pregnant, and then I learned that I was on the long list for the James Beard Award for best chef in the Southeast, and it all kind of reinvigorated the idea that I wanted to open our restaurant in the way we wanted to do it.”

In the midst of all these changes, Clopton had opened Love, Lydia, an upscale bakery near downtown, where her offerings, especially her focaccia, made a name for themselves. According to North Carolina-based food and travel writer Jason Frye, “Lydia was willing to step out and take some chances. It wasn’t the typical stuff. She did things like bring sesame seeds to her focaccia, and that and other choices she made showed a full and thorough approach to food.”

Neff hoped that Clopton would be willing to bring that same full and thorough approach to a shared venture. “She’s a details person,” Neff says. “And I knew that if we did this restaurant together then we would spend more time together, and everything — from the front of the house to the back — would be better if she were here.”

It turns out that the couple would be spending a lot of time together. In quick succession, their son was born, the pandemic hit, Clopton closed her bakery, and, finally, in May, Seabird opened to rave reviews.

Neff credits the name of the restaurant with his obsession with maps and aerial views. When thinking of names, he pictured a bird flying over Eastern North Carolina, gazing down upon the expansive landscape from which he and Clopton would draw both ingredients and inspiration. When someone tipped him off to the song “Seabird” by the Alessi Brothers, Neff knew they had chosen the right name, especially when he read the lyrics Lonely seabird, you’ve been away from land too long. Those lines are now featured beneath the restaurant’s marquee at the corner of Front and Market Street in downtown Wilmington.

While both subtle and bold details inform the visual aesthetic at Seabird, clean lines, floor to ceiling windows, and textures varying from natural wood to textiles, create a space that feels durable and robust yet finely appointed. But make no mistake; while the restaurant is gorgeous, the menu is the focus.

Jason Frye cites the smoked catfish and oyster pie as being among his favorites. “It’s a masterclass in subtle flavors,” he says. “The oyster is stewed until tender, and the smoked catfish is done lightly, so the smoke comes in, but it doesn’t overwhelm the creamed collards and celery broth or the potato-flour pastry that sits on top. With every bite, one flavor leads into the next. At the end, you don’t come away from it feeling like you’ve read a collection of short stories. You feel like you’ve read a novel.” And that’s exactly what Neff and Clopton want the food at Seabird to do: tell the story of the community it comes from.

After more than a decade of working solo or for other chefs or alongside business partners, Dean Neff and Lydia Clopton have come home to Seabird, and they’re inviting locals and visitors to join them. Food, stories, family, community: All of the ingredients are here.  PS

Wiley Cash is the writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina-Asheville. His new novel, When Ghosts Come Home, will be released this year.

An Asian Aura

Reviving mid-century modernism at CCNC

By Deborah Salomon   •   Photographs by John Gessner

Minimalism treats space as an object. Therefore, the 6,500-square-foot residence of Dr. Sun Moon Kim and his wife, Sylvia Jeongmin Kim, flows around multiple open spaces. Light streaming onto forest and ponds creates seasonal backdrops seen through tall, unshaded windows. Furniture, where required, is spare and sculptural.

The result: serene, quiet, contemporary with an Asian buzz and a transformative history.

If ever a house reflected its occupants, this is it.

Sun Moon and Sylvia are a fit, handsome, thoughtful Korean couple who know what they like. Their adorable daughters — Adrianne, 7, and Lillian, 3 — chatter in English or Korean in a family room where toys are the only clutter.

“We don’t like clutter,” Sylvia says, with a slight frown.

“We grew up that way — neat, clean, no clutter,” her husband adds. Already, the children understand tidying up.

The environment they have created matches a description of Korean architecture as naturalistic, simple, displaying an economy of shape and avoidance of extremes. However, the story of how the Kims found this house deep in the Country Club of North Carolina residential enclave illustrates serendipity, or luck.

Sun Moon was born in Brooklyn, where his father studied medicine. He returned to Korea for seven years before settling in the United States. While an undergrad at Georgia Tech he met Sylvia, a stunning Korean flight attendant who traveled worldwide for Etihad Airways, based in Abu Dhabi. She would arrange her flight schedule to coincide with his whereabouts. Sun Moon’s medical training and cardiology specialty took him to the West Indies, Kentucky and Chapel Hill where, now married with children, they squeezed into rented townhouses.

Settling in a small town wasn’t their agenda. However, when Sun Moon, a golfer, learned of the Reid Heart Center in Pinehurst, he said, “Let’s go visit.” He was impressed not only by the medical facilities, but by the area where “kids run around among trees and nature.”

“We fell in love,” Sylvia said.

Enough in love to accept a position at Reid and look for a home that met their stringent specifications.

Move-in condition was not one of them.

Central North Carolina in the post-war 1950s was no hotbed of architectural innovation. Ranch houses with breezeway and attached garage sprung up everywhere, interspersed with brick Colonials, clapboard Victorians, shingled Cape Cod cottages, a few predictable split levels or, in gated country club settings, ante- and post-bellum Southern mansions.

Then, N.C. State University College of Design imported young Japanese-American architect George Matsumoto from California, who introduced a style soon applauded around the nation: mid-century modernism — described as angular, spare, flat, glass, wood and, yes, faintly Asian. Matsumoto’s homes stood in stark, often shocking, contrast to their neighbors. They definitely required related lighting and furnishings, as well as amenable residents.

Because flowery chintz and wall-to-wall carpet don’t belong in mid-century modern.

Matsumoto’s students and successors spread the concept through the Research Triangle and tri-state areas. Ed Lowenstein, another modernist who revolutionized Greensboro, sent Thomas Hayes to Southern Pines, where Hayes settled and built not only his own home, but several others in Weymouth, Knollwood and elsewhere.

In 1952, the all-boys club received a woman’s touch when Elizabeth Bobbitt Lee became the first of her gender to graduate from the N.C. State design school. By 1986 Lee, now an established architect, was hired to design a house at CCNC.

Like its prototypes, it was described as “very brown,” meaning the exterior faded into the wooded acreage, but its outlines suggest an Asian influence. The Kims saw beneath the flowered chintz upholstery and wall-to-wall carpet within.

“The architecture was way ahead but (the interior) was stuck in the ’80s,” Sun Moon says. “We walked in and saw the house as our own sanctuary.” In 2019 the house had been on the market for a while. “It needed total renovation.”

No problem. They were young, brave, strong, ready to tackle the job, in part with their own hands. Besides, they found a talisman left hanging on the living room wall: a large painting of a kimono, common in Korea as well as Japan.

“This is it,” they decided, and looked no further.

Renovating a 6,500-square-foot house with six bedrooms (each with a balcony) and eight bathrooms (previously 10) while Sun Moon practiced cardiology and Sylvia cared for two young children proved a challenge. They acted as general contractors, hiring professionals for plumbing and electrical, heating and AC, but did much of the design and grunt work — stripping wallpaper, painting, carpentry, installations — themselves. Enclosed spaces were opened, a flow established from the enormous family room leading onto an equally enormous deck, through dining room, living room (with fireplace in the center rather than on an exterior wall), built-in bar area and hallway to all main-floor bedrooms except the master, which is located off the family room. In the true spirit of minimalism, this master bedroom is simply a low platform bed in a room, with tissue-fabric window coverings and a wall decoration composed of slats. No chairs, no chests or tables, no bureaus. Adjoining is a windowless bath-dressing room-closet suite the size of a studio apartment, centered around a double shower with glass walls on three sides. The entire house, previously carpeted (even the bathrooms), is unified by PVC floorboards, a contrast to light area rugs.

“This is good for the kids and the dog,” Sun Moon says.

Because the house is built on an incline the basement is above ground, with a central room, still empty, proportioned for floor hockey or tricycle races; also a kitchen and two guest bedrooms with bathrooms perfect for grandparents, still in Korea.

Just outside the glass doors, the girls play on a colorful gym set like those found in the best parks.

Realtors suggest a house sinks or swims in the kitchen.

The Kims are foodies. “We live to eat,” Sun Moon says. Travel destinations include culinary meccas. The Kims demolished the original kitchen — huge, well-equipped by 1980s standards, with light paneled wood cabinetry — to install a smaller version, designed by Sylvia, where every square inch has a purpose, every cupboard holds enough, but not an overabundance, of dishes. Where the highest-end appliances work to optimum efficiency. Where the Asian aura continues in sleek black, brown, sand and white surfaces. Where Sylvia and Sun Moon prepare beautiful, healthy Korean and American meals.

In a bold but logical move, this couple decided to leave almost all their furnishings behind and start anew. High Point wasn’t an option. Sylvia measured carefully, then shopped online for simple pieces, some statuesque, others spectacular, like the dining-area chandelier. She chose neutrals, avoiding primary colors except in the princess-style girls’ rooms in pink and mint green.

“I looked at thousands of pictures for inspiration but I didn’t copy anything,” Sylvia says.

The 5 acres surrounding the Kim residence have been left au naturel except for a stone walkway linking the house and two ponds, one with a footbridge, each with a geyser fountain, both large enough to accommodate fish. Another water sculpture stands between the circular drive and front door, creating an expectation of what lies ahead. Foliage hides the house from the road. Moss covers much of the ground. Azaleas and dogwoods bloom in the spring, but formal beds would look contrived.

Minimalism as practiced by the Kims is more than a style or a period, furniture or decor. “I try to apply it to general life,” Sylvia says. “I spend time researching before I shop, think a lot about minimalizing the amount of stuff in our lives.” Buying less allows buying better. This applies to groceries and clothing.

“We want each piece of furniture to go along with the rest of the house — and let the house do the talking,” Sun Moon adds. “We want to breathe the house, enjoy it with five senses.”

Luckily, husband and wife share the same taste and philosophies. Otherwise, “People can get divorced when renovating a home,” Sun Moon says.

Not the Kims. Their house represents a partnership moving in the same direction, inspired by an American feminist trailblazer who challenged Southern tradition with an architectural mode distilled from Frank Lloyd Wright, George Matsumoto, Scandinavian modern and classic Asian, which coalesced when a Japanese-American came to Raleigh in 1948 to inspire a coterie of architects chafing for change.

“We’ve seen photos of Miss Lee on-site,” Sun Moon says. “I think she would be proud, how we preserved the story of the house and honored the architect,” in part by returning the interior to its intended karma. “My motto, don’t follow any one trend. Instead, do what expresses us in the best way.”  PS

Almanac

By Ashley Wahl

July spills her secrets to the night.

At twilight, as the earth exhales the sun’s hot kiss, the parish of crickets chants glory to the rising moon and a softness spills across the landscape.

In the garden, a luminous sea of moonflowers opens beneath the glittering heavens. Fragrant blossoms resemble tiny white horns — silent galaxies transmitting sweetness from the darkness to the great abyss.

A night bird calls out from the shadows.

Does he sing his own name — whip-poor-will — or does he sing of the muse? 

 

Night-bloom-er.

Moon-flow-er.

Hard to tell.

As constellations of fireflies rise from the tall grass, cicadas blurt out their shameless confessions. It seems that each moment is a dance between sound and light, and as moths orbit lamp posts like tiny winged planets, five deep, guttural bellows resound.

A bullfrog moans from an unseen pond. It’s not a siren song, per se — more like a trembling cellist exploring a single string — but enchanting, nonetheless.

Might it draw you to the water? Will you run your fingers along the pond’s silky surface, dip your toes into its coolness, hum a sonorous tune of your own?

Maybe.

Only the night will know for sure.

Edible Landscape

The garden is churning out summer squash and snap beans. Beefsteaks and Brandywines grow plump and heavy. And yet, everywhere you turn, edible treasures spill forth.

Blackberry patches at the edge of the woods.

Wineberries along favorite trails.

Mushrooms galore — boletes, leatherbacks, chanterelles and, if you’re lucky, chicken of the woods.

Red clover and dandelion, daylilies and chickweed, chicory and burdock roots.

Yet at the height of this summer abundance, don’t forget: Now’s time to sow seeds for the autumn harvest.

Something Sweet

Japanese wineberries: delicious though invasive. So, if you are wondering what to do with your daily harvest (besides eat them by the handful or tuck them into your favorite cobbler), consider using them for a cool, summer treat.
Got lemon balm? A friend passed along this simple recipe:

Wineberry & Lemon Balm Sorbet

Ingredients:

3 cups fresh-picked wineberries (rinsed and drained)

1/4 cup sugar

1 handful lemon balm leaves (rinsed and dried)

1/4 cup water

Additional ice water

Directions:

Line wineberries on a cookie sheet to put in freezer.

While berries are freezing, make simple syrup by stirring water, sugar and lemon balm in saucepan over medium heat. Once mixture reaches a boil, remove from heat and allow syrup to cool completely before straining out the leaves. Put syrup in a covered container; refrigerate.

Once berries are frozen, combine them with cold syrup in blender with a few teaspoons of ice water. Blend until smooth, adding more ice water if needed.

Enjoy immediately.

Mosquito is out,
it’s the end of the day;
she’s humming and hunting
her evening away.
Who knows why such hunger
arrives on such wings
at sundown? I guess
it’s the nature of things.

—N. M. Bodecker,
Midsummer Night Itch

Good Natured

Tea Time

Refreshing, and good for you

By Karen Frye

Here in the South, drinking tea is almost a birthright. The good news for us tea (and sweet tea) lovers is that a recent study from the University of California in Irvine School of Medicine revealed that two catechin-type flavonoids found in both green and black tea activate a process in the body that relaxes the blood vessels. This discovery could be helpful in the treatment of hypertension. So, enjoy your glass of tea; just be careful of the amount of sugar you use to sweeten it — or maybe use honey or stevia instead.

There are a few other teas that can quench your thirst on these hot summer days. Yerba mate is a lovely tea with similar benefits as green and black teas. The tree where the tea leaves are found is a species of holly found deep in the rainforests of South America. The leaves are hand-harvested by farmers in indigenous communities in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. Yerba mate contains less caffeine than a cup of coffee (about 85 mg), but a little more than a cup of black tea.

Just like black and green teas, yerba mate is rich in antioxidants. It also has 24 vitamins and minerals, 15 amino acids, and abundant polyphenols to slow down the aging process. Some of the benefits of this superfood tea are increasing energy and mental focus, boosting the immune system, and lowering blood sugar and heart disease risks. Yerba mate nourishes while it stimulates. 

Hibiscus tea is a caffeine-free tea that is as delicious as iced tea. Its lovely rosy color is reminiscent of Kool-Aid. Children will find it a delicious drink as well. Hibiscus flowers are from the hibiscus plant, but not the ornamental variety that we see blooming in the summer.

Here is a simple recipe for an energizing, cold-brewed tea on sweltering summer days:

3 tablespoons loose leaf black tea (or 5 tablespoons yerba mate or hibiscus flowers)

6 cups cool water

3 tablespoons honey or to taste

1 lemon, sliced

Add the loose leaf tea and cool water to a large jar or tea pitcher. Stir to mix well. Seal the jar or pitcher and refrigerate 12 hours. When ready to serve, strain the tea into another container and add the honey and lemon slices.

Enjoy your delicious and healthful beverage.  PS

Karen Frye is the owner and founder of Nature’s Own and teaches yoga at the Bikram Yoga Studio.