Hungry Times Two

This is not a food or garden post. One of the few good things about 2020 is time at home to reflect, so this is part of my process. A note of caution: this post contains a few references to racial epithets.  How long have magnolias symbolized Southern femininity? Surely before the 1989 film that I and so many daughters born in this region can quote by heart.  A few weeks ago I walked down a street one block from my own, and took in the scent of magnolia blossoms in morning humidity. Heady but not overpowering, and slightly sweet and sensual. I stopped to admire the large creamy ivory flowers opened fully at their peak, and a memory came.  Credit: Andrew Butko My Grandmother Hazelene, my father's mother, and I used to sit and have a picnic in the low branches of a large old magnolia in the front yard of the home where she grew up, in Badin, Stanly County, North Carolina.  "The Old Home Place," as she called it, had an old Frigidaire refrigerator with a chrome handle you h

It’s officially eight weeks into the “Stay Home, Stay Safe” directive here in Asheville, NC, and today I had the most epic day of mishaps thus far. In North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper and state officials tout the three Ws as “flattening the curve” practices. I’d like to propose a fourth, inspired by the opening line of most of actor Leslie Jordan’s Instagram posts . “Well, shit.” That’s my motto. Casual, to the point, and very much over it all. (This being said, I am aware of my privilege to work from home and remain inconvenienced thus far, and I send much love and respect to those who cannot.) Ouch First I woke up with a sore neck. What could I have done? I quit doing half-assed yoga weeks ago! Then I remembered last night I washed a particularly gritty bag of romaine lettuce using my salad spinner. I recall thinking at the time, "This is why I don’t use this Ikea spinner that often. This thing is stubborn and churns like a cement mixer.” I must have over-aggres

I'm planting my garden this spring like I always do, but it's got extra meaning for me now.  It's May 7, 2020 and we've been living amidst COVID-19/coronavirus since early March, and in addition to so many other upheavals, food security's come up.  Meat-packing plants  are shut down due to employees falling ill, food banks have miles-long lines, and restaurant owners are feeding their former  bar/restaurant workers . Additionally, there have been some references to the Victory Gardens of World War I and more so from World Ward II. Things are nutty right now, so looking to history, and gardening, can teach us some things. Gardening is Good for Your Mental Health Just as COVID-19 really started becoming a reality, and subsequent lay-offs happened at bars, restaurants, etc., I ironically started a job on March 20, 2020.  I'm a warehouse worker at a local garden center, stocking shelves, loading 50 lb. bags of soil and fertilizer [manure] into customer's cars

Scott and I are so many things right now.  Jobless. Unemployed. "Between Jobs," which is one of my least favorite terms, as I imagine us physically bookended by work.  We prefer the term our financial advisor shared with us - the "Intentional Sabbatical" - when we told her we'd both gone and resigned from our jobs in Oregon and planned to move back to North Carolina. We thought she'd "Tsk" us into shame, but she was actually supportive of our need to stop the needle on the record of life and make some drastic changes.  While we're not in a terrible situation financially, we're trying to watch the spending, and though I avoid a spreadsheet like most steer clear of the plague, I know one of our biggest spending categories is food. Like, duh. Have you seen Scott eat? Do you know the damage I can do in a cheese shop?  I won't pretend that I fully know what I'm doing, but I have made some adjustments to our meal expenses

West Asheville has some big damn hills. I forgot about them after 15 years away, but my quads now remember. Yesterday I walked almost four miles round-trip to see my first West Asheville residence, on Hudson Street. In 2001 I split rent with two UNC-Asheville friends, paying less than $300 each per month for a three bedroom house. During my junior year of college, my dad came up to visit from Concord, NC one December day, bringing a Christmas tree and treating us all to a holiday lunch at Asiana Grand Buffet on Smokey Park Highway (now the Yao Buffet & Grill). He also may have gotten a U-Haul truck stuck in the front yard while backing into the very steep driveway. Hudson Street looks nothing like what I remember. Two-story McBungalows at the top of the street replaced the small cottage where a nice older man used to live, a man I once called 911 for when I saw him fall around the corner on State Street.  After Hudson Street, I rented my first solo place on Oakwood Street,

Road trips in books and films always seem so fun, carefree, and adventurous.  Or they can be devolving nightmares that can't end fast enough. Our Oregon to North Carolina trip wasn't quite the latter, but it didn't nearly have enough of the former. Read on for an authentic account of Scott, Erin, and Loretta the dog, packed into a Ford C-Max hatchback for seven loooooong sub-caffeinated days. 

If you've kept up with us over the years (thanks Moms, for reading) you'll know we moved from Charlotte, North Carolina to Gresham, Oregon in April 2018.  Therefore, deciding to move back to North Carolina this summer definitely raised some eyebrows.  What can I say? When you know, you know. That female intuition is some powerful stuff.  It was harder for Scott to leave the Pacific Northwest. Have you seen that man around tall evergreen trees and all the IPAs one can drink? Yet my insistence that one more winter in dreary, dark rain would end me, coupled with the high cost of living and the diminished shine of his PNW college days, were the reality checks to help make this giant U-turn of life. This was no '90s free-wheeling Oregon. 2019 was all too real.  To quote Marc Maron , we don't know how much time we have left. Rather than harp on what Oregon didn't provide, I'd rather think about what our return to Asheville, North Carolina can. I'm