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Sagging Shutters and Fixing Leaks

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 3:59 pm

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As I have gone about addressing the needs at Melrose, my ol' pile in eastern North Carolina's ag-land, uppermost in my mind has been securing the shell of the house so that the rain does not pour in, the wind does not whistle in, and various scofflaws do not come in. In moments of delusion, I actually think I have been successful in this prime goal, but sanity always returns and I am disabused of such stuff-and-nonsense, as my mother used to say. There I am deluding away, having a cup of coffee in the morning, and a call comes from DH, the fellow who does so much of the work at Melrose. He'll call to bring me up to date on whatever project is underway, and all too often his update includes an 'oh, by the way' about another leak that was discovered after a recent rain. Rains in Eastern North Carolina have been scarce, as they have been for the whole state and region. So, without rain, it is easy to become complacent. No rain, no leaks, no worries. Then comes a rain, followed by a call from DH.

To DH's knowledge, all leaks are accounted for and patched. But that is until the next rain. The roof is metal, and how long it has been in place is anyone's guess. I feel certain that it was put on after Sherman came through, but how long after is just conjecture. Speaking of Sherman reminds me of the oft repeated story for why Melrose survived the war of northern aggression. As the story goes, the detachment of Union soldiers who came into the town where Melrose is located might have damaged or destroyed the house but for the fact that the leader of the Union detachment was a Mason, and he learned that the owner of Melrose was a Mason. Rather than burn down a fellow Mason's home, Melrose was allowed to stand. The problem I have with that story is that it is very similar to stories of how homes were saved all over the South.

Anyway, back to roofs. Patching a leaking roof is a time-honored practice, but my thinking increasingly is moving in the direction of "Shouldn't I be thinking about replacing the roof with something that will last at least to the end of my life, and hopefully long beyond that?" I confess that the cost of replacing the whole thing at one time is bound to be too costly, especially with all the other things that need tending at Melrose. So, I am going to investigate replacing the roof in stages. Fortunately, because the house was added onto over the past 200 years, it has different roof surfaces that cover the various additions, resulting in several separate and distinct roof areas. Each could, I suppose, be replaced as time and money allowed. At least I hope so.

Increasingly, I am seeing homes which have metal roofs with a baked-on painted surface and are, I think, far superior to the metal roofs of Sherman's or any other earlier time. I particularly like the fact that you can get the new roofs in different colors. I've been thinking that a nice chartreuse would look good on Melrose, rather than the stogy green it now sports, but I'm concerned the good folks who are my neighbors might tie me to the business end of a cotton combine and proceed with their harvesting should I choose such a color. Still, one is tempted....



Two other issues I am dealing with concern the cost of heating Melrose, and the condition of the shutters that grace every window at the house.

Heating Melrose (and air conditioning in the spring/summer/autumn) is not simply an issue of money. It raises an interesting philosophical question concerning caring for old homes in the years to come when energy costs likely will be even more burdensome. Old homes by their very nature are not energy efficient. The technology available when they were built did not allow for that. Wood and coal were plentiful and global warming was still two hundred years away.

If Melrose were occupied full time, it would cost a king's ransom to heat Melrose to a comfortable temperature in the winter, and the future does not appear to offer any relief. So, what's a poor plantation owner to do? One thing that has occurred to me is to investigate both wind and solar power options as a means of at least softening the impact of heating and air conditioning. My bet is that it is possible to make Melrose energy independent, or darn close to it, but to reach that point will require lots of time and lots of money. The alternatives, though, are dealing with ever higher costs or leaving the house to fend for itself with thermostats set at levels in summer and winter that would make the house unattractive for even periodic visits. I have been upstairs in Melrose in the summer before air conditioning was installed, and I feel quite certain that forcing someone to sleep up there in that heat would be a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

The shutters on Melrose fortunately do not raise issues of human rights. However, they do raise my blood pressure. While I have not counted all of the shutters on the house, I do know that there are 24 just on the front of Melrose. Knowing the total number on the house would require use of a calculator and me taking an extra dose of Paxel. I recently had the bright idea of bringing home a couple of shutters at a time, stripping them, doing whatever repair was called for and then re-hanging them on my next trip to Melrose. At the time, it did seem like a good idea, even if it did require me to live 170 years to get all of the shutters stripped.

Well, I brought home a couple of shutters in seemingly good shape, set up the carpenter's horses and proceeded to strip away. What I discovered is that when you put enough layers of paint on wood over enough years, it no longer matters if the wood beneath rots away. The paint itself maintains the shape of the shutter, giving the appearance that all is well down below where the sun don't shine.

Given that the shutters are likely 100 years old or more, the one I began with wasn't all that bad. Still, the lower left corner joint was rotted so bad that after I had cleared away the rot, virtually nothing was left of that corner. I'm not a carpenter and could not rebuild the damaged area, so I began to think that if all of the shutters presented similar problems, stripping dozens of other shutters would be a fool's errand. I try to avoid fool's errands whenever possible, so I hot footed it down to a builder's supply and learned that a very similar shutter to the ones on the house is available. But the cost per shutter would make you shutter, and I only ordered two, all the better to avoid bankruptcy.

When I shared all this with DH, he was incredulous. Why buy new shutters when he could repair the old ones? Plus, you can't buy shutters that sag. The fact that all of the shutters now on the house sag 20 degrees from square merely adds to their authenticity. As luck would have it, DH is restoring old shutters for another owner of an old-house. Bottom line is that I will have the two new shutters to replace any old shutters that are beyond even DH's mending touch, and we'll try to salvage the rest/ I'll be responsible for stripping the shutters since I find that task to be fulfilling in a mindless sort of way, and DH can work his magic to bring the shutters back from the verge of disintegration.

With all of this focus on the outside of Melrose, you might think that the interior is being neglected. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I will address that soon. I also have an ancient apple tree that I hope to salvage by doing some judicious pruning this winter. You can't get much more scintillating than that.


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Poo-Patrols and the Methane Momma

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 6:33 pm

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Right off the bat, I want to provide assurances that the title of this blog is not a harbinger of worst things to come. There will be no deep dive into poo-dom on my watch. Instead, I am forced to come to grips with new realities that impact my life as a gardener, not to mention forcing me to trip the light fantastic as I negotiate my way across the lawn.

With my recent marriage, so much has come into my life that enriches it, and I am very much aware of my blessings. Not only do I have a wonderful wife and friend, but I also have a really neat step son, a new cat and two really great dogs. So, the math in my house is now one female wife (in today's world, it is advisable to point out the gender of one's wife), a daughter, two female dogs and two female cats. Then, there is my step son and me- the testosterone orphans in a calm sea of estrogen.

It is about the dogs that I write here. I knew them long before my marriage and we enjoyed a relationship of mutual respect and growing confidence. After all, they embodied so many of the characteristics I have come to cherish in my life. They are fiscally responsible, they do not wear pants in such a way as to suggest that they are plumbers, and they demonstrate a large measure of intellectual curiosity. It is true that they were given to wandering their neighborhood with wild abandon. But, to be fair, they could always be counted on to return at the slightest sound of a massive bag of Alpo being ripped open. In planning our life together, my soon-to-be wife and I had made arrangements for an invisible dog fence to restrain their mad dashes, and- just as important- to protect the formal garden I have worked on for the past 11 years. I thought I was ready for a squire-ific peaceful life on our mini estate.

Any dog owner out there undoubtedly now realizes that I have never owned a dog before. My knowledge of dogs pretty much came from watching Lassie on 1950s TV and Rin Tin Tin at the movies. They never shed. They never barked except when that doofus Timmy fell yet again into another well. And they certainly never poo-ed. It was, after all, the 1950s.

Boy, have I ever been disabused of any of those notions. I find myself announcing on a regular basis that I am headed out to the back lawn on a poo-patrol. That area now qualifies as one of the largest canine rest stops in the Carolinas. How it is that just two dogs- albeit fairly large dogs, but nothing like the stature of the Hound of the Baskervilles - can be so productive is a wonder and a mystery worthy of investigation by the National Academy of Sciences. We Americans are so often beaten about the head and shoulders because we refuse to join the rest of the world in use of the metric system, and for that reason I will try here to be international in my reporting. The productivity of those dogs must be measured is the kilograms. I recently had outpatient surgery on my right shoulder, and I must be mindful while on poo-patrol to only use the right arm for the picking up. It is the left arm that must, as we say in the South, do the heavy toting.

Now, to be fair, I shouldn't single out our dogs (they are our dogs when I remember them with particular fondness, but her dogs when I am on poo-patrol) for such public exposure. Thanks to the invisible fence protecting the garden, my patrolling is limited only to the lawn. Honesty forces me to note that a goodly number of All Creatures Great and Small live nearly invisible lives in our midst and have no compunction at all at using my garden as a porta potty. We are regularly visited by deer and rabbits and raccoons, all of which leave what Southern ladies of another era liked to refer to as "calling cards." No one pretentiously showing their garden with pride, as I recently did, wants the tour to be punctuated by discussions about what card came from what caller. No indeed!

And while I'm bearing all, there is one more thing I need to share. One of "her dogs", which shall for purposes of anonymity be called Lilly, is as loving and gentle a creature as the Creator has ever blessed us with. She's now in her reclining years and wants nothing more now than a warm rug, a tennis shoe to carry aimlessly from point A to point B in the house, and the reassuring comfort of her mistress's company. I am a mere after thought in this scene of domestic tranquility, but I often find that I am in Lilly's company as well, particularly as I sit with my wife and watch a movie on TV. Lilly has a problem that seems to afflict so many of those who are aging, myself included. Not to put too fine a point on it, she has periodic eruptions of methane. Actually, periodic is not as accurate a word as it should be. Frequent is far more specific. The reliability and regularity of Old Faithful doesn't hold a candle to Lilly. Come to think of it, it would not be wise to hold a candle too close to Lilly due to that regularity.

I've actually speculated that Lilly, who I call the Methane Momma, is singularly responsible for global warming. The bovine crowd has been singled out by scientists as having an important role in causing global warming because of their flatulence. I beg to differ. I think that cows and others of their ilk have gotten a rotten gaseous deal. If I had the time, I would research whether there was an appreciable increase in atmospheric methane prior to Lilly's middle age. My bet is not. However, I feel certain that the research results would only confirm my theory of Lilly's culpability.

Still, when global warming has caused the seas to rise and waves are lapping at the steps of Melrose, our Southern manse that currently is 80 miles from the rising Atlantic, I will love Lilly all the more. I'll simply pause the movie we're watching, cross the room to open windows for cross ventilation and return to watching an old Lassie episode.


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Welcome to Melrose

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 1:20 pm

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for those who have asked to see Melrose, here is picture of the exterior. As I become mor proficient in putting pictures on the blog, I will send some others.

[img]<a href=http://phi[/img]



Last edited: Fri Nov 16, 2007 9:13 pm

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Question from the Techno Challenged

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 2:47 pm

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can someone tell me how to incorporate a picture into a blog? Several people have asked for pictures of Melrose, but I have yet to figure out how to do that. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.[/img]

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Me and the Ol' Dear

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 8:39 pm

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A year ago, I sat on the front steps of Melrose - the 200-year old faded beauty I have in Eastern North Carolina - and felt totally overwhelmed by the scope of all that needed to be done to this house, which had been left to me when my wife died in 2005. Immediately after her death I had fully intended to follow through on her dream to have Melrose restored and for it to serve as a "family seat" or a "country retreat" for my family. Throughout that first year, I had various projects underway, some on the inside of Melrose, and others on the grounds surrounding the house. The two-acre grounds had been such a mess, that just having someone haul away the accumulated trash of decades seemed like a good place to start. Much of that got done, and I felt the better for it- not unlike having an enema. But the inside of the house was another matter. It was filled with furniture and boxes upon boxes, all of which had been moved from the house we had sold on the North Carolina coast in preparation for the move to Melrose.

Each time I went to Melrose, I intended to do something - to invest some sweat equity that would move the whole project toward some far-off time when all would be done and life would be bucolic. But, no matter what I did on those quick down, quick back day-long trips, it amounted to less than a drop of sweat on the snout of a local mole. The restoration project was so vast, my time was so limited, and the dollars to hire workers were not inexhaustible. Hence, that day came when I found myself sitting on the Melrose steps, dejected, depressed and deflated. It was during that semi-seminal moment that I made a decision to sell the house. It now has been on the market since last spring.

But, funny things happen on the road to a house closing, and as it happens, that decision was not the end of the story. It appears that in a quirky, roundabout way, that might just have been the end of the beginning.

Soon after the decision to sell, we set about moving the furniture and boxes to a storage facility. I thought I was moving the stuff to make it easier to sell the house. And it did serve that purpose. But, because my mind is only slightly larger than that found in a fruit fly, having the stuff out of the house permited me to take in the uncluttered spaces as I had not done before. At the same time, I was still involved in projects intended to return the house to sound condition. I even spent three days in August perched on a portion of the metal roof, scraping and painting, sweating and swearing and even managing to sit in a spot of tar that was being used to mend leaks in the roof. Unknowingly, in the searing heat and humidity of an Eastern North Carolina summer, I had begun bonding with Melrose.

When fall arrived, my new wife and I came to similar conclusions, which we shared one night during dinner. Something- maybe stars in a particular alignment or (God forbid) the influence of the resident ghost in Melrose - something had the both of us thinking that getting rid of Melrose might not be the right course of action. I have been letting that idea marinate in sweet and sour sauce ever since, not sure whether it has more to do, as Scrooge said, with a bit of beef or a blot of mustard, than with ghosts or inspiration.

All of this has caused me to announce to a suspecting family that if the old dear does no sell by spring, I will take it off the market, and prepare to occupy Melrose, not as Sherman would have done with fire and sword, but with paint brush, toilet bowl cleaner and floor buffer. If the house sells by spring, I will view it as an act of fate fulfilled. But, if it is not sold by spring, I will take it as a sign of my karma.


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A Response to a Fellow Blogger

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 4:55 pm

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As a result of the couple of blogs I have penned, I got a response from a reader who is involved in a very creative undertaking involving gardening, and she asked me to clarify my thinking on the kind of things I'd like to do. Responding to that person has forced me to sharpen my focus a bit more, and what follows is what I sent that person. Thanks for letting me share.

This will likely be far more than you want to know, but it may be helpful is understanding where I am coming from and where it is I might want to go. For several years I have occasionally addressed the question of what I want to be when I grow up, or, to put it differently, what will I do when I retire? I have never answered those questions to my or anyone elses' satisfaction for reasons that only a therapist could untangle.

But now I am 64. And I have no interest in asking, as the Beatles did, will you still need me, will you still feed me....? Daily I get mail from Medicare and from Medicare supplement companies reminding me in no uncertain terms that I really am 64, a number which is always followed by 65, and thereafter, by ever higher numbers (if you're lucky). I suppose I ought to be grateful that I am not getting mail from the company that makes Depends. But I suppose that is only a matter of time.

I have quite a good job and after I retire, I can reasonably look forward to a decent lifestyle. But that's not the issue. The issue is that when I step down from my currrent role, what will I do that is meaningful to me, that makes a contribution to others, and that, at the end of the day, leaves me with a feeling that I am doing more than occupying space.

For more than 30 years, the one thing that has given me the greatest pleasure is developing a series of gardens. So, it has been a common theme for me to think in terms of doing something related to gardening as I enter what amounts to a new career. For a long time, I could not decide on that that "something" is, and even now it is too shapeless for me to give a definitive answer to the question, "what are you going to do after you retire?" But, at least I know the general direction where the answer to that question can be found.

In the meantime, another factor have entered the picture that influences my thinking. It is a factor I have raised in my blog- the restoration of old homes.

My interest is not just in seeing that gardens are more available for people to see, or that garden events are better publicized, or that resources for gardeners are better known, or that people involved in old home restorations share what they are doing and celebrate their successes- my interest is not in any one of those things. It is in all of those things. And a good bit more besides.

I cannot overstate the impact that reading the British version of Country Living magazine has had on my thinking and outlook. The mix of articles, subjects, art work, etc. that I find there speaks to me in a very meaningful way. My response is always to feel like "gee, I wish I had something like this, but telling me the same kinds of things concerning the Carolinas or all of the South."

I do not know whether I would have eventually started the blog you have seen. But I was prompted by a colleague in the PR business who suggested that to do so might be a good first step in deciding how to proceed with my interests. And I do think that is going to happen.

If there is something I am moderately good at, it is coming up with an idea and then turning that idea into some kind of reality. That was the case a few years back when I created a radio program on the South, and kept it on the air for five years. But if there is something I am not good at, it is turning my ideas and realities into some kind of cash flow. I am no entrepreneur, or, if I am, I haven't discovered it yet. Maybe I don't have to be. I could fulfill my vision without payback, but payback sure is a nice side benefit.

I like what I see you trying to do with your online magazine. I hadn't thought of trying something like that before, but it is an intriguing concept. I'd even like to do a TV program on gardens and old homes in the Carolinas. I'll just have to see. But by virtue of having connected with you and others on GardenStew, I am already ahead in my thinking, and new areas of thoughts already have opened up. thanks!!

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Open Them Garden Gates

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 9:07 pm

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Blog 3

Across the Carolinas, there must be dozens and perhaps hundreds of gardens that are in private hands, and that would make really fine places for gardeners to visit. I have read many times in various publications that information is made available to those living in Britain on when and where private gardens are open. This is done in convenient booklets for people to use throughout the year when planning day or weekend trips. I'd love to have something like that for the Carolinas or for all of the South..

A booklet like those I have read about presupposes that the owners of gardens are ready and willing to share their gardens with fellow gardeners. Sometimes a small charge is made for entrance into a garden, but other gardens are open free of charge. Finding gardeners willing to share their gardens, and then having a means of communicating that would require something of a cultural shift in the good ol' US of A. But it sure would be nice.

Once in awhile, I hear about a garden tour that is arranged to raise money for a charitable organization. Such tours so often are linked to a "tour of homes" which are certainly nice, and I'd hate to see them go away. But all too often the gardens that you see as part of a homes tour are really an afterthought and the real star of the tour are the interiors of those homes. Garden tours also tend to focus on the biggest, or the best being taken care of by a local lawn and garden maintenance company. Again, nothing wrong with such tours and they are certainly enjoyable, but I think that the world of interesting gardens is not just populated with big, professionally maintained gardens. That's a bit like the thinking which gives us tours focusing on just municipal, or university or corporate gardens. Enjoyable tours to be sure, but they only scratch the surface of what I suspect are the number of wonderful, albeit likely small gardens that individuals have created by the sweat of their gardening genius and maintained by their sweat of their brows.

I have heard and read repeatedly that gardening is the number one hobby in the United Sates. I take it as gospel that the gardens are out there. We have to find them. I also think it is a certainty that people- mostly but not confined to gardeners- would enjoy the opportunity to do some visiting, to see what others are doing and perhaps even to ask some questions of fellow garden owners about what they do and how they do it.

Through this blog, I'd like to urge gardeners to open their gardens from time to time, and to facilitate development of some communication piece that lets others know of when gardens are open. I'd also like, during my retiring but not reclining years, to create a program for public TV access channels where private gardens are visited, gardeners are interviewed, and the world of Southern gardening could begin to open up.

The fact that I have no television experience is no deterence. I one had no radio experience but went ahead and created a half-hour radio program on teh South called SouthernCurrents, and it aired for five years.

As a result of my first two blogs, I have gotten a few questions about subjects I have alreadt raised, and in my next blog, I will address those questions, as well as trying to add a picture of the 200-year old shack name Melrose.


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Melrose On My Mind

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2007 4:35 pm

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Melrose On My Mind

Awhile back, in the presidency of Garfield (the man, not the cat), I had a deep interest in history and really expected to follow that interest into the profession of teaching. But, because God has a sense of humor, he may be responsible for leading me first into journalism and then into public relations. So, while history was shunted into a drawer titled "awaiting another life," I did nothing of consequence with things historical in nature (though I admit to having done some things hysterical in nature).

I should first point out that in matters of family history, mine came primarily from Ireland and our likeliest greatest claim to fame would have been horse thieving, or finding ways to make whiskey undetected by the occupying British army. Marrying, as I did, into a family with deep North Carolina roots, especially in Eastern North Carolina, brought a certain slice of history front and center to me, and for many years, I enjoyed learning not only about the broad sweep of the state's history, but also a great deal about its deep cultural history, especially Eastern North Carolina culture. From the sidelines, I watched and learned the history that was opened to me, and contented myself with the idea that this history wasn't mine to chronicle or pass on to future generations through family stories. I was a spectator.

Two years ago, my wife died, and my being a spectator at someone else's historical drama ended. My wife had been an only child and an only grandchild. The history that had flowed over hundreds of years down the generational highways and alleyways had pooled at the feet of one woman, and out of nowhere, long before "her time," she died.

That's where Melrose comes in. It's a 200-year old antebellum home in the historic farming community of Murfreesboro, NC. It's an old house, but not in any way an ordinary old pile in the country. It looks as if it was taken from the set for Gone With the Wind , with great two-story columns rising from the front porch, topped by classical pediments, walls of brick 18-inches thick, wavy old glass, high ceilings, and a resident ghost whose acquaintance I do not care to make.

Had my wife lived, she would have happily spent the remainder of her life bringing Melrose back to life, for she was a talented interior designer and had the time and inclination to see the job was done right. It would have been a labor of love for her because she had wanted since she was a little girl to one day live in Melrose. One of her long-ago ancestors had owned Melrose, and my wife never lost sight of her interest in bringing Melrose back into the fold.

All of this means that Melrose is now on my dance card, which has not been an altogether unblemished blessing. Let me put it this way-- Melrose and I are not yet at the point where we'd be described as a "couple" along the lines of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn.

From the outset of our relationship, I was intent on keeping things strictly platonic. I wouldn't have been surprised if it had only amounted to having a few drinks, a few laughs, and then a parting of the ways. After all, I knew from day-one that ours would be a challenging relationship. Melrose is AR (agro-rural); I'm SUSR (semi-urbo-suburbo-rural). Not even Dr. Phil can make ARs and SUSRs cohabitate successfully. Plus, Melrose is four hours from where I live and work. Not exactly easy commuting for a weekend tryst, assuming of course that I wanted Melrose for that reason. And, sad to say, Melrose is a bit dowdy. Hardly anything spoils a relationship more than dowdiness. It hasn't been updated in any serious way since the 1960s. Now, I remember the 1960s (in a hazy sort of way), and one thing I am sure of is this- it was a long time ago. 60's wallpaper. 60's bathroom and kitchen décor. The only thing missing was a bust of Timothy O'Leary, shag carpet and a refrigerator the color of avocado.

It wasn't long before I began feeling overwhelmed. This wasn't going to work out. I could feel it. I imagine it's a feeling lots of people have experienced when facing the job of learning to love and restore an old place.


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The bug that flicked me onto the blog

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Fri Nov 02, 2007 7:07 pm

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To begin somewhat closely approximating the beginning...

As I dive mouselong into this blog business, I look at two right-off-the-bat questions. Why am I doing this? And why would someone read it and respond? Fairly succinct, if I do say so. The answers likely won't be.

On the gardening side of this blog, I can say that I am a gardener with a nice garden who likes to talk gardening, likes sharing his garden with others, and likes enjoying the gardens others have created. I've been out and about this gardening business for nearly 40 years, and my interest in plants and such predates the actual start of digging, planting, backaches, liniments, etc.

But, as circumstances have dictated, I only recently came to own a nearly two-hundred year old home that looks like it was lifted from the pages of "Gone With The Wind." It is a wonderful old place in the rural wilds of peanut-draped Eastern North Carolina, but like anything else its age, it's a bit weepy in the rafters, somewhat crackie in the walls and decidedly creekie in the floor boards. It also is reputed to have its own resident ghost, about whom I know very little and about whom I could stand to know even less.

But being a gardener with a full fledged garden, and owning a ancient pile-in-the-country in need of renovations great and small are only a part of the bug that has flicked me onto the blog. To be totally truthful, which one normally should avoid at all cost, I have a growing need to talk with others about these things and, if nothing else, to make myself more aware of what others are doing and thinking along these lines. If others enjoy that same benefit, it'll be pinto beans and collards for New Years.

It has been an interesting trip to an understanding of the need that I mention above. I begin with an admission that will likely stab my Irish maternal great grandfather to the marrow (assuming someone who has passed over minds being stabbed or has marrow for that matter), I must confess to being an Anglophile. Second, I am a closet Southern nationalist and fanatic, meaning that whenever the feeling overwhelms me, I go into the nearest closet to hum a few bars of 'Dixie' and to salute a picture of Robert E. Lee found on an antique fan I bought in Newbern, NC Indeed, the name of this blog, Southern Currents, is the same I gave to a radio program I had for five years in which I traveled via radio signal from one end of the south to the other,.

Because I am an Anglophile, I have for many years read a magazine titled Country Living (the English version, not the American model). If you have read Country Living, you already know that it promotes the English countryside in all of its manifestations, including gardens and old homes. The fact that it goes on to address such topics as the environment and saving small English villages, and that it features individuals and families who are moving to more rural settings, thereby simplifying their lives and making valuable contributions to rural life–all of that and much more only makes me love the magazine. But when I read the articles each month, it also makes me ask "why not here?" Why are we not doing something like this?


When I read stories that put the spotlight on wonderful, almost always private and therefore less well known gardens, when I see people lauded for successfully starting small businesses in smaller towns and villages, increasingly I ask myself why do we not do something similar? Why we do not celebrate such things here in the South. No doubt, other regions of our country have so much to celebrate as well. But someone who is a self-described Dixie humming, R. E. Lee saluting fellow and who knows the difference between the Confederacy's battle flag and the Confederacy's 1st National Flag (now gracing the front bumper of my Mini Cooper), I'm best advised to keep my focus on the hominy and fatback side of the Mason and Dixon Line.

In my next outing, I'll let forth some thoughts on why renovation of old homes and SouthernCurrents go together



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