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McGarrigan Group Wilhoit Group Marti Tyler Preston Young
Katherine Farless Laine Rendleman Leslie Stainback
Marty Susan Boydoh Sue Anne Wade Hilburn Michel
Stacey Ofsanko Bridgette Johnson Maggie Marston
April 2026
FEATURES
55 Poems Poems by Matthew Olzmann & Paul Jones
5 6 Beat by Beat
By Cassie Bustamante
Greensboro’s newest poet laureate aims to build bridges
6 2 Brake for Estate Sales
By Cynthia Adams
More than a junking junket
70 Sanctuary By Ross Howell Jr.
A Kernersville gardener creates a native plant refuge
7 6 Knowing When to Bale By Maria Johnson
For Rachel York, a straw-bale home was the answer to her domestic riddle
85 April Almanac By Ashley Walshe
Cover photograph by Amy Freeman
Photograph this page by Lynn Donovan
DEPARTMENTS
13 Chaos Theory By Cassie Bustamante
17 Simple Life By Jim Dodson
22 Sazerac
26 Tea Leaf Astrologer By Zora Stellanova
28 State of Mind By Tommy Tomlinson
31 Life’s Funny By Maria Johnson
35 The Omnivorous Reader By Anne Blythe
39 Home Grown By Cynthia Adams
42 In Good Taste By Jasmine Comer
45 Pleasures of Life By Josephus III
49 Birdwatch By Susan Campbell
51 Wandering Billy By Billy Ingram
116 Outings
124 GreenScene
128 O.Henry Ending By John Adamcik
WHERE PRECISION MEETS BEAUTY
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They Tried the Big Cities. THEY CHOSE GREENSBORO.
Spartans MICHAELA KELLY AND JACOB WARREN met and fell in love as students at UNCG. After graduation, their path took them to Boston and Los Angeles, where they built careers and experienced big-city life.
What they wanted next was something deeper.
“I want to know people when I’m out in town,” Jacob says. Greensboro offers “the benefits of a larger city with a smaller-town feel”. The Tanger Center now brings Broadway and national touring acts downtown. New restaurants and gathering spaces have expanded the city’s cultural energy. There’s more to experience here than when they left, yet it still feels like home.
Michaela returned to UNCG as Assistant Professor of Voice in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Jacob stepped into the role of Donor Experience Manager, strengthening UNCG’s relationships across campus and community.
Walking back onto campus as faculty felt “super surreal,” Michaela says. For Jacob, it was full circle. As a former Campus Greensboro Fellow, he was once paired with a local mentor who helped shape his path, a relationship that still matters today.
Ready to come back? BOOMERANG GREENSBORO CAN HELP.
Boomerang Greensboro helps former residents plug back in, find jobs, and use their experience to shape what’s next for our city.
For more info, contact Cecelia Thompson: cthompson@actiongreensboro.org
Volume 16, No. 4
“I have a fancy that every city has a voice.” www.ohenrymag.com
PUBLISHER
David Woronoff david@thepilot.com
Andie Rose, Creative Director andiesouthernpines@gmail.com
Susan Campbell, Ross Howell Jr., Billy Ingram, Josephus III, Gerry O’Neill, Gary Palmer, Stephen E. Smith, Zora Stellanova, Tommy Tomlinson, Ashley Walshe, Amberly Glitz Weber
ADVERTISING SALES
Lisa Allen
336.210.6921 • lisa@ohenrymag.com
Amy Grove 336.456.0827 • amy@ohenrymag.com
Brad Beard, Graphic Designer
Jennifer Bunting, Advertising Coordinator ohenrymag@ohenrymag.com
Henry Hogan, Finance Director 910.693.2497
Darlene Stark, Subscriptions & Circulation Director 910.693.2488
OWNERS
Jack Andrews, Frank Daniels III, David Woronoff
In memoriam Frank Daniels Jr.
Why DIY today what you can DIY tomorrow?
Ceilings and other unfinished projects
By Cassie Bustama Nte
When it comes to house projects, my husband, Chris, and I have an unspoken motto: Why do today what you can put off until right before you need to sell your home?
Just before we moved to Greensboro, our project procrastination caught up with us. I kneel atop a 5-foot-tall, mint-green, vintage shelving unit in our kitchen, my neck craned toward the ceiling I’m painting. Tiny, white droplets fleck my darkbrown hair. Nearby, Chris feeds our infant son, Wilder, stuffing lukewarm spoonfuls of mushy, Gerber oatmeal with a touch of homemade applesauce into the little guy’s hungry, gummy, babybird maw.
In our house, painting is a tag-team endeavor. Chris is the roller, while I am the cutter-inner. After many years spent creating content for my DIY blog — mostly paint projects — and refinishing furniture for my vintage-furniture storefront, I’ve got a steady hand, one that requires no blue tape. Chris, on the other hand, is more like a bull in a paint-your-own-pottery shop — not so good with the details but great with the brute force required for rolling. So, as soon as I swipe paint on the last of the kitchen ceiling edges, I hop down and swap places with him. He douses a roller in white paint while I take over with Wilder.
“Why do we do this to ourselves?” I say, exasperated. “All of these projects we let pile up over the seven years we’ve lived here and now we’re cramming them into seven weeks!” Light fixtures to replace, countertops to update, a half-dead maple tree along the driveway to chop down and, obviously, ceilings to paint.
“And, you know,” says Chris, “none of these projects are that bad. It’s the getting them all done in rapid succession that’s killer.” He pauses and I can practically read the thought bubble that’s forming over his head. “Let’s not do this in our next house.”
I nod enthusiastically. “Let’s get things done over time so that we can actually enjoy the results of our own blood, sweat and tears,” I say, rubbing 6-month-old Wilder’s button nose with my own. “That’s right, Mommy and Daddy are not going to procrastinate in our new house!”
A couple short months later, we say goodbye to that home and its freshly-painted ceilings, and make our way to Greensboro, where a 1966 Starmount Forest ranch home waits for us. Sure, it needs some updating, but it ticks so many of our boxes as a family of five — four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a great location.
The kitchen, however, is never going to work for us. While I am a huge fan of reusing what you can, the original cabinetry only allows space for a 24-inch oven. A baking sheet full of dino-shaped chicken nuggets? Forget it. And I can stop fantasizing about hosting Thanksgiving with an oven like that. So, just months after moving in, we hire a contractor to renovate our kitchen, updating it with new cabinetry, new flooring and fixtures, a hammered-brass sink from locally-owned Thompson Traders, and, of course, new appliances, including a gorgeous, white-and-gold, 30-inch Café oven.
As the renovation crawls closer to its completion many months later, I tell the contractor, “We’ll take care of all the painting.”
We just want our house back — no more workers tromping around, no more plastic sheeting, no more construction dust. “Trust me, we can handle that part.”
“OK, if you’re sure,” he says.
“Oh, I’m sure.”
Once the contractor and his accoutrements have quite literally left the building, we spend a weekend coating the walls in white. I give the new built-in banquette and molding a touch of easy-to-clean sheen with semigloss in the same shade. And it looks fresh and finished — as long as you don’t look up. “We’ll save the ceiling for next weekend,” I say to Chris as I scrub my brush clean. “I’m too tired to think about it right now.”
Approximately 150 weekends — or three years — later, our ceiling finally has its moment with paint. While we’ve grown so tired of looking at the dull, drab ceiling in its primed state, apparently we haven’t been tired enough to actually push up our sleeves and do it ourselves. Nope, the first thing we do when I go back to work full-time is hire out the work. All I have to do is select the color: Sherwin Williams’ Romance at 75% saturation, a lovely, warm shade of blush. No argument from Chris, who’s just happy to have it done.
Well, almost done. You see, the painters arrive on a sweltering July day and our AC is working overtime. The two vents in the kitchen ceiling are dripping with condensation, making it impossible for paint to stick to them.
“Don’t worry about it,” I tell the concerned painter as he shows me the issue. “We can easily get to it when the weather cools this fall.”
It’s been almost four years and, as I sit at my kitchen banquette writing, I steal an upwards glance at the vent closest to me, stark white against the soft-pink ceiling. Really, how hard could it be to just slap some paint on it when I’m done writing? Not hard at all, but we’re not ready to list our home anytime soon. OH
Cassie Bustamante is editor of O.Henry magazine.
By Jim DoDsoN
On a warm and dry afternoon last October, as I mulched and watered my front yard’s 35 parched azaleas in the middle of the most punishing drought in memory, a shiny, white Volvo eased into my driveway.
Garden Reborn
And just maybe, ready for prime time
A pair of well-dressed women emerged. They introduced themselves as Candy Gessner and Lorraine Neill, committee members from the Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs. They had something to discuss.
For an instant, I wondered what crime against nature I might have unwittingly committed. Unnecessary strain on municipal water supplies? Had neighbors complained about my loud (and entirely inappropriate) oaths issued at a rainless sky?
Instead, Candy smiled and reached for my grubby hand.
“We understand you have a lovely garden,” she said. “We’ve come hoping to view it and ask if you would be interested in having your garden featured on the 2026 garden tour in June.”
Between us, they could have knocked me over with a packet of Burpee seeds. In my time on this Earth, I’ve built three ambitious landscape gardens and never given a passing thought that somebody might wish to see them. Especially a lot of serious gardening somebodies.
My first garden was built on a heavily forested hilltop in Maine, a classic New England woodland garden created on the remains of a vanished 19th-century farm that my cheeky Scottish mother-in-law nicknamed “Slightly Off in the Woods.” It was the perfect name because the only people who ever saw it were the FedEx guy and tourists who’d taken a wrong turn onto our dirt road.
“Nice layout,” the FedEx guy once remarked with a smirk. “But why build a garden like this that nobody will ever see?”
“Because I see it,” I said. “It keeps me sane in a crazy world.”
He thought I was joking. But any serious gardener will tell you that time spent in their garden is a cure for whatever ails the spirit. Most of us, in fact, never imagine that others will desire to see our gardens. We create them for us. The closest we can get to playing God, as a famous English gardener named Mirabel Osler once said to me.
My second garden belonged to a cute little cottage in Pinehurst that my wife, Wendy, and I rented in hopes of eventually buying. The previous owner had been an elderly gardener who let his 2-acre garden run amok. I spent a year cutting back overgrown azalea bushes and battling wicked wisteria vines and even recovered a “lost” serpentine brick fence that had been swallowed whole by English ivy. I also built a beautiful wooden fence around the fully restored garden — just in time for disaster to hit.
The week we planned to officially buy the place, the kitchen floor collapsed, and we discovered that black mold was running like a medieval plague through the walls and floors. We moved out that same afternoon. At least the garden looked fantastic.
Finally, there is the garden where the women from the garden council and I stood on that afternoon. It is, without question, my final garden and, therefore, a serious labor of love.
A decade ago, we moved back to my hometown, taking possession of a charming mid-century bungalow that the Corry family built in 1951. I grew up two doors away from this lovely old house and always admired it. Al and Merle Corry were my parents’ best friends. Their grown children were thrilled when they learned that a pair of Dodsons would be their childhood home’s second owners.
And so, we set off to fully restore the property.
As Wendy got to work on the interior, I confronted “Miss Merle’s” long-neglected garden. It took a year of weekends just
to clear dying trees and dead shrubs from the front yard before I could turn my attention to the backyard so wildly overgrown, I nicknamed it “The Lost Kingdom.”
Over the next decade, neighbors and friends got used to the sight of me getting gloriously dirty every weekend, rain or shine — digging holes, building beds, hauling in new soil and manure, eventually planting a dozen flowering trees in the front yard alone, with banks of hydrangeas and 30-plus azalea bushes, inspired by a former neighbor who did the same during my childhood years.
In due course, our “east” garden became a flowering space with a tiered stone pathway and lush beds that are home to autumn sage, Mexican sunflowers, purple salvia, society garlic, Mexican petunias, Gerbera daisies and red-hot pokers. Knock Out and old-garden rose varieties preside over a trio of butterfly bushes that monarchs swarm upon on late-summer days.
In the former Lost Kingdom out back, I built an Asianthemed shade garden that’s home to nine Japanese maples, scores of autumn ferns and monster-sized hosta plants (I imported from my Maine garden). The final touch was a stone pathway that winds through this tranquil, hidden space, though only I and our three dogs have ever followed it.
Which brings me back to the lovely women from the council. I thanked them for considering my garden for their June
tour but pointed out that drought had taken an alarming toll. Moreover, mine was still a young garden, a mere decade old. It needed time to heal and find its way.
“Another year perhaps?” I suggested.
They wouldn’t hear of it. “Everyone’s garden has been beaten up,” Candy reminded me. “But come spring, they always bounce back like a miracle. Yours will, too.”
So now, friends, April is here and I’m a man in constant motion, fussing, fixing, weeding, mulching, trimming, planting new things and getting gloriously dirty. A garden, of course, is never finished. There is always something to do, to change, to add or subtract, or simply fix. Nature abides no slackers.
Nothing could make me happier than to welcome folks to my reborn garden come June 6-7.
Don’t mind my grubby hands, though. A gardener’s job is never done. OH
Sadly, Lorraine Neill passed away earlier this year on Feb. 6. We offer our condolences to her family and friends and gratitude for the time she dedicated to The Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs. For more information on the 2026 garden tour, visit their facebook page: facebook.com/gcgcinc.
Jim Dodson is founding editor of O.Henry magazine.
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FEATURING
Art to Heart
SAZERAC
"A spirited forum of Gate City food, drink, history, art, events, rumors and eccentrics worthy of our famous namesake"
“What I’ve realized, regarding how long I’ve been doing it, is that you don't get better, you just change,” says artist Matthew Micca, whose work will be featured at GreenHill Center for NC Art beginning April 10. Micca, an Asheville resident and contemporary abstract artist who breaks the mold, strives to always produce art that he’s proud of — even if it’s something that has completely strayed away from his norm. From drawing illustrations in his earlier years to falling in love with abstract art, Micca has decided to set aside his panel paintings and, instead, try out three-dimensional cubes that encapsulate his contemporary artist mind. “About a year and a half ago, I figured out how to merge my paintings and bring it to the 3D realm in a way,” he says. He found the switch from 2D to 3D to be easier than expected. His technique involves painting his design on one flat surface of the cube while the excess paint drips down its sides. Asked what he thinks about his previous work, he says: “I recognize that it’s good, but I can’t do that now because I’m past that.” Art, Micca says, is ever changing and constantly moving. He wishes more artists would take risks and evolve their art, which, if you can pluck up the courage to do so, can pull you out of your comfort zone and into daring and bold expression. “I think I’ve gotten braver through the years,” he muses. While his work has changed over time, one thing has remained the same: “My work has always been a mix of geometric and organic forms.” While his shapes, patterns and evolving mediums allow him to express himself, he’s fascinated by viewer interpretations as well. “I love to hear what people see in my work,” he says. So when you catch Micca’s solo exhibition of his 3D-cube work at GreenHill Center for NC Art through June 20, be sure to let him know what you see. Info: greenhillnc.org/exhibitions.
Just One Thing
Art is many things to Greensboro artist Jonathan Vizcuña, but quiet isn’t one of them. Vizcuña believes art should speak for itself — and loudly, at that. With its shiny, eye-catching embellishments, his art illustrates his feelings. “As an artist, that’s one of your goals. I want to have the opportunity to, through my art, fill with joy, touch with emotion and communicate many things to many people,” he says. Years ago, while working as a web designer, he started expressing himself through a hobby he didn’t expect to take off the way it did. “I’ve gone through every single title in web design. That has always been my world. Now, sculpting has become a more personal expression, much slower,” Vizcuña explains. For him, sculpting is a much more intentional process than working on paper. He describes himself as having quiet confidence, unassuming and never boasting but, instead, letting his art toot its own horn. He’s been often told by others that he “should be proud” of his art. “I’m not saying I’m not proud of it, but I never thought I would get so much exposure with my sculptures,” he says. From getting his first exhibition in Deep Roots to now exhibiting at The Center for Visual Artists, Vizcuña has put hours upon hours into sculpting because he believes in the power of his art. If you’re a sucker for art that speaks to — or, in this case, roars at — you, check out Vizcuña’s Apex Noir, seen here, at The Center of Visual Artists exhibit, We Art GSO, through April 18. Info: mycvagreensboro.org/WE-ART-GSO.
Window on the Past
For National Poetry Month, we wanted to highlight the work of a not-so-ancient poet — and no, we’re not talking about Shakespeare. Douglas Cartland, a Gate City resident in the early 1900s, wrote a poem about renowned Greensboro-born writer William Sidney Porter, better known as O. Henry. Cartland calls him “Greensboro’s hero, Greensboro’s star, Greensboro’s outstanding light, Greensboro’s sun in the darkest night.” With words like these, Cartland may have just fancied himself the ‘Boro Bard.
Welcome to the Wordshop
Wanna shake up your reading and writing? Greensboro Bound Book Festival returns April 9–11, celebrating diverse voices and stories with American Kaleidoscope as its theme.
Three days of literary activities culminating in one full day of downtown events include perspective-shifting author chats, a palette of poetry, a collage of kiddo content and, of course, reflective — and perhaps refractive — writing workshops. That’s where O.Henry comes in to play.
We’ve teamed up with the festival to lead a few of Saturday’s workshops at the Greensboro Public Library’s Central Library. First, from 10–11:15 a.m., O.Henry editors Cassie Bustamante and David Claude Bailey will reflect on their own path of bringing back to life their personal experience. In a session entitled “That’s My Story,” they’ll offer tips and caveats about coaxing memory into words. Got a memoir ’bout to bust out of your brain? Chapter one starts here.
Then, from 11:30 a.m.–12:45 p.m., O.Henry contributor, author and TVparty! creator Billy Ingram takes you on a journey to your next career with “Writing as a Second or Third Act.” Billy’s worked in big-time
advertising as well as entertainment. These days, he spends his time unearthing Greensboro gems in his monthly “Wandering Billy” column and writing gritty features for O.Henry. An actor at heart, he knows something about entering the scene stage, whoops, write after a completely different career
Do you panic when you have to interview a subject? Book your sesh from 1:30–2:45 p.m. with O.Henry founding editor and New York Times-bestselling author Jim Dodson, who leads “The Art of the Research Interview.” After spending years traveling, researching and interviewing along the the Great Wagon Road for his 2025 release, The Road That Made America, Jim’s more than got the chops to teach you how to ask the right questions that allow the conversation to flow freely from your interviewee. We’ve always found that freeflowing whiskey helps, but we’re sure Jim’s got better methods.
Putting a cap on the workshops, Erica Miriam Fabri, author of the 2025 Jack McCarthy Book Prize winner, Morphology, leads “Making the Public Personal: Writing Autobiographical Poetry Inspired by Current Events” from 3–4:15 p.m.
JOI DE VIVRE
The Art of Silence: Although the candles on my cake aren’t yet enough to start a fire, these few years of my life have been nothing short of evolving and progressing. Constantly moving and pushing to advance have left my brain busy, cluttered and in desperate need of something more — or in this case, less — the quiet. Lately, I’ve found myself enjoying this newfound absence of noise as I’ve spent little time with it growing up. It's something I’ve been oblivious to but have also found is needed in my creative process. I’m an overthinker, more than I’d
Curious how you can use your own autobiography to provide future generations with the true — and poetic — story of the cultural movements or social and political conditions shaping your life? Learn to use your voice as a measure for the times. No matter what skill it is you’re shooting to sharpen, we’re here to help you find and cultivate your story. After all, we’re writing prose.
And don’t miss out on a full line-up of talented authors, beginning on April 9 with No. 1 New York Times-bestselling author Casey McQuiston, whose book, Red, White & Royal Blue, was made into a 2023 film. Find the schedule of events here: greensborobound.com/2026-festival.
like to admit, but sitting in silence, this space of nothingness has allowed my overflowing thoughts to process unfiltered and untouched by the opinions of others. The silence allows me to flex my artistic skills and challenge me to build something from the ground up. If you consider yourself a creative person like myself, I encourage you to take some time out of your day to be alone, think in silence, then create. How else are you supposed to connect with your most authentic thoughts?
– Joi Floyd
Unsolicited Advice
For the lot of us, 2016 was an era in itself. Groovy, new music albums and the upsurge of pop-culture references, thanks to rising social media, made the year nostalgic. And though it’s worth a scroll through our camera rolls, there is one part of 2016 we keep coming back to — the fashion trends. Some were iconic and some were not so much, but, you’ve got to admit it, no one was rocking ripped, high-rise jeans better than us. It was an experimental year to say the least and we’ve grown through our choices in clothing since then, but it’s hard to focus on current ‘fit picks when we’re mentally stuck a decade before. So we’ve provided a list of trends we advise you to stay away from this time around.
Skinny jeans? More like leg traps — bonus points if they looked like they’d been run over by a lawnmower. Hard to get into and even harder to get out of, these infamously tight jeans have burned a hole — bigger than the purposefully placed one on their knees — in our memory
forever. Luckily, we’ve evolved to clothing with a little flare. Never again will we let skinny jeans reemerge from our bin in the attic and never again will we let our legs suffer in a vacuum-seal fit.
Fried, dyed and laid to the side, our hair was nothing more than a rainbow experiment. Arguably one of the most tedious trends — thanks to grown-out roots — ombré hair was a trend of self-expression and individuality. It’s not ridiculous to say that every once in a while we have the urge to grab some hair dye and bring the hot-and-hued hairdo back, but lest we forget the clumps of hair and the big chop that followed.
Paired with a denim jacket and a snapback, thigh-high boots were a sign of the times. Leather, suede or pointed, these boots were versatile and everywhere. We saw them on celebrities, family and even friends. What's the downside, you say? These boots, turns out, were not made for walking — sure to bring blisters and callouses, but, luckily for us, this 2016 trend didn’t stick to us as tightly as these boots did. OH
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ARIES
(March 21 –April 19)
This month, you’re giving theatrical bravado — and we’re lapping it up. Mars in your sign from April 9 through mid-May is the energy shot you didn’t need but surely won’t squander. Just don’t move so fast you miss a stellar career opportunity that aligns with your long-term goals. A friendly tip: Passion and impulse aren’t always synonymous. Now, channel your inner Freddie Mercury and watch the world respond.
Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:
Taurus (April 20 – May 20)
Taste as you go.
Gemini (May 21 – June 20)
Double the recipe.
Cancer (June 21 – July 22)
Best not to overextend yourself.
Leo (July 23 – August 22)
Slow down and proceed with wonder.
Virgo (August 23 – September 22)
Go waffles-for-dinner wild.
Libra (September 23 – October 22)
Check the expiration date.
Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)
Try changing the lens.
Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)
Two words: flameless candles.
Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)
It’s time to turn the compost.
Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)
Read the room, Darling.
Pisces (February 19 – March 20)
Schedule the oil change. OH
Zora Stellanova lives in the N.C. mountains with her wolfdogs, Venus and Lilith. Although she prefers divining with loose-leaf puerh, she recommends a mugwort and passionflower blend for those seeking wisdom and clarity from dreams.
April Arrivals
By tommy tomli NsoN
Every year
I mark it on the calendar when it arrives: porch season.
This year we got a dose in the middle of February. We always get a brief false spring right around then. You know winter is coming back for another round so you get outside while you can.
Sweet Spot
A place to watch the world
It was 74 degrees one day, 83 the next, and my wife and I took to the porch in the afternoons. The porch was one of the main reasons we bought this old house. It was built in 1929, ancient in a modern city of teardowns. When we got the place the porch was half caved in — it had a big crack in the concrete, running down the middle. We got it resurfaced, and over the last 22 years, and two sets of porch furniture, we’ve spent untold thousands of hours out here.
There are some neighbors we see only when we’re on the porch. They stop by and chat on their way to get a beer down the street, or just on their evening walk. Sometimes they come to browse the books in our Little Free Library. Not long after we put the library in, a young couple with a little girl would stop by a few times a week. An older neighbor noticed, found out the girl’s name, and started leaving books in there with notes for her. Then the couple discovered that the older woman had a dog and started leaving treats for the dog. I’m not sure that couple and that woman ever met. But those little gifts meant the world to them. And to us.
A year or two ago, a waterlogged branch fell off our oak
tree in a storm and knocked out the library. We had it rebuilt. You can’t let go of a thing that gives you a story like that.
The porch is our party line, our message board, the place we catch up on news and gossip. It’s where we learn who moved out and who moved in, who got sick and who’s doing better. We have watched children grow from here, and watched other neighbors age. This winter was a hard one. We had an ice storm one weekend and 11 inches of snow the next. Other parts of the state got it even worse. We got lucky at our house — the power never went out and the pipes didn’t freeze. But man, a winter storm in the South can be lonely. We went entire days without seeing another soul. My wife is from Wisconsin and cheerfully tells stories about having to shovel the driveway every hour when they had one of their regular blizzards. Some people down here — mostly transplants — take to the snow like golden retrievers. The rest of us just hunker.
A week or so after the last snow melted, I saw the shoots of one of our daffodils poking through the dirt. And I knew porch weather was coming.
I have spent some time over the years developing a theory about why the South is believed to be, let’s say, more eccentric than other parts of the country. I call it the Crazy Aunt Theory. In colder places, if you have a crazy aunt, you can just
stick her in the attic. But our summers are too hot for that. So we put our crazy aunts on the porch where they can talk to God and everybody.
The porch takes us back to those looser, closer times. You don’t have to text anybody from the porch. You don’t need to look up their socials to see what they’ve been doing. They are voice and flesh, standing right in front of you, having real conversations. Sometimes, if somebody has a few minutes, they’ll come up on the porch and actually sit with us. Crazy, right? Spending time together, in person? And we will sit there with glasses of sweet tea, or possibly bourbon, and talk about — well, maybe, nothing. Some days nothing is the best thing to talk about.
And sometimes we are silent because there is so much to see.
There’s a movie from the ’90s called Smoke that features a character named Augie who runs a little tobacco shop in Brooklyn. Every morning at 8, he takes a single photo of the street corner outside. One of the other characters thinks this is the dumbest thing he’s ever heard . . . until he looks through an album of Augie’s photos. Slowly he notices the little differences, the way the light changes, the weather, the people walking through the frame. He is deeply moved.
That’s the way I think about our porch.
In my mind, I can flip through the album and watch the
magnolia on the corner bloom and fade. I can see the wrens who show up every year to build a nest under one of the eaves, making a warm space for their babies: first eggs, then hatchlings, then gone. I can see the lizards who slink out from under the house to sun themselves on the warm concrete. I can turn around the camera and see Alix sitting next to me. We who moved here in our 40s and are now in our 60s and hope to still be around in our 80s.
That second warm day in February, two bluebirds floated into the branches of the ornamental cherry tree in our front yard. Our neighborhood is full of cardinals and robins and swallows. Hawks watch over us from the tops of the trees, and owls call to one another at night. But we don’t get many bluebirds. They felt like a promise. The hard winter was coming to an end. Soon it would be porch season for real. We could live out here again — not virtually, not digitally, but through the rich and beautiful panorama of real life. OH
Tommy Tomlinson is the author of two books, The Elephant in the Room and Dogland. He was a longtime columnist for the Charlotte Observer and has written for Esquire, The Atlantic, ESPN the Magazine and many other publications. His online newsletter is called The Writing Shed. He lives in Charlotte with his wife, Alix Felsing.
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Holy Mole-y
Coping with tunnel vision
By maria Joh NsoN
Awoman dressed in gardening boots, jeans and a hoodie, her hair stuffed under a ball cap, walks across her backyard gingerly, dousing the grass with the sudsy contents of a gallon sprayer.
Her cell phone rings in her pocket.
She puts down the sprayer and checks her phone. It’s her mom. She answers.
“What are you doing?” her mom asks brightly.
“Do you really want to know?” Gardening Woman asks.
“Mmhmm,” her mom says.
“I’m spraying the yard with castor oil,” Gardening Woman says. Silence.
“For moles,” Gardening Woman adds, for context.
“I’ll talk to you later,” her mom says.
It’s late winter. The snow has melted.
The Gardening Couple’s backyard is bursting with promise.
The grass they sowed last fall is coming on, bright green, even in the shady spots.
The maples tease them with ruddy buds.
The crocuses are croaking. Not in a morbid way. No, rather in the tree frog way: cheerfully chirping notes of yellow and purple on the fringes of the natural area, which is landscape-talk for “places they don’t even try to grow things any more.”
Finally, the Gardening Couple has almost finished renovating their raised-bed garden, which had fallen prey to a cycle that many gardeners will recognize: wood rot, which draws bugs, which draw bug-eating critters, which draws a Gardening Dog, who tears the ever-living snot out of the frames.
Board by board, the couple’s Gardening Dog dismantles the frames so thoroughly and so quickly, the Gardening Couple conjectures later, that she must have a YouTube channel on the subject.
“Hi, everyone,” she would say merrily. “Gardening Dog here. Today, we’re gonna take down these raised beds in just a few hours.”
All this happens while the Gardening Couple “works” inside.
“Where is Gardening Dog?” one of them asks blithely.
“Oh, she’s dogging around in the backyard,” the other says.
“Oh, good,” comes the reply.
Lalalala.
This is how society crumbles. Good people tend to their daily lives while the paws of destruction dig away under their noses.
This is also why the Gardening Couple is very familiar with people who work at Lowe’s.
“How’s the family?” the Gardening Woman asks someone in a red vest.
“Good. You back for more cedar boards?” her vested friend asks.
“Yep. Hey, can we have some of these doughnuts meant for contractors?” Gardening Woman asks.
“Sure! You paid for them!”
Hahaha.
Like that.
Anyway, the Gardening Couple’s new, improved raised beds, made with slotted concrete blocks at the joints — burrow into that, critters — is almost finished and ready for the planting of cool-weather greens, flowers and veggies.
Proudly, the Gardening Couple walks outside laden with shovels and dreams. They anticipate the spring day, just a couple of months away, when they will host a small gathering to celebrate the marriage of their older son and his wife. Guests will stroll through the yard, marveling at the peacefulness of their little Eden, the beauty of springtime in the Piedmont, the craftsmanship of the raised beds.
“Did you see the slotted blocks on the corners?” they’ll whisper over their plates.
“And the way they chiseled the cedar planks — which were a tad too wide — to fit the slots snugly?”
“In all my days, I’ve never seen such arugula.” “Breathtaking.”
These are the thoughts that fill the heads of the Gardening Couple as they walk outside one sunny afternoon to finish their project.
Suddenly, the reverie is shattered. [CLANK] “OOOOOHHHHHNOOOOOOOOO!!!
ARGGGHHHHHHH!”
The Gardening Woman drops her shovel, grips her head in her hands, falls to her knees, and screams to the heavens.
Half the yard looks like a munitions-testing ground.
Craters yawn with freshly churned dirt.
Patches of new turf lie asunder.
Muddy trenches meander like . . . molehills.
Gardening Dog bounds up, tongue lolling, tail wagging, nose crusted with dirt.
“Yo, family, check it out!” she seems to say. “I took care of those moles for ya!”
Gardening Man looks crestfallen. According to his telling, his life has been one protracted battle with moles.
He retells his war stories: how, as a kid, he helped the maintenance man at his Catholic grade school dispense of moles in the lawn with poisoned peanuts, smoke bombs and pitchforks.
Gardening Woman frowns. She is not a poisoned peanuts, smoke bombs and pitchfork sort of person. Gardening Man knows this.
He continues his epic poem, telling how the moles found him again, early in his marriage to Gardening Woman.
Fortunately, their dog at the time turned out to be a “moler” who brought family members dead moles as gifts. Gardening Man rewarded the dog with bites of steak to reinforce the habit.
Soon, the tunnels and trenches disappeared.
If the current Gardening Dog has ever unearthed a mole, which she must have, she has never shared the bounty.
The thought occurs to Gardening Woman that the mole might
have gone into another dark tunnel — Gardening Dog’s digestive system — only to be reintroduced to the yard as fertilizer.
Gardening Woman thinks of mole holes, in every sense of the term. She thinks of how Gardening Dog loves to lick people’s arms and legs.
Ew, she thinks.
There must be a better way.
Gardening Woman reads up on moles. They eat grubs and worms.
Yuck.
But OK.
She looks at galleries of mole pics, absorbing the details of their faces. They have bright red button noses, which sounds cute except the rest of them look like Freddie Krueger plushies, with knife-like fingernails and scrunched-up eyes.
Mole huggers says they’re helpful creatures that aerate your lawn. Mole haters says they’re destructive pests that ruin lawns.
Gardening Woman thinks they are both.
She is fine with moles being moles, just not where she wants people to mingle, on level ground, and praise her arugula.
She is willing to coexist.
She reads about battery-powered lawn spikes that emit a low-frequency hum, supposedly repelling moles. The problem is, they don’t work very well. Like parents who don’t love,
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but get used to, their children’s music rattling the walls, it appears that moles don’t love, but learn to live with, vibrating ground.
The safest and most effective way to discourage them — moles, not children — seems to be by soaking the lawn with a solution of castor oil, liquid soap and water.
Like many creatures, it seems, moles do not like the taste of castor oil.
Gardening Woman wonders why any animal that eats grubs would be put off by castor oil, but she accepts the premise and orders a gallon of pure castor oil, enough to purge the city in prepara tion for a world-record attempt at Most Colonoscopies in a Metro Area in a 24-hour Period. But no. According to Amazon, this is “landscaping” castor oil, a mole and vole deterrent.
Whatevs, Gardening Woman decides. Either way, we’re talking mole runs.
She mixes the oil with lavender-scent ed Castile soap and water and applies the concoction to the tilled up earth. Never has so much laxative smelled so lovely. It rains for two days.
On the third day, Gardening Woman ventures out. Gardening Dog follows her to inspect the moonscape.
No new hills.
No new trenches.
Gardening Dog seems uninterested in the wasteland.
Gardening Woman makes a note to buy top soil and grass seed and start over at ground zero. There’s just enough time for grass to sprout before the gathering.
She goes to the “natural area” to check on spring buds.
When she turns around, Gardening Dog is digging again, this time in the unoiled part of the yard.
What’s that sound? A muffled, mania cal Freddie Krueger laugh coming from under the sod?
The castor oil has worked. Sort of. Gardening Woman scolds Gardening Dog, marches inside, finds the sprayer and silences her phone.
Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. Email her at ohenrymaria@ gmail.com.
The Forest Primeval
Finding identity in a Hemlock
By A nne Blythe
Midway through Melissa Faliveno’s Hemlock: A Novel, her protagonist, Sam, awakens after a night of many beers and shots, disoriented in the thick of the Wisconsin Northwoods.
The ground is wet with dew. Damp leaves cling to her body. She has no idea where she is nor how she got there. On the forest floor where she finds herself, far below the canopy above, small shade-tolerant trees and plants survive in the low light, providing a vital layer of sustenance for the wildlife living among them. As Sam emerges from her oblivion, confused but unafraid, the word “understory” pops into her mind.
“She whispered the word to herself and thought of things that live in the light, and things that live in the dark. How whole worlds and realities can exist in things unspoken and unseen,” Faliveno writes. “How there’s a story told aloud, in the open, above the surface of things, and there’s a story beneath it, that one must look much harder to find.”
Hemlock, Faliveno’s debut novel, is as layered as the Northwoods, a vast expanse of dense coniferous and hardwood forests, glacial lakes and rustic cabins and cottages. It’s a story of self-discovery — a dreamlike exploration into addiction, inherited generational trauma, gender identity and sexuality. It’s also a story that defies genre.
In Hemlock, Faliveno, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill creative writing professor, pulls from Gothic tropes: a
gloomy cabin in an isolated area, a non-traditional damsel in distress, ancestral curses and a talking deer that —no matter how hokey it sounds — works. At the same time it’s a love story, sinister and sultry, and a tribute to nature that teeters between reality and fantasy.
We meet Sam, a 38-year-old Wisconsinite, when she’s had 10 stable, booze-free months with her boyfriend, Stephen, and their cat, Monster. She’s on her way from their Brooklyn apartment to “Hemlock,” her family’s desolate cabin nestled in the heart of the Northwoods. Once a place of family togetherness for Sam and her parents, a creepy vibe had settled into the cabin ever since her mother’s eerie walk into the woods, never to be seen again.
As the miles and days roll by, Sam’s fragile grip on reality becomes even more tenuous. In her dreams, the cabin is a huge, “hulking, looking thing with endless doors and hallways, walls that seemed to breathe; a maze of passages that changed shape and stretched on forever; into nothing.” In reality, it is “a normal little house, with four normal walls, a normal little porch and chimney” that her father built for retirement but now is ready to sell.
As Sam replaces broken floorboards and repairs things, she’s living in virtual seclusion, a marked difference from the urban frenzy of New York City. The rot of the cottage and surrounding area hollowed out by recession creeps into her mind and she begins to slip back into old behaviors. Just one beer turns into one more. Then a sixpack. Then one brandy old-fashioned, and another before an empty bottle awaits her on the counter in the morning.
Amid the slip from sobriety, Sam wrestles with whether she wants to return to her boyfriend, her job as a magazine editor and the life she built in New York.
The novel — a probe of the indecipherable space between one place and another, one gender and another, one sexuality and another and past and present— is not always an easy read. It can be frustrating and exhausting watching Sam settle into a buzz that, no matter how hard she tries, cannot quiet the persistent whisper of her emotional unraveling.
. . . it’s a love story, sinister and sultry, and a tribute to nature that teeters between reality and fantasy.
Can the Midwest she fled ever be home again? Does she identify as a man, woman or something else more fluid that’s not so easily defined? Can she eschew the booze that is part of her culture and escape the throes of addiction passed down from her grandmother to her mother and on to her?
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Somehow, though, Faliveno’s vivid and descriptive writing keeps pulling you back in. She makes you feel like a confidant, a trusted but objective friend who can help Sam as she tries to break free from the expectations of a world with deeply entrenched norms and stereotypes.
Faliveno is very introspective, pondering a wide range of topics, any one of which probably could have anchored a book. Despite the dark themes in Hemlock, there is beauty in the ugliness and light in the understory. OH
Anne Blythe has been a reporter in North Carolina for more than three decades covering city halls, higher education, the courts, crime, hurricanes, ice storms, droughts, floods, college sports, health care and the many wonderful characters who make this state such an interesting place.
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Dial M for Miss You
A local wind phone welcomes users to call their lost loved ones
By C ynthi A A dA ms
Dana White doesn’t know exactly what captivated her when she learned about wind phones on National Public Radio. Was it longing to reach out to a dearly departed relative?
Was it a call to connect?
White, a woman with healthy boundaries, isn’t saying.
Yet many also feel a mysterious attraction to wind phones, a concept originating in Otsuchi, Japan.
Since the first wind phone appeared 15 years ago on a windswept mountain, created by a grieving man, Smithsonian magazine estimates more than 200 wind phones have been installed in the U.S. alone. A wind phone — a disconnected phone perfect for expressing deeply held feelings of loss or grief — may seem outmoded in a digital age of instant connectivity.
Here, the wind alone bears the message.
The premise is basic. A vintage phone, often with a rotary dial, is typically placed in some remote, sometimes haunting location, though it’s not unheard of to find them in cities. Walkers on a nature trail may happen upon an old phone mounted to a tree.
According to a CBS News Sunday Morning segment, people hiked to such a phone within a California forest, there for the purpose of unburdening themselves.
The bereaved used the phone to leave messages borne
away by the wind without a trace — hence the name.
But sometimes wind phones are installed in built structures or phone booths.
Simple or elaborate, the wind phone becomes the receiver of longing, for reconnection with a deeply missed someone or something.
In White’s case, however, her wind phone seems to have evolved like a highly personalized art project; one long mulled over. In her spare time, she likes making art in a home studio. So, when White spotted what she believed could become the raw materials for such a project, she set about creating one.
“In February 2022, I was hanging out with friends at Fishers Grille and saw a large crate next to a dumpster and thought, That could be a phone booth!”
Fishers Grille co-owner Doug Jones said the shipping container was free for the taking. White’s boyfriend, Steve Dabbs, collected the crate in his truck and thus began her new project.
“No telling what my friends, family and neighbors thought as they listened to me going on and on about it, but none of them discouraged me,” she says four years later.
Since White’s phone was created, wind phones began popping up throughout the state, more recently in Charlotte, Oak Island and Sunset Beach. Ian Dunn placed a wind phone at historic Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh. (At this writing, there is at least one other in Raleigh.)
Having now lost several family members without the opportu-
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nity to say goodbye, I instantly connected with the concept.
White fashioned the phone and booth from upcycled materials, just like the crate, painting the open booth barn red. After mounting an old rotary wall phone inside, she placed a “Phone” sign on the top.
“I finally set it out next to the sidewalk in May 2022 with a note explaining what it is, and pens and paper for people to leave notes.”
Well satisfied, White says, “It gets a lot of traffic and feels pretty private, considering the location.”
“While some [who use her phone] are aural, others are more visual and prefer to write/read,” she explains.
White also gets a kick out of watching adults explain the concept of the wind phone to children. From her perch on a kitchen stool, she notices some users come often. At times, she meets people who are deeply curious about the phone. White smiles. “When I’m asked, ‘Does it work?’ I always respond ‘Of course, it does.’” Disappointingly, the vintage phones occasionally disappear.
“As we’re now on our third phone, I welcome anyone’s old phone for which they no longer have a use,” she writes later — not a terrible average given it has been four years since the wind phone’s installation.
On a whim, I dial my childhood phone number: Tuxedo 8-2372. A throwback to when the prefixes were actually pneumonic devices, they related to the letters and numbers on a rotary dial. Naturally, the number is no longer in service. My voice, too, simply drifts away on the wind.
In the silence, I imagine my father’s singular way of answering: “Yell-o! This is Warren!” and my heart does a little twist. I have not heard his voice since his sudden death in 1990.
Since, I’ve discovered what’s called a “Goodbye Line,” which allows users to bid farewell to people, places and things. Once connected, a recording reflects that: “This payphone, like us, is here now but won’t be forever.” OH
Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry magazine.
Pines
Sweet Spring Layers
A strawberry cheesecake parfait
story A nd P hotogr APh By JAsmine Comer
I’m currently in a full-blown parfait phase. While they’re traditionally served as a dessert using ice cream, health-conscious millennials now think of them as yogurt bowls, and they’ve become my breakfast staple. But really, they’re good any time of day. I usually start with a Greek yogurt base and layer in seasonal fruits — it was apples all winter — plus granola, nuts or a drizzle of nut butter. Once you add a sweetener of your choice, something like honey or natural maple syrup, you are all set. The real draw for me is the texture and flavor play: You get that perfect mix of creamy, crunchy, salty and sweet. But the best part? How little effort it actually takes. Of course, you can go fullon indulgence and make it a true, rich and decadent dessert. Though I’m not suggesting you eat that for breakfast.
This recipe is a love letter to effortless kitchen adventures. Even for those of us who find peace in cooking, there are days when standing by the stove feels like a chore — especially as the temperature rises and the last thing you want to be is tethered to a hot oven.
Enter the strawberry cheesecake parfait: Think of it as cheesecake’s laid-back, sophisticated cousin. It’s a deconstructed masterpiece that layers silky cheesecake mousse with the bright, macerated sweetness of seasonal strawberries and the saltysweet crunch of buttery graham cracker crumbs. This may be your first foray into dessert parfaits, but given the high-reward, low-effort ratio, it certainly won't be your last. OH
INGREDIENTS
Cheesecake Filling
14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk not skim, please
Two 8-ounce blocks cream cheese, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or paste
Graham Cracker “Crust”
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup melted butter
2 tablespoons sugar
Pinch of salt
Cinnamon to taste, optional
Strawberry Topping
1 pound strawberries, sliced
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Zest of half a lemon
DIRECTIONS
For the cheesecake filling: In a large bowl, using a hand or stand mixer, blend ingredients until smooth and creamy. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or overnight; the longer the better.
For the graham cracker layer: Right before you are ready to assemble your parfait, using a spoon, mix ingredients until combined in a medium bowl.
For the strawberry topping: Just as you are ready to assemble your parfait, mix the strawberries with the sugar, lemon juice and zest together until combined in a medium bowl. Let sit for 20 minutes so the strawberries can release their natural juices.
Using a glass of your choice, start with a layer of graham cracker crumbs, followed by a layer of the cream cheese mixture and then the strawberries, using approximately 3 tablespoons of for each layer.
Strawberry Cheesecake Parfait
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Changing the World
One poem at a time
By JosePhus iii
There I was, nervous, excited, dressed in a Carolina-blue, sheer top, looking like the African Tooth Fairy. My first hours in Nairobi and I’m already on stage, closing a dance performance at the 10th Annual Kenya International Theatre Festival with a choreographer from London. How did I get there? Community is the short answer. And poetry, because, for me, Poetry is Life and it continues to open doors into rooms that were too big for me to even fathom.
You see, 20 years ago I worked on a project with the Community Theatre of Greensboro, which, at the time, was being run by Mitchel Sommers. Together, we fused hip hop and poetry into Schoolhouse Rock, remixed some classics and toured Guilford County Schools with a little “Conjunction, Junction, what’s your function.”
Fast forward several years and Mitchel is retired, vacationing in Nairobi, where he happens to connect with people who run this festival. So, when they mention they are looking for a U.S. poet, guess who he recommends? You guessed it, me! Josephus III, Greensboro’s first poet laureate and the author of Poetry is Life, my book about how poetry is all around us, permeating everyday life, from hip hop and R&B to the rhythmic pattern of what comes out of our mouths.
I jump at the chance to share my art on a global stage.
The plan is for Poetry is Life to be performed as a one-man show. Plus, I’ll teach a master class on “The Beautiful Struggle” and perform at closing ceremonies.
As I move from day one to day two, still in transit, the idea of Nairobi keeps me on my toes; anticipation keeps my mind and body tingling like I have Spidey senses. Finally, I touch down, grab my bag and as my prearranged transportation makes its way to the hotel, the streets are alive with people — hugging, smiling, living. There is a cow in the median. I take it all in, my senses vibrant. I am in awe — poetry continues to provide and prove to me its power.
By the time I arrive, the festival has been drumming for a week, like heartbeats and Sasquatch feet, and I am the new kid on the block. I breakfast with thespians and creatives from Botswana, Zimbabwe, France, Switzerland and all over the planet — a community a world away. Plate full of sausages, potatoes and an omelet, plus a glass of mango juice in my hand, I “Greensboro Grub,” code for how I meet, greet and eat my way through this Olympic village for art and culture.
The first person I meet, Michael from London, invites me to have a seat at his table. Conversation, like poetry, flows and I learn that the dance show he’s been choreographing, Trickster, is happening that very evening. His eyes light up when he hears I am a poet. “There is a poem in the end of our piece,” he says. “We were going to project it on the screen to close the show, but we would love if you could read it.” I’ve only known him for 10 minutes and now he wants me to help close a show that he’s been prepping for a week? When in Rome — or shall I say Nairobi . . .
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So here I stand in my blue, see-through top, looking like an African Tooth Fairy adorned with tribal face paint and purpose and passion and, above all else, poetry, surrounded by community filled with a feeling of fellowship with others, cultivating creativity and culture for a common cause on a stage in Nairobi, Kenya, changing the world one poem at a time.
And as the dance comes to an end and the stage lights fade, these are the words I speak:
So here’s the moral for the rich and the poor
For the ones who search and for those hearts that have already found the truth
The trickster never sleeps, he watches every move
He’s wicked and he’s strong
He’s magical and fast
But spirits from the ancestors may gather from the past to free your soul
And gently guide you back into your own
Have faith and courage friend, You are not alone. OH
Josephus III is honored to have served as Greensboro’s inaugural poet laureate. This year, he’s taking his open-mic poetry show, The Poetry Cafe, on a world tour. Info: josephusiii.com.
Harbingers of Spring
Return of the swooping swallows
By susA n CA mPBell
As the days lengthen and the air begins to warm, many of us look forward to the return of migrant songbirds. Dozens of species that breed here spend their winters far to the south, and dozens more spend time feeding here as they migrate to summer haunts in New England and points farther north. Of these, the first to return in central North Carolina are the swallows. In early April, it’s possible to see six different species: barn, rough-winged, tree, bank and cliff, as well as the more familiar purple martin. And since swallows move in mixed flocks at this time of year, encountering three or four kinds in close proximity is not unusual.
Swallows are almost exclusively insectivorous and are built to catch their prey on the wing. They have strong pointed wings and forked tails, which allow for excellent aerial maneuverability. Except for adult male martins, they are all dark on top and light colored below. But each species has a characteristic flight pattern that can be used to identify it even if field marks cannot be discerned. Modern field guides include descriptions of the patterns — where a species flies and how it flies (the combination of flapping and soaring) are unique. This is very helpful, since swallows spend most of their time on the wing and tend to be quite high in the air, so plumage is difficult, if not impossible, to see. Without a doubt, the best place to find swallows is around water, where insects are most abundant during the warmer months. If one is lucky and there is a snag or wire adjacent to a wet area, the birds may be perched at close range, which should make for ideal viewing conditions. Except for purple martins, sexes are identical. To the human eye, male and female size, coloration and behavior are the same. However, you may be able to pick out the drabber plumage of a juvenile in late summer if you have a pair of binoculars — and a good bit of patience.
Purple martins are the largest of the group and have the darkest feathering. Adult males are a distinctive bluish-black. Females and second-year males have some blue feathering on the back and head but are mainly a dingy gray. Juveniles will be a paler gray with little or no blue feathers in late summer.
Barn swallows have a dark-bluish back, orange face and yellowish underparts. They also have a deeply forked tail. Given this superior rudder, they are capable of low and erratic flight, scooping up insects close to water level or over large grassy expanses such as horse pastures or golf course fairways.
By comparison, rough-winged swallows are stocky and brown above, whitish below with a drab, buffy throat. They spend a lot of time soaring high in the air and, therefore, have a more squared-off tail.
Bank, tree and cliff swallows are less likely to be encountered in central North Carolina. All three have less distinct plumage and short, forked tails. Bank swallows, which may be found in the western part of the state, have light brown backs, thinner wings and quick wing beats. Tree swallows have dark-green backs, broad, long wings and more direct flight behavior with less wheeling involved. Increasingly, they can be found using tree cavities or nest boxes near large bodies of water in the northern Piedmont. And they are quite common in the coastal plain. Cliff swallows, which resemble barn swallows with a short tail and a pale rump patch, fly more deliberately, with slightly slower, more powerful strokes. They favor the protection of overhangs associated with man-made structures such as bridges and overpasses to affix their unique mud nests. Interestingly, for reasons we are not sure of, cliffs are being found in more locations across the state each season.
Although these little birds are well-engineered for flight, they are not known for their song. In fact, their vocalizations consist of short raspy or mechanical calls. Nevertheless, swallows can be quite noisy, whether they are migrating as a flock or in pairs defending a breeding territory. Try to remember to listen and look up this spring; you might just spot some fancy fliers. OH
Susan Campbell would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos. She can be contacted by email at susan@ncaves.com.
Barn Swallow
A Multi-Storied House
If these walls could talk . . . occasionally, they do
By Billy ingrAm
“How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start, when memory plays an old tune on the heart!” – Eliza Cook
Rarely do time, temperature and opportunity coalesce to create conditions rife for recapturing carefree memories of sunshiny, youthful afternoons. In this instance, it’s an unplanned springtime saunter through Fisher Park — a frequent footpath in my teenage meanderings when hoofing it from Latham Park to First Presbyterian or onward Downtown, sketchbook and graphite at hand for rendering fascinations like that bulbous Weeping Willow billowing at the entrance (long since withered away), those cobblestone arches crossing creeks, masonry stairways and hardwood hickory trees.
Only once did I attempt drawing any of the surrounding houses, and that was 106 Fisher Park Circle, a majestic, two-story Neoclassical Revival with inviting slate steps that lead to a grand portico canopied by a tympanum accented with a whimsical lunette window that, even then, I suspected had witnessed its share of illustrious people and familial felicity. This graceful home is a centerpiece of Greensboro’s very first residential development, one that broke ground in the 1890s then grew exponentially throughout the Roaring ’20s.
If every picture is worth a thousand words, then, surely, every vintage home has potential to inspire an entire novel. In theory, one could select randomly any period property and undoubtedly uncover countless intriguing untold — or untoward — tales, walls eagerly awaiting listening ears. That recent midday wandering into wistfulness led to wondering: Why not honor 106 Fisher
Park Circle for this “novel” experiment?
Knowing little more than that 106 had been dubbed “R. D. Douglas House,” I began researching in my own library of local lore. Tucked into unread recesses was a nondescript paperback inscribed to my mother on her birthday in 2005 entitled The Best 90 Years of My Life, written and self-published two years earlier by Robert Dick Douglas Jr. Born in 1912, the author’s chronicle commences with recollections of growing up with his three siblings at . . . 106 Fisher Park Circle. In his opening paragraph, Douglas Jr. describes the stately five-bedroom manor his parents had built back in 1906: “The house was high above the street and had four large cement two-story columns in the front. On the north side of the house was a concrete driveway leading from the street up the hill to a red wooden barn at the back of the lot.”
That barn originally housed a horse that pulled the family’s four-wheeled carriage. Before long, the Douglases were motoring in touring cars (with Eisenglass curtains, no less) east down North Park Drive to arrive at 480 Church St., where the children’s great-grandmother lived in the estate known as Dunleith. The striking three-story mansion had been built around 1858 by her husband, N.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert P. Dick. One of the nation’s earliest examples of Italianate architecture, it was briefly requisitioned for Union Headquarters as the Civil War drew to a close. Descending into disrepair, that elegant dwelling was demolished in the late 1960s. More recently, the former Aycock neighborhood was renamed Dunleath (close enough, right?) in its honor.
In the 1910s, public transportation was incredibly convenient for citizens of the newly-named Gate City. “We had electric trolleys running on rails in the street and getting electric power from overhead trolley wires,” Douglas Jr. writes. “Streetcars ran from downtown out North Elm Street to about where Wendover crosses now. Later, they went all the way out to Sunset Drive where you could walk to the Greensboro Country Club.”
Douglas Jr.’s youth revolved around the single Catholic
Church in town, St. Benedict, within easy walking distance. “Father Vincent was a great golfer and a member of the Greensboro Country Club,” he writes. “I think a lot of anti-Catholic prejudice was dispelled by his charm and golfing ability.” The Parish’s Sunday School was taught by the Sisters of Charity, who established St. Leo’s, Greensboro’s first hospital in 1906.
As an Eagle Scout, Douglas Jr. spent a summer hunting big game alongside Serengeti natives, about which he wrote a book, Three Boy Scouts in Africa: On Safari with Martin Johnson, published by Putman. He followed that up with a second memoir published one year later in 1929 about bear hunting on Kodiak Island, A Boy Scout in the Grizzly Country. He later returned to Alaska, exploring steaming volcanos, graduated Georgetown Law School and, by 1941, was rounding up Axis collaborators as an FBI agent. In 1945, he resettled with his wife and toddler son in Greensboro to specialize in labor law. Multiple cases he argued were heard before the Supreme Court. Douglas Jr. passed away in 2015 at age 103, remarkable in itself. The Best 90 Years of My Life was republished in 2007 by Vantage Press but remains elusive to locate.
In 1936, 106 Fisher Park Circle welcomed Dr. Luther L. Gobbel, the same year he was appointed president of Greensboro College, where, two years later, he presided over the school’s centennial commencement. My mother was an undergrad there during his tenure, her 1945 sophomore yearbook fronted by an appropriately placid portrait of Gobbel as an archetypical, armchairseated academic doyen projecting an air of professorial steadfastness.
Gobbel relocated around 1941, when this Fisher Park landmark was purchased by Dr. Samuel F. Ravenel, founder of one of North Carolina’s first pediatric practices in 1925, positioned on the third floor of the Jefferson Standard Building.
In 1948, Ravenel rallied city leaders to raise $100,000 (roughly $1,350,000 today) in just 12 days. The funds were needed to convert a former rec hall on
the recently-vacated Army Air Corps base, located off Bessemer, into an emergency, M.A.S.H.-like triage infirmary where he and new associate, Dr. Jean McAlister (pioneer female physician), risked their lives combating — and promptly conquering — a polio outbreak crippling Guilford County’s children by the hundreds.
“Dr. Jean” was our beloved family pediatrician in the ’60s. When she was away, it was Dr. Ravenel’s stethoscope pressed to our chests in their modest, rectangular office suite on East Northwood Street (improbably still standing among Cone’s expansions). What those well-healed patients’ parents likely didn’t know was that Dr. Ravenel spent spare hours at Children’s Home Society charitably attending to some 9,000 infants that would otherwise have gone untreated. Revered across every community, his 51-year devotion to the health and wellbeing of Greensboro’s most vulnerable ended tragically with a 1976 car accident.
A mere three chapters in, if we do indeed have elements necessary for an intriguing historical novel, it’s going to need a satisfying wrap-up. Turns out my old pal, Bill Baites, along with Stephen Dull, restored this gem to shine anew while residing there in the 2000s, undertaking a million-dollar renovation recognized with a Preservation Greensboro Award for excellence in 2006. I had no idea!
Then again, many casual readers crave conclusions couched in cloying profundity. The epitaph engraved on Dr. Jean McAlister’s monument at Green Hill Cemetery could decisively serve as a suitable swan song for those selfless souls once resting their heads at 106 Fisher Park Circle:
Good and faithful servant of God
Well done
Rest from thy loved employ
The Battle fought, the victory won Enter thy Master’s joy. OH
Billy Ingram is a former Hollywood movie poster artist.
April 2026
Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf Pine in North America
Tell me what it’s like to live without curiosity, without awe. To sail on clear water, rolling your eyes at the kelp reefs swaying beneath you, ignoring the flicker of mermaid scales in the mist, looking at the world and feeling only boredom. To stand on the precipice of some wild valley, the eagles circling, a herd of caribou booming below, and to yawn with indifference. To discover something primordial and holy. To have the smell of the earth welcome you to everywhere. To take it all in, and then, to reach for your knife.
— Matthew Olzmann
Matthew Olzmann is the author of three poetry anthologies. He is currently an assistant professor in the department of English and creative writing at Dartmouth College.
Poem in Which I Carve Your Name in a Very Tall and Very Old Longleaf Pine
Taking on love’s task, I reach for my knife, peck at the layers of gray-black pine bark. All our years flake away under my blade;
I want to leave some symbol of the life we made, scratch back even to our darker times. I know my labor’s odd, retrograde,
but then this tree, like me, like you, can stand a scar or two. Cutting in, I know I’ll never reach the heart, but carve an image —
a sign, I wish, I hope and imagine, will be found by some other lovers. Still be meaningful, despite our passing age.
We’re old now, though not tree-old, end-aware. Through weather, storms and high winds, we’ve remained deep-rooted, yet too wild to become tamed.
This pine, like long-lived love, depends on fire. In the bark-shorn trunk, I begin your name. I work chest-high above the marks from flames.
— Paul Jones
Paul Jones is the author of Something Wonderful and Something Necessary, both available from RedHawk Publications.
GREENSBORO’S NEWEST POET LAUREATE AIMS TO BUILD BRIDGES
By Cassie Bustamante • Portraits By Liz nemeth
“Ididn’t really start off wanting to be a poet,” says Greensboro’s newest poet laureate, James Daniels. “I always wanted to be a rapper.”
But, says Daniels, “I had a Dead Poets Society moment.” That was while he was attending Johnston County Early College Academy. Just like the students in the film who were inspired by their professor (played by Robin Williams), Daniels remembers how a couple of his own teachers, Amanda Rowland and Dawn Blankenship, kindled the spark that ignited his love of poetry. They introduced him to Poetry Out Loud, a high school poetry recitation competition. And though his gut reaction was a big heck no, “I took the leap.” And, turns out, the spoken word spoke to him.
As he listened to poets and poetry, he recalls, “I started to absorb the power of the word — just understanding that there are so many different mediums it could go in. So I just started trying all of them and poetry was the one that stuck.”
Later, at N.C. State, where he was earning a B.S. in education, he discovered open mics, where anyone, from beginners to pros, can step up on a stage and share whatever is in their hearts and minds. Greensboro’s inaugural poet laureate, Josephus III, visited the campus, leading a Poetry Cafe session (an interactive open-mic event). “I went up and, of course, embarrassed myself on that mic, too. You know, you got to step out.”
Daniels got even more involved with Poetry Cafe while working on his M.F.A. at UNCG. At first, he says, he was “a table boy, bringing people in.” But soon Josephus was asking Daniels to teach at events for kids when he wasn’t available to do it himself. When it came time for his two-year term as poet laureate to
come to an end, Josephus III reached out to Daniels, who notes, “a bunch of dope poets in the city also got that call.”
At the time, Daniels was deep in the application process of another position — assistant professor and director of creative writing at N.C. A&T — which he soon landed. Thinking it might be too much to take it all on, he made calls to other poets, suggesting they go for it. But one question kept bouncing back to him: “You’re applying, too, right?”
His response? Of course, he told them, even though that wasn’t his intention. “But I was like, I can’t lie to 20 people,” he says. “Now you said it, so now you’re doing it.” He sat down and got to work on his own application after all.
He ran it by his most trusted critic, his wife of three years, Ajani Anderson, who “tore it up.” Through some tough love from Anderson, a visual artist who Daniels says “makes me better everywhere,” the application was ready to submit.
Loving metaphors as all poets do, Daniels is constantly talking about building bridges “between creatives, institutions and other artistic mediums — through the power of poetry.”
A bridge, of course, is the sum of many trusses and supports. Daniels envisions a city where organizations and creative people across multiple genres reach out to each other collaboratively. One man cannot bear the load on his own, but he hopes to continue building on the foundation Josephus has laid.
“I’m grateful for this position. I’m grateful for all of the positions that I’ve received thus far,” he says. But don’t for a second think that he’s given up on his initial dream of becoming a rapper: “That’s still a goal,” he says. OH
The following poems are by James Daniels.
It Feels Like a Tree Leaf Keeps Budding and Breaking In My Stomach, So I Write to You
I wrote in pencil today and erased every word or phrase that meant “I need you gone” until the killing shavings sprinkled down the edges of my leather journal. You would have loved the mess. I wanted
to call you, tell you I’m budding into the tree I was meant to be, spilling your favorite loose leaf on these pages, soaking our sloppy longing in lukewarm leaf puddles. I’m maturing, so instead, I smudge the lines with more lead—
Could our hunger have burned into healing? Could it have hushed our cravings?
I pray your garden grows your little sprout stronger than us.
Spirits Knock at My Door and It’s Unlocked
I know that there are more spirits than the main spirit—the Holy Spirit. They’re in everything these days—the mildew smell that lingers on my carpet, the fruit flies that swing and swoop and die diving into my fridge, the rain of my shower water— someone more faithful than me says it’s something evil.
Probably. My habits haunt me, but I know I cannot live better.
My stomach burns acid past my esophagus— I tried to eat this away. I’m failing to fight a lust that infests me— I tried to touch this away. I stand in the shower scared of my foot’s squeak— I tried to calm this away.
I already hear myself asking the spirits stupid questions:
Have I not taught in your names? Have I not cleansed myself in your names? Have I not loved in your names? Why do I have to see, feel, be a lesson?
That’s normal, I guess— asking what we did to deserve the aches that breath for us while we beg, like leaves, to keep falling, crumbling, mixing with our soul’s soil to grow a body that spirits can’t touch.
BRAKE FOR ESTATE SALES
More than a junking junket
By C ynthia a dams • Photogra Phs By a my Freeman
At home, Sarah Ferrell shares her favorite finds, sourced primarily from estate sales
Garage sales are familiar ground — few rules and no commitment. Slow the car, rubberneck, and cruise on past if you notice more trash than treasures. Estate sales, however, are a different matter altogether.
Catnip, too, for admirers of antiques, collectibles and all things vintage. “There is a whole community,” says Sarah Ferrell, owner of Working Decor. “A community of shoppers! A big friend group.”
But what about those of us on the outside looking in, those who love the quirky and fascinating preused and well-loved items? Perhaps you’ve seen signs for an estate sale at an intriguing home and wanted to join the line of antique hunters, but felt out of your league.
Ferrell says not to worry. You don’t need deep pockets, nor even a driving reason, to steer your car straight towards a sale. Allow Ferrell’s considerable experience to guide you.
Don’t be intimidated. “People who hold estate sales are thrilled to see people coming through the door,” she reminds us. A good estate sale can refine your eye. Or at least, entertain.
Southerners lean towards the look of collected homes, writes Patricia Shannon in Southern Living. Plus, sales give us license to be snoopy. “Southerners, as a whole, are big fans of any kind of sale that sees us sifting through someone else’s personal belongings.”
Ferrell grew up “with people who went flea marketing or antiquing. It is in our culture to go junking.” She muses, “I really think it’s a very Southern thing.” Prepare. Often, virtual previews of the estate’s offerings let you prescreen items of interest. Know before you go by checking estatesales.net, says Ferrell. Entering
An original 1974 Sallie Quirk painting of scissors
a zip code reveals upcoming sales with much of the inventory. “You can see pictures. And get a clear idea of what you want to do for the day.”
She speaks from experience that finds can surface in unlikely places. Antiquing in Ferrell’s family remains a professional calling.
For years, Ferrell’s father, Gene Crowder, and his late brother, Bill, helmed Crowder Designs, a Triad design business. Clients relied upon their instincts.
“They definitely had a huge stash of antiques to sell to clients,” recalls Ferrell. Gene has sustained a following for his antique chandelier and lighting restoration business, which continued after his brother died in 2021. Later, she spent eight years at a traditional estate sale company, where she learned to organize, evaluate and sell. Called in to assist after the death of a prominent community figure six years ago, Ferrell undertook her first solo liquidation, and Working Decor was born.
Very often, she now goes directly to collectors in her database, rather than holding a public sale.
Be mindful of the rules, as they can vary by estate sale. The stated rules are typically on the company’s website or at the entry point. Register upon arrival, as numbers are often issued before admittance, and hold your place in line. People who shop for businesses, or “pickers,” are commonplace, but so are casual collectors.
There’s a reason for the adage, “one man’s trash is another man’s
Mid-20thcentury Forsyth Memorial Hospital medical cabinet
Green glass chandelier, vintage pink ice cream parlor chair and pair of paintings by Vietnamese artist Nguyen Trong Minh
treasure.” Oddities at sales may shock, excite, or entertain. But Ferrell empathizes with families selling loved ones’ possessions. “Things should be dispersed in a mindful way.”
Do not rush the door or line. There is a protocol, says Martha Stewart Living’s “9 Tips for Estate Sales,” which published last summer. Writer Wendy Rose Gould stresses that estate sales occur in the previous owner’s home. Be respectful, she says.
Don’t hesitate to look in other towns and cities. Larry Richardson, a close friend of the Ferrells, often rises predawn in search of treasures, most recently schlepping all the way to Charlotte’s affluent Myers Park. He seconds Gould: “It’s so helpful if everyone honors the process.”
He has scored vintage Louis Vuitton luggage and even a garaged Mercedes in like-new condition.
Educate and focus your eye. “I think original artwork is timeless,” Ferrell says. But focus on a niche. She often buys colorful art books.
Ferrell is still amazed by the wide variety of things people amass. (She mentions her own affection for vintage medical objects, including a physician’s cabinet and a skull used in teaching dentistry.) She repurposed the workbench to use as a table.
Art Nouveau chandelier with opalescent shades Antique workbench and a skull labeled “1964 Dental School”
“I have such eclectic tastes,” Ferrell admits. But she knows exactly what she likes. When she sees rare, chunky pieces of glass art, her heart beats faster. Ditto for all things green, she says, with favorite pieces of their personal collection in the kitchen.
Think about complementing what you have with affordable finds. “An effortless way to decorate is to look for coffee table books. They are extremely expensive new, but at estate sales, they are cheap. You can look for them by color or style,” she says.
Ferrell also has a soft spot for what she calls “orphaned” chairs from a former set, usually bargain-priced. “Don’t sleep on an orphaned chair!” Mismatched is more visually interesting
Pricing. As for pricing, even estate sale prices may be negotiable. “Sometimes you can negotiate,” says Ferrell. It may be a no, but if you never ask, it is a no. Sometimes, too, “the first day is full price and later days are discounted.” Cash does not always rule, but it may help secure a deal.
Be realistic about whether you have room for the acquisition.
“If I bring something in . . . something goes out.” Unless it is something rare, which, in her collector’s parlance, is a “unicorn.”
For Ferrell, it was a green glass chandelier (which she recognized from when it appeared in this magazine in July 2024). Sold to the homeowner by her father, it recently resurfaced at Carriage House, a local antique store. Ferrell found the coveted (albeit broken) light once again, restoring it with her father’s help.
With persistence, “You can find that one unicorn piece you’ve been looking for.”
Appearances can deceive. “Don’t underestimate a sale by the way a house looks on the outside,” Ferrell advises. “I found some wonderful, rare things in an unexpected house. Sometimes you find a treasure.” Do not overlook the garage and outbuildings.
“One of my most prized finds is an old wooden workbench complete with splashes of paint and hammer marks.”
Don’t be reluctant just to browse around. However, don’t shun the occasional “reality check,” offers Ferrell. It is valuable to see
An original 1974 Sallie Quirk painting from of neckties
Burgundy antique medical cabinet with Queen Anne legs
Vintage Czech grape lamp and vintage original floral painting by French artist Pierre Ramel
prevailing prices. Professional estate sales can help shoppers “become more realistic about what their [own] items are worth.”
Estate sales are opportunities to upcycle items that might otherwise wind up in the landfill. “People don’t think about the sustainability aspect with an estate sale,” Ferrell adds, noting the ever-cyclical nature of tastes. “You can get the 1950s version versus the reproduction.”
Find your tribe. Ferrell enjoys that estate sales unify many for a shared experience and “bring together the most widely eclectic people . . . all in different fields.” Here, she has made friends and connections.
She points out yet another reason to be an estate sale goer, even if you leave empty-handed. At estate sales, you glimpse the inner worlds of fellow collectors. “It’s a wonderful way to see some wonderful homes,” says Ferrell.
Go forth confidently in the direction of the estate sale sign’s arrows. You may just find your unicorn. OH
The Trend Cycle — and Upcycle
Among those who never fail to hit the brakes for an estate sale? Then you are possibly a reseller or someone passionate about upcycling, says the former owner of a vintage store.
Long-time estate sale fans like Kevin and Kim Gunther report that reselling helps tame their collecting addiction. It also allows them to indulge in one of their favorite pastimes, that age-old thrill of the hunt.
Part-time resellers with full-time jobs, the Gunthers completely understand the impulse to scrutinize every sale and hit the road. For some years, they have spent their free time seeking inventory for three antique booths (at Blue Horseshoe in Ramseur, Blue Octopus in Eden and Main St. Market & Gallery in Randleman). Estate sales are their prime hunting ground.
They happily report that their first date was at an auction.
“Cheap date,” they say in unison. “Free popcorn and cheap Cokes!” Later, as a married couple, the tradition continues. They remain passionate about each other and their favorite shared hobby. Kevin admits they recently “hit an estate sale on our way out of town to go celebrate our anniversary.”
They’ve figured out a way to monetize their, well, mutual addiction, while spending scarce free time together.
He is fixated on sourcing vintage records.
“I only buy what I like, hoping other people will like it, too. I have tunnel vision,” he says.
Kim looks elsewhere. “I love furniture. Primitive. A certain look. If it is 100 or 50 years old, that does not matter to me. I buy the look.” She searches for shelves and hutches, which are practical. “People who collect need places to show off their treasures.”
Of course, not everything on offer excites. It may not hit the mark or look current. Trends are meant to be broken — and will be. So don’t discount a special find if it bucks current trends, Sarah Ferrell suggests. Once disparaged as “brown furniture,” unpainted pieces in original condition are back in style.
“Oh, it’s coming back,” Ferrell declares. “Which thrills me to death . . . I am tired of people painting things, especially pretty pieces that should not be.”
Having logged many estate sales miles in their pursuits, the Gunthers have lugged home many acquisitions, sometimes those that counter trends.
The Gunthers agree with Ferrell. Given time, the trend will turn in your favor, they predict, and that is the beauty of upcycling at work.
A Kernersville gardener creates a native plant refuge
By
ross howeLL Jr. • Photogra Phs By Lynn donovan
Ever heard of a plant rescue? Me neither.
Not until Kelly Gage toured me around her woodland garden.
Gage grew up on a tobacco farm in Davidson County, where her grandmother and mother were avid garden club members. After earning a degree in biology at UNCG, Gage took a job as an environmental manager for Guilford County, working with geologists and engineers to enforce surface-water and groundwater regulations.
For more than 20 years, Gage and her husband, Bobby, had lived in the same house where she had, of course, designed and maintained all the landscaping. Fourteen years ago, they decided to build a new home.
The couple selected a 6-acre wooded site outside Kernersville that had been left untended for 75 years and was overgrown with poison ivy, Chinese viburnum, privet and Japanese stilt grass.
One of the first decisions the Gages had to consider was where to build on the property. They decided to remove a patch of loblolly pine trees and site the house there.
“That really opened up space,” Gage says.
And that’s where we’re standing, in dappled sunlight at the edge of a broad planting bed in front of the house. The trees resound with birdsong.
“At first, we had a lot of sun, but now we have a lot of shade,” Gage muses. With the pines removed, overstory trees such as oaks, maples, poplar and beech have flourished, along with understory trees such as redbud, dogwood, sassafras and sourwood.
She points out a tree with shimmering, green leaves.
“That’s an umbrella magnolia,” Gage says. “It has the secondlargest leaf in the magnolia family.” Over time, she’s found many of these natives on the property.
“This one just happened to be close to the house,” she continues. “It’s just the loveliest tree.”
Gage’s voice is calm and measured. It reminds me of one of my favorite elementary school teachers. As she describes the magnolia, you hear inflections of admiration and affection in her voice.
She’s discovered many other indigenous plants that had been overgrown or suppressed altogether, including swaths of columbine, creeping phlox and at least five different species of native fern.
“Once you disturb the soil, some of the seeds and spores that have been lying dormant start to show up,” she says.
“Management makes a real difference in woodland areas.”
“I’ve always liked plants,” Gage continues. “But I got really interested in natives when we were settling into this property, trying to understand how to manage the invasive, non-native plants here.”
In 2018, Gage joined the North Carolina Native Plant Society
(NCNPS), which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. Through education, conservation and advocacy, the organization works to protect native plants throughout the state.
“The members of the society are very generous people,” Gage says. “We do a lot of seed swapping and plant trading.” And they share a deep well of knowledge and experience.
Since 2023, Gage has served on the NCNPS executive board as membership chairman, recruiting new members, developing new chapters (there are currently 11 across the state) and producing educational materials.
On her property, she has cataloged more than 700 different species of plants, shrubs and trees, and estimates that about 600 of them are natives.
As we begin to stroll, Gage points out and names the plants, sometimes by the Latin name, sometimes by the common. The names flow from her lips like a familiar melody.
Gage tells me that she sometimes mixes hellebores among natives because they deter the deer. She’ll plant
daffodils for the same reason.
Though some native plant purists might object, she enjoys introducing exotics like the pineapple lily, native to South Africa.
“I love them,” Gage says. “They’re really cool plants.” They produce bract clusters crowned with foliage that look like tiny pineapples.
“And here is my native amethyst falls wisteria,” she says. “It was beautiful last week. Coming up under that is native Clematis viorna.”
Gage explains that she prefers bedding her plants.
“People who are first learning about native plants tend to think only about meadow settings,” she says. “But meadows are hard to maintain,” Gage adds. “Organized beds are easier to control. And your homeowners’ association won’t be after you,” she says with a laugh.
As we walk, Gage points out more plant types. Then she pauses.
“That’s Amsonia hubrichtii, which has just finished blooming,” she says. “It has this gorgeous, golden-yellow foliage in the fall.”
“Growing next to it is silverrod,” Gage continues. “It’s a variety of goldenrod that’s white. It’s lovely. I got it on a plant rescue.”
“What’s a plant rescue?” I ask.
Ah, the perfect question for the NCNPS board member responsible for membership.
Plant rescues, as it turns out, represent an important society activity.
Following clear protocols, a long-time NCNPS member who specializes in rescues works out agreements on the society’s behalf with owners, engineers and builders to gain access to land slated for development. Some tracts span thousands of acres that will be built on over decades, while others are relatively small. Entities prefer working with the NCNPS because their rescue efforts are covered by insurance.
Properties are photographed and clearly marked by surveyors. Accompanied by experts to help with plant identification, a rescue team of about 15 volunteers collects native plants that will go to botanical gardens, art museums, school and community gardens, as well as to the properties of volunteers.
“The only rule is that none of the rescued plants can be resold,” Gage says.
Do volunteers need big gardens to provide sanctuary for the rescues?
“The typical volunteer takes plants home to a quarter-acre neighborhood lot,” Gage answers.
As we continue our tour, we come upon a couple of my boyhood favorites — jack-in-the-pulpits and trilliums.
Jack-in-the-pulpits are perennial natives that reproduce vegetatively by sprouts from their corms or sexually by their spadix (Jack) and spathe (pulpit), yielding bright-red berries in the fall. Plants can be male, female or both, and can change sexes season to season. The trained eye can detect the plant’s sex by the number of leaflets it produces.
As for the trilliums, Gage has at least half a dozen varieties.
“I purchased most of them at UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens sales,” she says. Others were gifted to her by friends.
“If you’re going to grow trilliums, you better have time,” Gage cautions. “It takes about seven years for them to get established.”
As we continue to walk, she points out blue wood asters, white wood asters, mayapples and another plant that came to her garden as a rescue — dittany.
“It’s a neat little subshrub that has these beautiful, tiny pink blooms,” Gage says. “It likes really dry soil.”
Growing in a shaded bed are yellowroot, wood poppy, glade mallow, wild ginger and phacelia. In a moist area at woods’ edge is a group of taller plants.
“Now these, I just pull out in handfuls,” Gage says. “There are always so many!”
Carolina impatiens — often called jewelweed — is an annual that produces prodigious amounts of seed. Deer love to eat them and they have medicinal value, as well.
“Occasionally, we have gentlemen who cut firewood come by and ask if they can have some of the impatiens,” Gage says. “Apparently, the fluid in the stems will prevent poison oak or cure a case of it.”
We start to head back toward the house. She continues to point out plants along the way.
“Joe Pye weed . . . rattlesnake fern . . . bear’s breeches . . . that’s partridge berry over there it came from a rescue,” she continues.
“And this is native star hibiscus coming up,” Gage says. She pauses and smiles. “Everybody thinks it’s marijuana!”
Close by the path is a plant with paired leaves shaped like butterfly wings.
“That’s twinleaf,” Gage says. “I just love this plant. It has little white flowers.”
Finally, we pause next to a tree with a wonderful name.
“This is a Carolina silverbell tree,” Gage announces. “In spring, it has gorgeous, papery white flowers. This is my favorite tree.”
When I ask Gage about the future of her sanctuary garden, she smiles.
“Well, we’re in the process of buying 4 more acres from a neighbor, so we’ll have 10 acres,” Gage says.
“The new property is loaded with poison ivy,” she continues. “Some of the vines are as thick as your forearm. And I’m allergic!”
Gage acknowledges that she’ll probably have a half-acre cleared professionally before she starts gardening there.
She hopes one day to have created a sanctuary similar to the Emily Allen Wildflower Preserve in Winston-Salem.
“Our long-term vision is to stay on this land as long as we are physically able,” Gage says. “But we look forward to having the property serve an educational purpose one day.”
For now, she’ll keep tending to her acreage and adding more North Carolina native plants, one rescue at a time. OH
To learn more about the North Carolina Native Plant Society’s activities and opportunities, visit www.ncwildflower.org. The site also includes a comprehensive, illustrated reference for N.C. native plants.
Ross Howell Jr. is a contributing writer.
KNOWING WHEN
Homeowner Rachel York chats with Inhabit Sustainable Design & Build owner Amanda Albert
TO BALE
For Rachel York, a straw-bale home was the answer to her domestic riddle
By maria Johnson
Photogra Phs By Betsy BLake
When Rachel York moved back into her parents’ Greensboro home almost four years ago, everyone agreed it was a good thing.
Her dad was dealing with Parkinson’s Disease, and Rachel could help manage his health and keep her parents in their Lake Daniel home as long as possible.
The homecoming would help Rachel, too, because the cost of living in Maine, where she had moved in 2018 to earn a master’s degree in studio art, had shot up during the pandemic.
So Rachel, a visual artist and musician, moved into the attic bedroom of her parents’ home. Her folks, Jane and John York, both retired public school teachers, had converted her childhood bedroom into a study after she left home.
Soon, the house felt snug for three adults.
“Boundaries were hard,” says Rachel, now 37.
But her parents’ backyard was big.
So Rachel scanned the internet for information on small homes that could be built on the property. Nesting magazines call them accessory dwelling units, or ADUs.
That’s when Rachel read about straw-bale homes, which have exterior walls that are literally stuffed with bales of straw.
It’s an old idea. Humans have used straw as a building material since prehistoric times. Native Americans sometimes stuffed straw between the inner and outer layers of their teepees. European pioneers built homes with blocks of straw after the in-
vention of mechanical balers in the late 1890s.
Modern straw-bale homes have refined the practice.
Rachel was intrigued by the idea that she might be able to have a compact, distinctive, energy-saving home on her parents’ property.
“It stuck in my brain,” she says. “I just thought it was incredible.”
More searching led her to Amanda Jane Albert, whose Greensboro business, Inhabit, designs and builds sustainable homes.
Rachel asked Amanda if she’d be interested in doing a straw-bale home for her.
Amanda was not only interested; she was experienced. Over the last several years, she had worked with nonprofits to build more than a dozen straw-bale homes for low-income families out West.
A licensed contractor since 2020, she had been wanting to try the building techniques in Greensboro.
“We needed the right client,” she says.
Rachel was that client.
Amanda drew four plans for her.
Rachel picked a 700-square-foot design with shotgun-style layout: a great room that flows into a studio, which leads to a bedroom.
Because Rachel’s neighborhood does not have a homeowners association, there is no prohibition on separate ADUs as long as they
meet city zoning requirements.
But because straw-bale homes are so rare in this area — Amanda says there are about a dozen in the state, and hers is the first in Greensboro — there’s no statewide building code for the structures.
To issue permits, the Greensboro building department required Amanda to hire a licensed structural engineer, one who was experienced with residential projects, to sign off on the plan.
Construction began in July 2024 with the pouring of 18-inch-wide concrete beams above grade.
Amanda’s crew framed the home and raised the exterior plywood walls.
To weatherproof the box, they added a white metal roof to reflect the sun’s heat, and they built a floor that was layered, from the ground up, with a waterproof barrier, gravel, fill dirt and a rough coat of adobe plaster made from clay, sand and straw scraps. Later, the floor would be finished with a finer coat of adobe and sealed with natural oils and beeswax.
Once the structure was enclosed, the crew started baling.
Bristling blocks of straw, culled from wheat grown in Alamance County, were stacked like bricks on the concrete beam. The crew notched out the bales with chain saws to fit
around the wall studs. They used grinders to cut channels for electrical cables.
To finish the interior walls, two coats of adobe plaster — one rough, one fine — were slathered directly onto the bales.
“You just glob it on with your hands and use a trowel to try to keep it level,” says Rachel, a gungho homeowner who had no formal training in “globbing” but rolled up her sleeves to work side-by-side with the building crew. She recruited friends, family and neighbors to help sift sand and clay, push wheelbarrows and smooth the plaster.
“It felt like what I would imagine an old-fashioned barn raising would be,” she says. “All of it was fun. Like, seriously hard labor, but fun and joyful.”
Friends bubbled with questions about the house.
Q: Do the straw bales pose a fire hazard?
A: No, according to Amanda, the straw is so tightly packed it would only smolder if exposed to a flame.
Q: What about the electrical wires embedded in the walls?
A: The wires are heavy duty, rated for underground use.
Q: Will rodents and other critters try to nest in straw?
A: Rodents can get into walls only where there’s a gap. The straw bales are sealed all the way around.
Q: What about humidity in this climate? Could the straw get moldy?
A: A vapor-permeable air barrier on the outside wall allows any water molecules to escape. On the inside, adobe plaster does the same, Amanda says. “Clay is an excellent humidity regulator.”
In keeping with Amanda’s tradition of naming her projects, Rachel, an avid birder, decided to call her home The Bower, after the resourceful bowerbird, which uses straw and grass to weave arched nests on the ground. Another, more literary, definition of bower is a lady’s private room, which describes
Rachel’s refuge perfectly.
The home was finished in August 2025.
Rachel and Amanda advertised an open house on social media.
Old friends and new neighbors showed up.
“It helped us to be more a part of the community,” Rachel says. Many people were surprised at how large The Bower felt inside. They talked about the abundant light, the attention to detail and the decorative flair.
Contrary to what they might have read about the flimsy straw home in The Three Little Pigs, The Bower felt solid and wellcrafted — a custom-built reflection of Rachel’s artistic heart and commitment to honoring the natural world.
Maybe that’s because Amanda and Rachel literally wove the outdoors into the interior.
As soon as visitors step through the mango-yellow front door,
they are greeted with a showstopper: a wall made with an old English method known as wattle-and-daub, in which plaster is stuck to woven branches.
In Rachel’s home, the wall stops about a foot shy of the ceiling, and some of the underlying lattice — which includes cuttings of bamboo, elderberry and ligustrum from around the city — is exposed at the top.
A fallen branch from a willow oak in the backyard anchors one end of the wall, jutting into a doorway to form a true art installment.
One of the crew members, a ceramicist, added more wow to the wall by sculpting an elm tree into the adobe plaster, a tribute to a living tree on the property.
The home’s organic eye candy gets even better.
From the wattle-and-daub wall, visitors’ eyes climb to a lofty,
wraparound bookshelf nestled close to the cypress plank ceiling.
The cypress, which came from a discount lumber company, was harvested in Eastern North Carolina.
The bookshelf was made with old barn wood that Amanda found at Preservation Greensboro’s Architectural Salvage.
Closer to the ground, the home hums a medley of thrift finds, recycled building materials, meaningful objects from Rachel’s life and dabs of modernity.
Wooden chairs and rockers came from Rachel’s grandparents’ home and from Milltown 87 Antiques & Collectibles, a vintage warehouse in Burlington.
A drop-leaf table came from Red Collection.
Bob Beerman and his wife, Teresa Rasco, who founded Bass Violin Shop, where Rachel works in customer service and bookkeeping, gave her a richly-colored, wool rug.
Rachel’s own bass fiddle stands in the corner, a nod to the legacy of her mom, who last taught orchestra at Penn-Griffin School for the Arts in High Point. Rachel’s father taught English at the same school.
In another corner, a Raku-fired vase made by Rachel’s late friend, ceramicist Hiroshi Sueyoshi of Wilmington, occupies a display niche scooped out of the wall.
A few feet away — above a stylish microfiber sofa from Sabai, a women-owned business in High Point — curiosity snags on a book-sized stained-glass door built into the wall.
Rachel’s artist friend, Lindsay Mercer, designed the glass to depict a bowerbird. When visitors open the door, they look through a piece of glass into the field-grown essence of the home.
“It’s called a ‘truth window’ because you can see the straw bales in the walls,” says Amanda.
The kitchen is an ode to artful economy. The stained glass lamp hanging over the island also came from Milltown 87. The butcher-block countertops, made from American walnut, came from Floor & Decor. The mint-green backsplash tile was salvaged from another job of Amanda’s. She bought the unfinished cabinets online. The cabinets were finished with dark green
linseed oil paint and hung on the home’s north wall, the only wall that’s not filled with straw bales.
Plumbing cannot be run in straw-bale walls in case of leaks. Amanda also needed the strength of studs behind the wall to hang cabinets. Still, she wanted the home’s north face to have an insulation value comparable to the straw walls, so she designed an 8-inchthick double-studded wall with two rows of staggered two-by-fours.
She hung sheetrock on the interior and filled the gaps between inner and outer walls with blown-in cellulose insulation and sheep wool.
To sustain herself and the planet, Rachel picked energyefficient appliances: an induction stove, a convection oven and downsized dishwasher. Even though her home steps lightly on the Earth, Rachel feels spoiled by it.
“Having a dishwasher is luxurious to me,” she says.
So is having a studio for her creative endeavors, which, lately have included drawing with chalk pastels. She also freelances as a singer and bass player, and as a graphic artist. Among her designs: the fox and grapes logo of Scuppernong, an independent book store where she used to work. Recently, she drew up signs to help Amanda market a total renovation that’s listed for sale in
the historic Dunleath neighborhood.
Working in her studio, Rachel is often surrounded by meowing muses: two or four cats. She owns two fur babies and shares custody of two more with her parents. They — the cats — love to nap in her studio’s deep window sill, another bonus of strawbale construction.
“These are great windows for cats,” says Rachel, who is both pro-cat and pro-bird. She has dotted her Anderson windows — Amanda uses only new windows in her construction — with stickers to keep the birds from slamming into the energy-efficient panes.
Off the the studio, a full bath is another study in economy and style.
A vessel sink sits atop a dry-sink cabinet that Rachel found at Milltown 87. The handsome navy and gold wallpaper — featuring, of course, bowerbirds — came from Spoonflower, a Durhambased custom printer of fabrics and wallpapers. The mirror came from Facebook Marketplace. Ditto the bronze-and-caramel colored floor tile. The floor is heated from underneath, another touch that feels like an indulgence to Rachel.
“The adobe floor can be pretty cool in the winter, so it’s nice to step into the bathroom and feel like, ‘Oh yes!’” she says.
The bedroom holds more beautifully practical flourishes: An arched inset in the wall functions as an adobe headboard for a queen mattress, which fits easily into the room, thanks to the recess. Wall sconces flank the arch.
The room has a laundry nook, too, meaning that, for the first time in her adult life, Rachel claims a washer and dryer of her own.
“This is a game changer,” she says, recalling experiences with basement laundry rooms and other tenants’ clothes left in washers and dryers.
Her new combination unit washes and dries clothes in the same tub. The ventless dryer dehumidifies clothes and drains away the water, which saves energy and extends the life of the clothes.
Thanks to many electricity-sipping decisions, the home earned a tax-saving Energy Star certification for Amanda. Rachel is eligible for electric company rebates.
Amanda throws out R-values, which are insulation ratings, to describe just how energy-efficient The Bower is. The higher the R-value, the better.
The Bower’s straw-bale walls are rated at R-30; codes for conventional homes call for R-15.
The attic, which is blanketed with blown-in cellulose insula-
tion, is rated at R-49. The code for regular homes is R-38. Already, The Bower is flexing its ability to save energy, therefore money. Rachel says the family’s power bill for November 2025 — her home is tied to her parents’ electrical system — was less for two homes than it was for just her parents’ home when she was living there in November 2024.
No solar panels power The Bower, but the home’s orientation, which squares with the Earth’s cardinal directions, makes the home a passive-solar structure.
Most of the windows face south. In the summer, the windows are sheltered by an overhang that provides shade. In the winter, when the sun’s arc is lower, its rays penetrate the windows and warm the interior walls.
The home’s exterior walls are Earth friendly in their own way. Amanda’s crew used propane torches to scorch the spruce plank siding, then they painted the burned surface with warm linseed oil. The charring method, known as Sho Sugi Ban, is a tra-
ditional Japanese method of protecting wood from insects and fire.
The dark boards, coupled with The Bower’s white roof and yellow door, make for an eye-popping modernist home.
Rachel’s family and friends love it, inside and out. Her parents tease her about trading places.
Some of her friends say they’d love to build something similar.
Rachel says only a few of her friends are homeowners, and she never thought she’d have her own place, much less one that captures her artistic, financial and ethical values so well. Building a straw-bale home — for about the same cost as a conventional home of the same size — with access to a large garden space and her mother’s fresh-baked cookies and focaccia, feels like a dream come true.
“To have a home — I didn’t even know that was possible,” she says. “The first couple of months being here, I thought, ‘I don’t know if this is real. It feels too good.’” OH
AALMANAC
April
By ashLey waL she
pril is a wild maiden, slowly waking.
Before she opens her eyes, she lets the stream of birdsong trickle through her inner landscape, lap against organ and bone, awaken her from the inside out.
Listen. Each trill and warble, an invocation. The dawn chorus, a polyphonic composition of her many dulcet names.
Awaken, Maiden! they sing. Awaken, Ostara! Awaken, Goddess of Spring!
As morning sunlight dances across her face and shoulders, she wiggles her fingers and toes, smiles at the tender kiss of sunbeam, then gently unfurls.
When at last her eyes greet the light of day, the wonder astounds her. She presses her feet into the soft earth, where constellations of glittering dewdrops adorn bluets and clover, and feels the pulse of all creation.
The rhythm moves her. As her feet caress the fertile soil, wildflowers spring forth. Dwarf crested iris. Bluebells. Yellow lady’s slipper. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.
Hips swaying now, a swirl of swallowtails envelope her in a kaleidoscopic dream. Bees circle hypnotically. Nectar-drunk hummingbirds flash by like jeweltoned meteors.
As she shimmies toward the flowering dogwood, fragrance and color spilling in her wake, pink-and-white bracts appear on bare branches like a spray of immaculate vows.
In graceful flow, the maiden reaches for a dogwood sprig, tucks it into her tousled hair, and drifts along, unhurried.
Like the birds, she calls the names of all awakening. Like the maiden, all of life responds.
Puddle Party
Nothing says spring is here like the site of early swallowtail drifting among native perennials. But have you ever stumbled upon a cluster of them “puddling” together in the mud? Absolute magic.
Supping essential nutrients from the wet earth (namely, sodium and amino acids), male swallowtails absorb that which nectar alone can’t provide. Why? For the offspring, of course. But isn’t everything?
Want to attract butterflies to your own neck of the woods? First and foremost: Forgo pesticides. Consider host plants for the garden (i.e. milkweed for monarchs, violets for fritillaries, pawpaws for zebra swallowtails). According to Conserving Carolina, native trees such as oak, cherry and willow each support hundreds of species of lepidoptera (winged insects including moths and butterflies). Or, fuel their flight with nectar a la purple coneflower, goldenrod, blazing star, black-eyed Susan, ironweed and aster. Everybody wins. OH
I would spend a morning With an April apple tree, Speaking to it softly, And laughing out in glee. All the summer sunshine And all the winter moon Are shining in the blossoms That will be gone so soon.
— George Elliston, “April Morning,” Through Many Windows, 1924
Words of Wisdom
“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”
— Margaret Atwood
SpringHOME and GARDEN
A SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION
Improve your home and garden with help and inspiration from these local businesses
Window Works Studio
Boxwood Antique Market
ETC for the Home
A Cleaner World
Murphy’s Upholstery
Blue Denim Real Estate
A Shade Better
Priba Furniture
Kitchen Express of Greensboro
Craig McIntosh/Tyler Redhead & McAlister
Paul Davis Restoration
Downtown Greenway
South 23rd
Jaree Todd/BHHS
Seabolt Upholstery
Greensboro Kitchen & Bath
Kitchen Tune-Up
Twin Brothers Antiques
Sunbird Storage
Compassionate Wildlife Removal
Preservation Greensboro
Golden Oldies
Chelsea on Green
Renewal By Andersen
The Cottage
WhiteStone
ReBath of the Triad
Laura Redd Interior
Guilford Garden Center
Weeks Hardwood Flooring
Crawlspace Medic
Randolph County Tourism
Development Authority
Shades & Cushions
Create
Custom
The Chick is back!
Before owning Murphy’s, we owned a gift store on Battleground called Party Chick and Paper.
With recent changes in the retail landscape in Greensboro, we have brought back the “Best of the Chick”.
We have divided the showroom at Murphy’s Upholstery into 2 parts - one half top quality furniture, home decor and fabric and the other half filled with the gifts you love!
It’s the most unusual location with the most fabulous gifts in town!
Taking your space from ordinary to extraordinary! Elevated style for every home
Our patent-pending planter cover instantly upgrades any plastic pot into a design-forward accent. No repotting, no hassle - just slide it on and elevate your seasonal greenery in seconds
Available in multiple sizes and timeless prints, it’s the easiest way to bring designer polish to your patio, porch or balcony.
Stop by, explore, and experience our products up close!
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We carry
Cultivate Your Retirement Finest
At WhiteStone, retirement is a plan you’ve carefully tended, now ready to bloom in full.
Our scenic Greensboro grounds offer a sanctuary where your purpose takes root and connections flourish like a well-kept garden.
Here, every day is a celebration of the thoughtful planning you’ve invested, allowing you to harvest the joy, curiosity, and deep-seated friendships you truly deserve. With a legacy rooted in fellowship and a future nurtured with care, WhiteStone is where your next chapter thrives.
Piedmont
Bird Club April 6
Urban Foraging April 27
APRIL 6, 15, 18, 22 & 27
DOWN TO EARTH.
If you’re a bit of a nature buff and enjoy spending your evenings touching grass, then you’ll love what the Downtown Greenway has lined up for you. While events are free, make sure you count yourself in by registering for each event you plan to attend. Info for all activities here: downtowngreenway.org/events.
From 5:30–7 p.m., Monday, April 6, follow the Piedmont Bird Club flock for some feathery fun. Take a leisurely stroll along the Downtown Greenway through the Morehead Park Trailhead area while learning the basics of birding. From blue jays to northern cardinals, who knows what you could spot? Bring a pair of binoculars — and maybe your birdloving bestie — for an evening of discovery Morehead Park Trailhead, 475 Spring Garden St., Greensboro.
April 2026
In need of a night out on the town? We’re highlighting some of our picks from the area to immerse yourself in the growing and evolving Greensboro arts-and-culture scene. Before attending any event, it’s best to check times, costs, status and location. Although we conscientiously use the most accurate and up-to-date information, the world is subject to change and errors occur!
Then, from 5:30–6:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 15, explore the wonders of treasure hunting, no pirates involved. Downtown Greenway invites only the bravest of Earthfarers to learn the basics of modern-day geocaching and how to find caches locally. It’s a fun hobby to master and — especially for the kids — a great way to explore the outdoors. Morehead Park Trailhead, 475 Spring Garden St., Greensboro.
Next, from 9 a.m.–noon, Saturday, April 18,
tour Greensboro like never before and walk the 4-mile loop of the Downtown Greenway with a friendly guide. From its public art and local history tributes, you’ll learn all about Gate City culture. Tours begin and end in LoFi park. LoFi Park, 500 N. Eugene St., Greensboro.
From 5–7 p.m., Wednesday, April 22, pair plants with relaxation and creativity every indoor gardener will enjoy. The Downtown Greenway hosts an inspired, hands-on evening with a Succulent Soirée Workshop.
The Pretty in Pink Foundation’s Triple Crown Casino Night
17 Geocaching April 15
Learn the basics of designing your own succulent arrangements in a relaxed, social environment even if you don’t know what succulents are — google it. Freedom Cornerstone, 750 Plott St., Greensboro.
Lastly, from 5:30–6:30 p.m., Monday, April 27, expand your plant knowledge as well as your palate with an urban foraging class. A local professor will teach you sustainable foraging techniques so you can do your own homework. Expand your plant knowledge as well as your palate. Meeting Place at the Public Orchard, 801 W. Smith St., Greensboro.
APRIL 9–11
PARTY FOR THE BOOKWORMS.
Times vary. For those of you happily stuck with your nose in a book — who’d much rather be reading than socializing — finding an event or festival full of likeminded people
can be tricky. The solution? The Greensboro Bound Book Festival, a celebration of books, writers and diverse stories. Whether you’re a book nerd or an aspiring writer, this festival is chock-full of happenings for you. Each day is filled with authors and poets who want to share their stories and help others explore their potential. Casey McQuiston, The New York Times-bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue, opens the festival on April 9, followed on April 10 by Alice Martin, UNC Chapel Hill grad and author of Westward Women, and then a full-day affair with author panels and writing workshops on April 11. Info: greensborobound.com/2026-festival.
APRIL 12
MAKE YOUR WAY TO THE MAKERS WAY 1–5 p.m.
Grab your sunhat and walking shoes — oh, and don’t forget your green thumb — then make your way to the Maker’s Way at Gateway Gardens. Join Greensboro Beautiful and Greensboro Parks and Recreation for their annual celebration of crafters and artisans. Stroll through the blooming grounds and get the chance to watch the talented people of our community create beautiful objects. This event will also feature food vendors and live performances. Free entry. Gateway Gardens, 2800 E. Gate City Blvd. Greensboro. Info: greensborobeautiful.org.
BEAT IT. 2–3:30 p.m.
A jazzy, improv drum workshop? Music to our ears. If you’re inspired by local legend John Coltrane and need an excuse to celebrate
Greenway A’Glow April 17
Jazz Appreciation month, blow your way to The Music Academy of North Carolina for its monthly jazz workshop. Whether you play for pure pleasure or are hoping to make some key changes in your life, tap into a smooth improv workshop, the second Sunday of each month. Whether it’s swinging sticks or crashing cymbals, you will learn the ways of the soulful drum at this session. Free. The Music Academy of North Carolina, 1327 Beaman Place, Greensboro. Info: musicacademync.org.
APRIL 17
CHIP IN. 5:30 p.m.
Roulette, card games and sparkling champagne to top it off? No, we’re not talking about Viva Las Vegas. The Pretty in Pink Foundation presents its 5th annual Triple Crown Casino Night benefitting breast cancer patients in North Carolina. To start the night off, Pretty in Pink pops the cork with a champagne reception followed by Vegas-style casino games, a gourmet dinner and a new “Spin to Win” game. We can’t promise you’ll hit the jackpot and make it big in one night, but we can ensure that every bid you place will make a meaningful impact to a life-saving cause — that’s something to bet on. Remember, what happens at casino night stays at casino night. Tickets: $175+. Legacy Stables & Events, 4151 Thomasville Road, Winston-Salem. Info: prettyinpinkfoundation.org.
GREENWAY A’GLOW 6–8 p.m.
Downtown Greenway invites you to light up the night at its glow party held at Morehead Trail park. Bring your little rascals, who can
party like a champ and still hit the sack by bedtime, or shine bright with your best pals before hitting the downtown scene. Glow sticks, glow paint and lively music that’ll make you want to hit the dance floor will be waiting for you. Free. Morehead Trail Park. 475 Spring Garden St., Greensboro, NC. Info: downtowngreenway.org/events.
A CONCERT-ED EFFORT. 7:30–8:30 p.m.
If you’re not a musician but like to listen to a great tune or two, then join The Music Academy of North Carolina for its Faculty and Friends Concert. It’s a chance for the academy instructors to show off their skills while drumming up support for students. Because, who knows, maybe these students are beating the path to be the next Louis Armstrong. All proceeds benefit student scholarships. Tickets: $25. The Music Academy of North Carolina, 1327 Beaman Place, Greensboro,. Info: musicacademync.org.
APRIL 18
TIME IN A BOTTLE 2–4 p.m.
Two-hundred-fifty trips around the sun? We’re celebrating with cake, candles and a
time machine. High Point Museum celebrates America’s 250th by burying some worthy mementos. Coordinated by the Guilford Battle Chapter of National Society Daughter of the American Revolution, this ceremony, open to the public, gives you a last look at the selected items to be sealed away for 50 years, until America’s 300th birthday. Cheers to 250 years — though she’s a timeless beauty — and cheers making history. Free. Historical Park at High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: highpointmuseum.org.
ALL WRITE 2026. 8 a.m.–6:30 p.m.
Spend the day with the North Carolina Writers’ Network learning the ins and outs of poetry, short stories and creative nonfiction. Whether it’s for pleasure or publication, there’s a class for every type of writer, book enthusiast or fiction connoisseur. From world-class guest speakers to riveting readings, you’re sure to walk away with new skills to tell your story. Fee: $99+ for members, $149+ for nonmembers. UNCG’s Moore Humanities and Research Administration Building, 1111 Spring Garden St., Greensboro. Info: ncwriters.org.
T he Ar ts
Songwriter Sessions April 19
SUNDAY, APR 26, 3:30PM · MONDAY, APR 27, 7:30PM Virginia Somerville Sutton Theatre, 4100 Well Spring Dr, Greensboro
Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South
February 7–August 1, 2026
As historical leaders in quiltmaking, generations of Southern Black women have used quilts to create visual records that maintain centuries of knowledge about the region’s complexities. Of Salt and Spirit is a love letter to Black quilters of the South, presenting twenty-four quilts and two portraits from the collection of the Mississippi Museum of Art.
Organized by the Mississippi Museum of Art. Support is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation and the Art Dealers Association of America Foundation.
Gustina Atlas, Variation on Dresden Plate Quilt, 1998. Cotton; machine pieced, hand quilted, 81 1/2 x 80 inches. Collection of the Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Gift of the Kohler Foundation, Inc., 2022.9.13. Photo by Gib Ford
APRIL 19
WHAT THE FOLK! SONGWRITER SESSIONS. 3–5 p.m.
Tune your guitar and vocal chords — you’re not going to want to miss this session. Ashley Virginia, local folk singer and songwriter, plus special guests Clint Roberts and Agis Shaw, welcome you to sit back as they strum and sing folk-inspired tunes. You’ll discover the stories behind the songs in an intimate, cozy setting that invites you to put down your phone and partake in the moment. Each month, Ashley invites new artists to play with her in her songwriter round, so make this a standing date on your calendar. Tickets: $19.05+. Back Table, 816 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: ashleyvirginiamusic.com.
APRIL 21–26
LIFE IS NOT A BED OF ROSES. Times vary. Growing up isn’t easy, but for 16-year-old Kimberly, it can be an adventure. Navigating her way through family dysfunctions, a rare genetic condition and her first crush takes her through a wild ride. Tap your feet along to Kimberly Akimbo, a five-
time Tony-award-winning musical, including Best Musical, and watch as the titular character dances her way through the ups and downs of life. Tickets: 67.55+. Steven Tanger Center. 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.
APRIL 21
HAPPY EARTH DAY TO YOU. 4:30 p.m. What better way to celebrate Earth Day than with music? The Music Academy of North Carolina invites you to sing along with its students at its Earth Day Sing-abration. Let’s honor Big Blue with a melody that’s sure to bring a breath of fresh air. Along with an inspiring performance, you will also want to catch the academy’s tips on keeping your voice healthy and performance-ready. Free. Benjamin Branch Library, 1530 Benjamin Pkwy., Greensboro. Info: musicacademync.org.
APRIL 25
IN FULL BLOOM. 10 a.m.–4 p.m.
Just because we can’t seem to revive the wilted plants on our own front porch doesn’t mean we won’t enjoy a nice stroll through a lush garden of fresh, blooming blossoms. The Garden Club Council of Winston-Salem/ Forsyth County swings open the garden gate on its one-day biennial tour, inviting you to celebrate the shared appreciation for nature, design, and transformation among nine private gardens. Each garden on this spring tour
LADIES CLOTHING, GIFTS, BABY, JEWELRY, GIFTS FOR THE HOME, TABLEWARE, DELICIOUS FOOD
has been lovingly cultivated over time. You’ll walk away with a head full of inspiration, ready to dig in the dirt and nurture your own green thumb, dead porch plants be damned. Tickets: $45 in advance, $55 the day of the event, $65 VIP includes boxed lunch. Info: wsgardentour.org.
APRIL 28
SPRING-ALONG. 7 p.m.
Grab your popcorn and your favorite witchy hat — leave the broomstick — for a wickedly good spring singalong. Wicked, a smash-hit film based on the Broadway musical, is the sweeping, cinematic story about two young women crossing paths in Oz — one popular and ambitious while the other sings a different tune. Watch this popular film on the big screen with fellow Emerald City sirens and enjoy singing all of your favorite gravity-defying songs. Tickets: $9+. Carolina Theatre. 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: carolinatheatre.com. OH
To submit an item for consideration, please email ohenrymagcalendar@gmail.com by the first of the month prior to the month of the event.
Sunday, October 19, 2025
Photographs by Mike Micciche
Sandi Lovitt, Alex Contianos
Phelps Sprinkle, Meredith Powers
Neal Sharpe, Buck Cochran, Cathy Cochran, Tim Elliott, Tim Rice, Andy Zimmerman, Hayley Sink, Caitlin Duke, Sen. Phil Berger, Phelps Sprinkle, Senitria Goodman, Heidi Norwick, Garrett Westfall, Tim Westfall
Peggy Hamilton, Debbie Faircloth, Linda & Rod Mortenson
Steve Royal, Laura Irvin, Carol Royal, Pauletta Root, Mary Skenes
John Bridges, Gigi Renaud, Chris & Aria Dragon, Laura & Robert Green
Charley Lanza, Brenda Macfadden, Sheila Phillips
FarmtoFable A handmade bench sings its story
By John A dA mcik
Our family’s kitchen bench sings. Farm songs, mostly. Warm and friendly tunes, passed down through generations.
Some might think it’s the old wood and nails, creaking in protest after decades of heavy use.
Or North Carolina heat and humidity working on the wood Grandpa chose when he built the plank bench for his family of 11 to use in their Michigan farmhouse.
I know better. It’s what’s inside the bench that makes it serenade.
My mother was an upholsterer. When I was young, she’d pay me to remove fabric from heirloom sofas, loveseats and armchairs. By 10, I’d learned how to pull rusty staples and tacks from a frame without damaging the antique, hand-carved wood. I could look at a piece in Mom’s shop and tell you whether the innards were foam, straw or horsehair.
Just as I can tell you what’s in almost any upholstered furniture, I know what’s in our family’s bench.
It’s stuffed with memories from family gatherings, where Grandma kept court at the dining room table. Her encouraging smile remains in my mind’s eye, a reminder of her unconditional love for all of us in her family. There’s residue from orange KoolAid she kept in the fridge for frequent visits by us grandkids. Dregs of the beer Dad and my uncles drank, the kind advertised on TV during Detroit Tigers games in the ’70s. Smoke from cigars the guys enjoyed while playing pinochle in the living room (once the farm granary, before the grandparents moved the family there in the 1940s).
There are echoes of laughter and prayers. Grandpa’s jokes, told in half-Polish/half-English. Silhouettes of the tornado of 1951. An undecipherable howl from an uncle struck by lightning as a boy (he lived). A soft groan of shock from another uncle when he got skunked as a youth.
My grandparents were humble people whose lives reflected
their faith, love of family and commitment to our mid-Michigan community. The city’s main employer — Dow Chemical, at the time the world’s largest single chemical plant — emerged in the 1800s to mine and transform the area’s subterranean salt deposits into useful components. Grandpa worked there. Dad and my uncles, too. Salt of the Earth, some said. The area. The people. My grandparents.
The bench is packed with testimonies of their farm life.
Early in Mom’s career she lovingly reupholstered the bench for Grandma with embossed, golden polyvinyl chloride fabric jokingly advertised as the shed “hyde” of a mythical creature (but which came from a factory much like our town’s). Ornamental brass tacks still hold the fabric on the bench’s scuffed brown paint.
When Mom moved to Florida years later, she grew as an artisan. Her skill and work ethic built a client list of the retired, the wealthy and the famous. When a fashion model’s Siesta Key home was featured in a national design magazine, Mom’s work filled every page of that spread.
My wife and I inherited the bench. I’m keeping it “as-is.” No repainting or recovering it. My kids can do that someday, if they want.
Mom stays with us now. She enjoys sitting on the bench, visiting with family and friends or keeping watch on the stove. The bench sings to her more than anyone.
I understand, because I know the song. OH
When not serving as a people person for a religious nonprofit, John Adamcik writes, acts, makes films and moonlights as festival roadie for his wife Jeanneen’s vintage jewelry craft business. He is currently writing his debut thriller novel, Superior State.
