April PineStraw 2024

God called us to serve, let us treat you like VIP!

Comedy Series

Star of Disney’s That’sSo Raven!

Rondell Sheridan’s

“If You’re Over 40 and You Know It... Clap Your Hands!”

Friday, April 5 • 7:00 pm

Mainstage series

Direct from NYC!

Friday, April 19 • 7:00 pm

Family Fun Series

Big Bang Boom!

Parent-Friendly Kindie Rock Trio

Sunday, April 21 • 3:00 pm

SandhillsBPAC.com • 910-695-3800 • 3395 Airport Rd., Pinehurst

CONCESSIONS AVAILABLE: Beer • Wine • Soda • Snacks

Sponsored by Paul Taylor Dance Company

CHAOS TO CREATIVITY

“We begin with a call to understand their needs and priorities, ensuring our first visit is immediately productive. Personalization is what really drives the process.”

— Lindsay Sartorio, Senior Design Consultant

Spring is a time for new beginnings, and when you’re expertly organized, that’s what every morning feels like. All PineStraw readers can receive $500 off a minimum purchase of $2,500 at California Closets.

Take spring cleaning to the next level — book a FREE design consultation with one of our designers today.*

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• Anyone with Osteopenia or Osteoporosis

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SEVEN LAKES WEST • $474,900 172 MORRIS DRIVE

Delightful 4 BR / 3 BA home in beautiful 7LW location. Home has been nicely updated to include remodeled kitchen, new flooring and has been freshly painted!

Beautiful 3 BR / 2 BA brick home in charming No. 6 community! Bright, open floorplan all on one level with fenced, private back yard and great stone water feature. PINEHURST • $498,500 30 JUNIPER CREEK BLVD.

SEVEN LAKES SOUTH • $272,000 104 SANDHAM COURT

Charming 3 BR / 2 BA townhome in popular 7LS community. Split plan home with spacious living area and cozy kitchen.

PINEHURST • $110,000 370 PINEHURST TRACE DRIVE

Large lot in desirable Pinehurst Trace! One of the few lots left in this area. Location is convenient to shopping, dining and the FirstHealth Hospital and medical facilities.

PINEHURST •$415,000 4 BUR COURT

Charming 3 BR / 2 BA home nestled among longleaf pines and mature landscaping. Home is situated on quiet cul-de-sac and is immaculate!

WHISPERING PINES • $497,500 42 SHADOW LANE

Appealing 3 BR / 2.5 BA lake front home on Shadow Lake! Home is open with an abundance of space and beautiful lake views from nearly every room.

PINEHURST • $395,000 138 LOVE THIRTY LANE

Beautifully renovated 2 BR / 2 BA townhome in popular Lawn and Tennis. Hardwood flooring throughout main living areas and great inset wet bar in formal dining room.

CARTHAGE• $450,000 1259 PEACE ROAD

Completely remodeled 3 BR / 2 BA home with inground pool, working barn and large three-bay metal shop. Set on 5 acres in beautiful Moore County - this countryside paradise awaits!

SEVEN LAKES NORTH • $360,000 104 PLEASANT VIEW LANE

New construction underway! 3 BR / 2 BA home situated on nice large lot. Est. completion date March 17th.

Alluring 4 BR / 3.5 BA custom home in desirable McLendon Hills! This home offers tremendous privacy and showcases a thoughtfully designed floor plan. Energy efficient and certified Green built. WEST END • $795,000 155 TRAILCREST DRIVE

Beautiful golf front 4 BR / 3 BA home in Longleaf CC. Floorplan is open and light with natural gas fireplace in the living room, a bright Carolina room and panoramic golf views in back!

Delightful 3 BR / 2.5 BA golf front home overlooking the 2nd green at Talamore. Hardwood flooring throughout main living area, bright breakfast nook/ kitchen and cozy family room with lots of windows! SOUTHERN PINES • $628,000 12 MCNISH ROAD

Gorgeous 4 BR / 3 Full BA, 2 Half BA GOLF FRONT home in quiet cul-de-sac overlooking the 6th green of the Azalea course w/transferable Pinewild CC membership. PINEHURST • $925,000 16 INVERSHIN COURT

Nice 4 BR / 3 BA brick home situated on large corner lot in convenient location. Included in this listing is lot on Forest Hills Drive for Pinehurst CC membership. PINEHURST • $505,000 1250 MONTICELLO DRIVE

Impeccably maintained and conveniently located 4 BR / 3.5 BA home in private cul-de-sac. Floorplan offers spacious rooms, gourmet kitchen and hardwood flooring in main living area. PINEHURST • $562,500 5 WILKES COURT

Amazing 4 BR / 4 BA Craftsman style home situated on the 16th tee of Pinewild’s Holly course. Open concept plan with fine touches and finishes throughout! Transferable Pinehurst CC membership. PINEHURST • $1,100,000 31 ABBOTTSFORD DRIVE

Beautiful, wooded 58-acre tract in rural northern Moore County. The tract straddles Spence Road and is convenient to NC 22. CARTHAGE • $559,500 TBD SPENCE ROAD

Charming golf front 4 BR / 3 BA home in Longleaf CC. Floorplan is open and offers lots of space and natural light with gorgeous panoramic golf views. SOUTHERN PINES • $545,000 521 COTTAGE LANE Re/Max Prime Properties, 5 Chinquapin Rd., Pinehurst, NC

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Where Vibrant Living Meets Timeless Community

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Scarlett Allison

Christine Barrett

Maureen Clark

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Tracy Gibson

Keith Harris

Maribeth Hough

Laurie Kornegay

Ross Laton

Christian McCarthy

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REAPING REWARDS. PUTTING DOWN ROOTS.

REAPING REWARDS.

Our health plan members come from all over North Carolina and all walks of life. But they have one thing in common: They’re part of our community. And here, our community always comes first. Learn more at FirstCarolinaCare.com.

Our health plan members come from of life. But they have one thing in common: And here, our community always comes Learn more at FirstCarolinaCare.com.

Many members. One community.

Many members.

PUTTING DOWN all over North Carolina and all walks common: They’re part of our community. comes first. One community. REWARDS. DOWN ROOTS.

BY GERRY O'NEILL

The Ever-Changing Garden

May the work never be done

By Jim DoDsoN

The spring

gardening season officially got underway this year with the necessary removal of a 70-year-old red oak tree that threatened to fall on my garage office. Being a confirmed tree hugger and septuagenarian myself, I felt for the old boy having to come down. But I’d probably have felt worse — perhaps permanently — had the old fella decided to fall on my office with me in it.

tree could navigate a path across my backyard garden, churning the ground up as it went.

I took this as a sign from on high that it was time to make several big changes in paradise. The first move came on the east side of our house where a trio of formerly well-behaved crape myrtle bushes were suddenly running amok and threatening to blot out the sun. The task of digging them out of the cold January ground proved the wisdom of Robert Frost’s elegant aphorism that the afternoon knows what the morning never suspected — i.e. that some tasks that were easy in the morning of youth prove to be monstrously difficult in the afternoon of age.

Such is the fate of an ever-changing garden, which is a redundant phrase since every garden everywhere is ever changing, if only by a matter of degrees. Any gardener worth his mulch will tell you that the work is never finished. There’s always some new problem to contend with or a fresh inspiration incubated over dark winter days to finally put into motion. We are, as a result, forever incomplete gardeners, revising and learning as we go.

In my case, this year has been all of the above — new problems, fresh inspiration and learning as I go. As the result of the day-long operation to remove “Big Red,” as I called the elderly oak, half a dozen young plants just awakening from their winter nap had to be dug up and set aside so the crane removing the

Still, I’m nothing if not a committed bugger when it comes to getting my way in a garden. After several hours of intense work with pick and shovel, all under the watchful eye of Boo Radley, the cat who suns himself in that particular part of the estate on winter days, the monstrous shrubs finally came out and I went in for a much-needed lunch break, muddy but triumphant.

“My goodness,” said my wife, stirring soup. “Who won the fight?”

You see, back in the “morning” of my gardening years — that’s five different gardens ago, by my count — Dame Wendy always found it highly amusing that I treated garden work like a full-contact sport, where blood of some sort was inevitably shed. In those days, I was so into clearing trees and rebuilding the ancient stone walls of a vanished 19th century homestead

SIMPLE LIFE

that once existed where our new post-and-beam house stood, I rarely noticed cuts, bruises or even gashes that needed a stitch or two. In those faraway days, all I needed was a long hot soak in our 6-foot Portuguese clawfoot tub, plus a couple cold Sam Adams beers to put things right.

These days, in the metaphorical “afternoon” of life, the cuts and bruises are fewer and the cure for sore muscles comes via a hot shower, a change of clothes and a nice afternoon nap with the dogs — though I have been known to wander outside just before the dinner guests arrive and get myself dirty all over again.

I think my sweet gardening obsession comes from a long and winding line of family farmers and gardeners, abetted by a childhood spent in several small towns of the South where I stayed outside from dawn till dusk, building forts in the woods, climbing trees, damming creeks and digging earthworks under the porch for my toy armies. More than once, I had to be hauled out from under the porch for church with my “good” Sunday pants streaked with red clay.

My mother, poor woman, nicknamed me “Nature Boy” and “Angel with a Filthy Face.” Worse than death was having her spit on a handkerchief to wipe a smudge of soil off my cheek as we entered the sanctuary.

Despite the damage from removing Big Red and heavy winter kill in both my side and backyard gardens this spring, I’m always nicely surprised by the resiliency of my suburban patch. One day, I’m looking at a bare perennial bed and the next,

45 CHESTERTOWN DRIVE – FOREST CREEK

Absolutely breathtaking, beautifully landscaped property with nearly one acre in the prestigious gated Community of Forest Creek. Charm and character abound throughout, with nothing spared in either design or quality of materials. Reclaimed heart pine, European stone flooring, Rutt cabinetry, Waterworks fixtures, gourmet kitchen, wood burning fireplace, luxurious Master suite, wine cellar and so much more.

$3,150,000

Lin Hutaff’s

PineHurst reaLty GrouP

dozens of green shoots are coming up. The daffodils never fail to rise nor the cherry trees bud. The hosta plants miraculously return. The dogwoods burst into bloom and the azaleas erupt in technicolor glory.

This annual choreography of springtime is a nice reminder that we human beings do the very same thing. Nobody escapes hard winters, actual or metaphorical. The weather of life beats everyone down at some point or another. But slowly and surely, we re-emerge as the days lengthen and the sun grows warmer. Soon the sheer abundance of blossom and green makes a body forget the cold months of unseen struggle to get here.

Though I am an unapologetic fan of winter — my best season for writing, thinking and planning new adventures in the garden — the happiest time for this incomplete gardener comes when I see what managed to survive the winter and has come back with new vigor and surging optimism. Such sights make my old fingers itch to get gloriously dirty.

This spring, there will probably be a new garden shed surrounded by ferns where Big Red once stood, and old Boo Radley will have a new perennial garden full of flowers in which to sun himself on cool summer mornings. I may even finally finish the cobblestone pathway I started last year.

The job in a garden, you see, is never done. And that’s just the way I like it. PS

Jim Dodson can be reached at jwdauthor@gmail.com.

4 AUGUSTA WAY – PINEHURST

Absolutely breathtaking property situated on its own private pond, stunningly beautiful. All brick, sprawling Estate with much to offer a growing active family. Casual elegance throughout, hardwood floors, architecturally detailed moldings, fireplaces, vintage wine cellar, hunt room, master bedroom and ensuite. An expansive patio overlooking terraced stacked stone gardens leading to the tranquil pond. Total privacy.

$1,850,000

45

CAMPBELL

ROAD – OLD TOWN

Nestled in the heart of Pinehurst on a quiet street in Old Town. Location is perfect for all things Pinehurst. All brick, corner lot with a circular driveway and a beautifully landscaped private back yard. The home is a stately residence with handsome double entry doors, hardwood floors in main areas and gorgeous kitchen.

30 BROOKHAVEN ROAD - PINEHURST

PINEHURST NO 2! Own a home on the WORLD FAMOUS NO 2 COURSE, hosted by Pinehurst for the 2024 US OPEN. SItuated at the end of the 4th green along with views of the 5th tee. Unique opportunity! Built by Breeden Construction, the home has an open floor plan with floor to ceiling windows and an expansive patio across the back of the home.

1655 FORT BRAGG RD – SOUTHERN PINES

New paved driveway. Fabulous completely updated house on 2 ½ acres with 6 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms and over 3900 square feet of living area. Inviting front porch, back patio, and attached 2 car garage plus 4 bay carport for RV, boat or 4 cars. Lots of windows fill the rooms with natural light. The recently updated eat-in kitchen with gas log fireplace overlooks the lush lawn and extensive flowering gardens. Extensive landscaping enhancements includes removal of large trees, additional raised bed gardens and complete back yard fencing.

$1,150,000

22 LAKE PINEHURST VILLAS – LAKE PINEHURST

NEW CONSTRUCTION! Fantastic 3 level HIGH END style, 4 BR, 4BA, open floor plan, 2 full kitchens, perfect for multigenerational vacation home. Sleek kitchen cabinetry, Zline appliances, wine cooler, fireplace, cedar closets, solid wood doors, blue tooth speakers. Both the main living area and the 3rd level Master ensuite have decks with views of the lake.

106 SAKONNET TRAIL - PINEHURST NO. 6

WATERFRONT! All brick Custom home, overlooking and surrounded by water, the 14th Hole of the premier PINEHURST NO 6 Golf Course. Walls of windows offer expansive views from the main areas on the first floor, as well as the handsomely finished lower level. Stunning home with PCC Membership for transfer. $975,000

55 BEULAH HILL ROAD - OLD TOWN

LOCATION, LOCATION, OLD TOWN! This 3 bedroom, 3 bath 2,541 sq ft home is situated on .64 acres, along with lush views and complete backyard privacy. An absolutely stunning move-in ready home. Natural light abounds with walls of windows throughout, vaulted ceilings, fireplace, and 3 decks. Beautiful hardwood floors grace the entrance, living room, dining room and kitchen. Granite counter tops in the kitchen, large Master Bedroom, ensuite with radiant heat flooring, a study with handsome built-ins and a large secluded Carolina room. The basement offers 500 sq ft for storage or a workshop, New HEAT PUMP in January 2024, six skylights replaced in 2020, exterior stained in 2022. A must see spectacular offering.

Seller to help pay down 2 points of interest rate with accepted offer. Seller will also give a $10,000 concession to buyer at Closing. NEW CONSTRUCTION, HIGH END, NY STYLE. The best materials and quality make this home spectacular starting with its 8” block firewall. Stunning detail throughout this 4BR, 4BA, 3248 square foot home. Open floor plan, gourmet kitchen, fireplace, wide deck with fabulous water views, and a Master ensuite with private deck also with water views.

2690 LONGLEAF DR SW - VILLAGE ACRES

New Construction. Pinehurst Country Club Property Privilege Membership Option. Open airy floor plan, bright, sunny kitchen with island, granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. First floor Master with ensuite and large walk-in closet. Walk-out basement with 9 ft plus ceilings $562,500

Filly & Colts at Whispering Woods

First Bank

First Capital Bank

FirstHealth of the Carolinas

Ricky Fisher

Coach Fitz

Five Points Pet Resort

Form V Chocolates

Forte Fitness

Four Branches Sporting Preserve

The Fresh Market

The Gamekeeper Restaurant

Gentleman’s Corner Pinehurst

Gerlal, LLC

GIV Mobile, Liz Zimmerman

Givens Performing Arts Center

Goldstein, Hayes and Lina, LLC

Golf Pride

Guidon Pediatric Therapy

Michael and Denise Gutschmit

Harper Jewel Boutique

Hasty Realty

Danny Hayes, House of Fish

Heidi Hats by Heidi Poage

Hickory Hill Pottery

Hollyfied Designs

Hollywood Wax Museum

Holman Distillery

Homewood Suites & Tempo by Hilton Raleigh Downtown

Lee Howell

Hugger Mugger Brewing

Imagine Youth Theater

Imagine Youth Theater Junior

Indigo Healing Arts LLC

The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston

Ironwood Cafe

J. McLaughlin

Jack Hadden Floral & Event Design

James Creek Cider House

Jarvis Estate

The Jefferson Inn

Johnny O’S Awards

Kaleideum

Karlie’s Cleaning Solutions

Karma Spa Lounge & Beauty Bar

Pam Keith

Keith Martindale Pottery

Kersey Valley, Inc.

Kirk Tours & Limousine

Za’Vette and William Kodzai

Kuhn Dental Associates

April Lamie

Lavender Home Market

Kathleen Leuck

Lil Bo Peep

Mary Wright Originals

Massage Envy

Judy McDonald

Allen and Jane McLaurin

Brian and Konni McMurray

McNeill’s Pottery

McRae Design

Jeff Medlin

MId Pines Inn & Golf Club

Midland Bistro

Stuart Mills and Helen Probst Mills

Misty Morning Ranch

Mollie Tobias Creative

Monkee’s of the Pines

Edward C. Monroe, DDS

Montana Knife Co.

Moore Dumplings, Hong Schulte

The Mosquito Authority

Museum of Life & Science

My Gym Sandhills

My Hot Lunchbox

Mystery Hill Inc.

NC Zoo

Nichols Propane

North Carolina Symphony

OBX Distilling

Olsen Orthodontics

One Eleven Main

Mary Elaine O’Neal

O’Neal Board of Trustees

Opulence of Southern Pines & Duxiana

O’Quinn Pottery

Oriental Trading

The Original Owens Pottery

Outback Steakhouse

Papa Blue Mixing and Music Studio, David Lussier

Pearsall Family

Peter Millar/G-Fore

Phil Morgan Pottery

Pinehurst Resort

Pinescones

Pollywog’s Play Pad

PrettyPolishedNC, Amanda Duffy

Publix

Purple Thistle Kitchen & Co.

Frank and Missy Quis

Rack Room Shoes

Rainbow Cycles

Raven Advisory, LLC / Gryphon Group Security Solutions

Realty One Group Liberty

Retriever Home Services

Reverie Cocktails

Chris and Jennifer Rhue

Rick’s Catering

Carrie and Kyle Simmons

Simplified Spaces, Ginger Monroe

Six H Asset Management

The Slabaugh Family

South Carolina Stingray Hockey

Southern Cuts Butcher Shop

Southern Grace Distilleries

Southern Pines Golf Club

Spiritus Systems

Splash & Dash

Spoonlickers

Sport Clips

Stone Theatres

Sunrise Theater

Sweet Dreams Mattresses, Dreams4all Foundation

Sweet Friday

Tabula Rose, Chrissy Holwerda

Talamore

Talbots

John and Kimberly Taws

Taylor Wine Shop

These Two Hands, Mark Keith

Total Wine & More

Christopher and Jennifer Tracy

Triangle Rock Club

Triple C Pottery

Turn & Burn Pottery

US National Whitewater Center

Uwharrie Crystalline Pottery

Van Scoyoc Periodontics & Implants

Vann Fine Art Portraits

Vascular Institute of the Pines

Village Pine Venue,

Sammy and Melissa McPeake

The Villager Deli

Vision Events

Aikya Waldo, Scent Society

Linda and Bobby Wallace

Stacey and Julie West

Wet ‘n Wild Emerald Pointe

Wheel of Fortune

Nellie and John Wilcox

Nancy Williamson

Wonder Works

Tiffany Wood

The Workshop Tavern

Laura and Dean Wrightson

Yarborough’s Ice Cream

Slabaugh South Southern Southern Southern Spiritus Splash Stone Sunrise Sweet Dreams4all Tabula John and Taylor These Total Wine Christopher Triangle Triple Turn & US National Uwharrie Van Scoyoc Vann Vascular Village

Sammy The Villager Aikya Linda Stacey Wet ‘n Wheel Nellie Nancy Wonder The Workshop Laura Yarborough’s

April is National Poetry Month. Follow us on Facebook & Instagram, where we will be posting a poem a day!

“COME SUNDAY” JAZZ

April 7 11:30 - 2pm

“Come Sunday” Jazz Series with the HornHeads’ Kenni Holmen on Saxophone

April 28 11:30 - 2pm

“Come Sunday” Jazz Brooke Alford and Ensemble

APRIL 13

Garden Festival and Plant Sale 10am - 4pm

Celebrate the coming of Spring with a stroll through our newly awakened gardens. Get the best deals around o n h ea l t h y plan t s for y o u r ow n ga rden. Food Trucks, fun activities, local vendors.

APRIL 14

Poetry by the Pond 4 - 5pm

Weymouth Center invites you to join

“Come Sunday” Jazz Series is sponsored by the NC Arts Council’s “Spark the Arts.” in conjunction with UNC Pembroke

Tickets start at $27.50 CASH BAR VIP TABLES AVAILABLE

The VIP table package includes your tickets for music, light hors d’oeuvres, and vouchers for six beverages of your choice from the bar

APRIL 16

James Boyd Book Club 2pm

The Collected Poems Sam Ragan us for a casual reading by acclaimed NC poets, some of whom are current Writers-in-Residence.

APRIL 24

Poetry Slam Jam! 5:30 - 6:30pm

PinePitch

Cash on the Hoof

The painted ponies that have been haunting the streets of Southern Pines for weeks now will be sold at auction, online, on Saturday, April 6. Proceeds benefit the Carolina Horse Park. For details on how to do what and when to do it, visit www.carolinahorsepark.com.

Bloomin’ Is Back

Jazz on the Grass

Bring a blanket, some folding chairs, a picnic basket and a roll of $20s to enjoy the cash bar and the Hornheads’ Kenny Holmes and his saxophone on Sunday, April 7, on the Boyd House grounds at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. For information go to www.weymouthcenter.org

Bipartisanship? You Bet

In 1948 a program to rebuild war-ravaged Europe was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by a Democratic president. What came to be known as The Marshall Plan, named after its architect, Secretary of State George C. Marshall (who, coincidentally, had become a Pinehurst resident by the time he was named recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953), lasted four years, allotting over $13 billion dollars (roughly $165 billion today) for the reconstruction effort. The Marshall Plan: Against the Odds, an award-winning PBS documentary, is scheduled to be shown at the Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines, on Monday, April 29, at 7 p.m. Executive producer Eric Christenson will introduce the film and take questions. Students of history, arise.

The Garden Club of the Sandhills will reprise its “Blooming Art” exhibition at the Campbell House Gallery, 482 E. Connecticut Avenue in Southern Pines on Saturday, April 27, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and on Sunday, April 28, from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Juxtaposing floral designs and the work of local artists, the 2024 exhibit will feature interpretations by members of the Southern Pines, Olmsted, Pinehurst, Linden and Sandhills garden clubs, as well as professional floral designers including Carol Dowd of Botanicals Fabulous Flowers and Orchids, Mary Furby of Thistle and Moon, and Bill McPhail of Always Flowers by Crenshaw. Tickets for the event are $20 and available at Sandhills Woman’s Exchange and DuneBerry in Pinehurst, and at J. McLaughlin and the Campbell House in Southern Pines. Tickets may also be purchased at www.ticketmesandhills.com and at the door.

One if by Land, Two if by Sunrise

The Sunrise Theater’s “The British Are Coming” April film series features Four Weddings and a Funeral on April 4, Hot Fuzz on April 11, A Fish Called Wanda on April 18, and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels on April 25. All shows begin at 7 p.m. at the Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Here’s to W.H. Auden and french fries up your nose.

Clenny CreekHeritage Day

The Moore County Historical Association will hold its annual Heritage Day showcasing the 1820s Bryant House and the 1760s McLendon Cabin on Saturday, April 20, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. There will be tours, farm petting areas, live music and food. The Bryant House is at 3361 Mt. Carmel Road, Carthage. For information call (910) 692-2051 or go to www.moorehistory.com.

Book It

The authors who will be appearing live and in full color during the month of April at The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., in Southern Pines, include Joy Callaway (All the Pretty Places) and Melissa Ferguson (How to Plot a Payback) on Thursday, April 11, at 6 p.m.; Tom Maxwell (A Really Strange and Wonderful Time — The Chapel Hill Music Scene 1989-1999) on Tuesday, April 16, at 6 p.m.; Kathleen DuVal (Native Nations: A Millennium in North America) on Wednesday, April 17, at 5 p.m.; and Jill McCorkle (Old Crimes) on Tuesday, April 23, at 5 p.m. There will also be a virtual chat with Becca Rothfield (All Things Are Too Small) on Monday, April 22, at 12 p.m.

A Rose Is a Rose

David Pike, the owner and president of Witherspoon Rose Culture, in Durham, will speak on the five essential steps in the care of roses in the Burlingame Room of the Ball Visitors Center, Sandhills Horticultural Gardens, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst, on Wednesday, April 24, at 10:30 a.m. Witherspoon is a third generation-owned company caring for some 80,000 rose bushes in over 2,600 gardens in North Carolina and Virginia. Sponsored by the Sandhills Horticultural Society, registration is required. The fee is $10 for non-members and $5 for members. For additional information go to www.sandhills.edu/ horticultural-gardens/upcoming-events.html.

Dance Like Everybody’s Watching

One of America’s most famous and dynamic modern dance ensembles, the Paul Taylor Dance Company, makes its debut performance on the stage at the Bradshaw Performing Art Center’s Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst, on Friday, April 19, at 7 p.m. Celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2024, the company has toured the world, performing in more than 600 cities in 66 countries, representing the United States at arts festivals in more than 40 countries, and touring throughout North America, South America, Asia and Europe. Now under the leadership of artistic director Michael Novak, they’ll perform three classic Paul Taylor works, “Airs,” “Syzygy” and “Promethean Fire.” For tickets and more information go to www.ticketmesandhills.com.

It Doesn’t Look a Day Over 450

Gather together and you may hear the story of the world’s oldest longleaf pine at its annual birthday bash on Saturday, April 20, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., beginning on the Weymouth Woods Boyd Tract meadow. There will be turpentine demonstrations, games, food trucks and an exhibition of a prescribed burn — not involving the food trucks, of course. For information visit www.partyforthepine.org.

PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF MOORE COUNTY HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, BY PAUL B. GOODE, COURTESY OF FRIENDS OF WEYMOUTH WOODS

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Aries

(March 21 – April 19)

Let’s get right to it: The new moon and total solar eclipse in Aries on April 8 may well clean your fiery little clock. If you’ve been dodging a difficult conversation or wavering on a big decision, ready or not, this cosmic punch will set things in motion for you. On the other hand, if you’ve been showing up for the hard work, trust that the universe is rearranging itself in your favor. But consider adding “patience” to your birthday wish list.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Use your context clues.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

There is no short straw.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Unsecured objects may be dislodged.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

You’re rage-cleaning again.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)

Look under the couch.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Ever tried binaural beats? Pink noise? Whale sounds?

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Repeat: Tending to my needs helps everyone.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

It’s time to flush the system.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Work from top to bottom.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Three words: peppermint, sage, ginger.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

It is decidedly so. PS

Zora Stellanova has been divining with tea leaves since Game of Thrones’ Starbucks cup mishap of 2019. While she’s not exactly a medium, she’s far from average. She lives in the N.C. foothills with her Sphynx cat, Lyla.

The Color of Music

Symphony of Secrets plucks at the heartstrings

By A nne Blythe

Brendan Slocumb, a composerturned-novelist with deep ties to North Carolina, hopes to one day be “the Stephen King of musical thrillers.” That’s what the author of Symphony of Secrets and The Violin Conspiracy told Katie Buzard, an Illinois Public Media arts writer, in a 2023 interview.

With two books in his repertoire from the past two years and a third due out in 2025, the gifted writer is well on pace to keep up with the “King of Horror,” whose first three books were published in a three-year span. Slocumb’s most recent, Symphony of Secrets, has been chosen as one of the 2024 selections for North Carolina Reads, a statewide book club created by N.C. Humanities, a nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, because of its exploration of “racial, social and gender equity and the history and culture of North Carolina.”

Delaney (a composer of Slocumb’s invention) for much of his life. He knows every piece, all the operas and songs to the most minute detail.

BY DAVID BICKLEY

The book is set mostly in New York but features visits to Oxford and the Granville County public library. Building on some of the same themes from his first book, Slocumb continues to explore the torment of institutional and everyday racism in his second as he toggles between the present day classical music world and the 1920s and ’30s in New York.

The novel opens with Frederic Delaney, a deflated early 20th century composer whose plummet from stardom was almost as rapid as his meteoric rise, going through his pre-concert ritual 16 hours before his death — Champagne poured into two glasses and a toast to a photograph of his as yet unidentified collaborator.

We are quickly introduced to professor Bern Hendricks, a musicologist at the University of Virginia who has been consumed with

Bern is deep into one composition, enjoying the layering of the alto and tenor saxes over the French horns — and the “French horns’ epic battle with the trombones, when the horns fought for supremacy, but the trombones would, in just seconds, kick their asses” — when he is summoned by the august and influential Delaney Foundation. It’s the organization that shaped Bern’s life from his early days in Milwaukee as a “poor bologna sandwich-eating kid with a beat-up French horn” to the respected academician he has become.

The foundation has uncovered what is believed to be the original draft of Red, a long-lost Delaney opera and an enigma of modern American music. It doesn’t take much coaxing to lure Bern from the Charlottesville campus to the foundation’s plush New York offices, even with the hush-hush of it all. His task is to authenticate Red, the final piece in Delaney’s Rings Quintet, a series of operas inspired by the yellow, blue, black,

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green and red rings of the Olympic flag.

OMNIVOROUS READER

What he discovers, though, with the help of Eboni Washington — a brilliant, sassy coding whiz from the Bronx — is a gripping history with the potential to destroy both the reputation of the composer Bern idolizes and the foundation interested in preserving an untarnished image of Delaney.

Central to the plot line is one of the most interesting characters of Slocumb’s Symphony: Josephine Reed, a neurodivergent Black woman from North Carolina with a gift for music. She arrives in New York in 1918 with a small, crumpled piece of paper in her gloved hand. We find out why she has traveled all that distance when she rounds a street corner and hears “a trombone, a clarinet and then a trumpet lifting itself up like a benediction, blessing the air with a run of notes that Josephine breathed in like the smell of the earth after a spring rain.”

She hears the sounds of the city — the subways, elevator doors, automobiles, the wind blowing through tunnels — in musical scales. “The wind whistled in a wavering B-flat up to an F-sharp,” Slocumb writes.

What further sets Josephine apart is how she sees music in colors: pinks, blues, greens, hints of brown, red and more. She has an innate vision and makes distinctive doodles on composition manuscripts that lead to the creation of masterpieces for

which she never was credited — Delaney was. It was a photograph of Josephine that Delaney saluted shortly before his death.

Reed becomes a captive in an industry that devalues her because of her skin color and uniqueness. Though she eventually sheds her fragility and finds the confidence to stand up for herself, Josephine’s life comes to a tragic end. With her death, the story of the true composer of the celebrated Delaney operas remains buried until Bern and Eboni find a shipping trunk in the basement of one of Josephine’s distant relatives, and the real source of the operatic sensation that won global acclaim is unearthed.

Slocumb, who grew up in Fayetteville and got a degree in music education from UNC Greensboro, plucks at the heartstrings of his readers throughout Symphony of Secrets. In this fast-paced and galvanizing musical thriller, he reminds us that what’s past is, indeed, prologue, that white supremacy, cultural appropriation and access barriers that existed in the 1920s persist. PS

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 many wonderful characters who make this state such an interesting place to live.

Beautifully Framed Art is the Centerpiece of your Home

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April Books

FICTION

Table for Two, by Amor Towles

Millions of Towles fans are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories based in New York City and a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood. The New York stories, most of which take place around the year 2000, consider the fateful consequences that can spring from brief encounters and the delicate mechanics of compromise that operate at the heart of modern marriagRules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September 1938 with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood” describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself — and others — in a noirish tale that takes readers through the movie sets, bungalows and dive bars of Los Angeles. Written with his signature wit, humor and sophistication, Table is another glittering addition to Towles’ canon of stylish and transporting fiction.

by Joy Callaway

It’s April 1913, and Belle Newbold hasn’t seen mountains for seven years, not since her father died in a mining accident and her mother married gasoline magnate Shipley Newbold. When her stepfather’s business acquaintance Henry Ford includes the family in one of his famous Vagabonds camping tours, the group is invited to tour the unfinished Grove Park Inn. Belle is unexpectedly thrust into a role researching and writing about the building of the inn — a construction the locals are calling The Eighth Wonder of the World. As Belle peels back the façade of the inn, the society she’s come to claim as her own and the truth of her heart, she begins to see that perhaps her part in Grove Park’s story isn’t a coincidence after all. Perhaps it is only by watching a wonder rise from ordinary hands and mountain stone that she can finally find the strength to piece together the longdestroyed path toward whom she was meant to be.

NONFICTION

The Early Days of ESPN, by Peter Fox

There is a forever dramatic moment on the evening of September 7, 1979, when Peter Fox and colleagues threw the switch to change sports television and maybe even sports forever. This book chronicles the curvy, crazy, giddy days of riding ESPN’s early rocket into business history. It’s about the people, the daydreams and the nightmares.

A Really Strange and Wonderful Time: The Chapel Hill Music Scene 1989-1999, by Tom Maxwell

North Carolina has always produced extraordinary music of every description, but the indie rock boom of the late ’80s and early ’90s brought the state fully into the public consciousness while the subsequent post-grunge free-for-all bestowed its greatest commercial successes. In addition to a slate of excellent indie bands like Superchunk, Archers of Loaf and Polvo, this was the decade when other North Carolina artists broke Billboard’s Top 200 and sold millions of records. A Really Strange and Wonderful Time features a representative cross section of what was being created in and around Chapel Hill between 1989 and 1999. It documents local notables like Ben Folds Five, Dillon Fence, Flat Duo Jets, Small, Southern Culture on the Skids, The Veldt and Whiskeytown.

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War, by Erik Larson

On Nov. 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds: Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding, and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor, Fort Sumter. Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter — a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals.

Welcomes Lindsey Williamson, LE

“It is such an honor to be part of the Plastics and Facial Plastic Surgery Team as their Licensed Esthetician. I truly love what I do and am passionate about helping others feel more confident in their own skin, relaxed, and rejuvenated when they leave. I would love the opportunity to take care of your skin care needs!” Facial

BOOKSHELF

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

The History Channel: This Day in History for Kids, by Dan Bova

What could be a more perfect gift for a teacher or a birthday than this fact-a-day encyclopedia? Packed with tiny tidbits of history, this is the gift that keeps on giving. (Ages 8 and up).

What’s Inside a Bird’s Nest?,

by Rachel Ignotofsky

Whether as a coffee table book or as a sitwith-me-read-together, this stunningly beautiful nature book is always the right choice. Lovers of the outdoors will find a treasure trove of information about eggs, nests, birds and the life cycles of our feathered friends. (Ages 4-10).

Frank and Bert: The One Where Bert Learns to Ride a Bike, by

Chris Naylor-Ballesteros

It just doesn’t get any cuter than Frank and Bert, and now Bert is learning to ride a bike. It may be a rocky road — with a few stops for supreme silliness — but these two friends will work it out. Usher in springtime with this fun read-together. (Ages 3-6).

Poemhood: Our Black Revival, by Amber McBride, Erica Martin and Taylor Byas

Just in time for National Poetry Month comes this stunning collection that includes contributions by poets both contemporary and canon. Audrey Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks and Phyllis Wheatley sit on pages beside Kwame Alexander, Ibi Zoboi and Ama Asantewa Diaka. Covering themes of pain and joy, frustration and community, this collection is an important addition to any poetry shelf. (Ages 10 and up).

If You Want to Ride a Horse, by Amy Novesky

Step on up. Hold the reins firmly but loosely. Settle in the saddle, spine to spine, and breathe. If you want to ride a horse, you have to be willing to fly. This lovely picture book anthem is a must for horse lovers of all ages. (Ages 3-8). PS

Compiled by Kimberly Daniels Taws and Angie Tally.

April in Augusta

Golf’s glorious pilgrimage

By Bill Fields

When the time comes when I don’t get to cover the Masters, I’m sure spending the first full week of April somewhere else will feel strange.

The 2024 edition will be my 39th trip to northeast Georgia in the spring. I’ve been every year starting in 1985 except for 2002, when I was writing a fun story about other places that share the name of the major championship’s host city and visited several of them during Masters week. Augusta, Iowa, featured the not-so-scenic Skunk River. A course in Augusta, Illinois, had greens the size of a throw rug. I observed a tournament of ordinary golfers on Sunday afternoon in Augusta, Kansas, which meant I missed Tiger Woods successfully defending his title. But I believe that having been on hand when Woods won his first green jacket, in 1997, and his fifth, in 2019, make up for that absence 22 years ago.

Given that it’s a week or so in Augusta on each assignment — I was credentialed as a photographer for the first 11 and a reporter for all the rest — that makes almost 10 months of my life there. Outside of locations where I’ve lived, I haven’t spent that much time anywhere else.

I regret not having taken a photo of the places I’ve laid my head down for those couple of hundred nights in Augusta. In the 1980s, we called the Knights Inn the “purple palace” for the color of the bedspreads and curtains of its “medieval themed” rooms. I spent more than a few nights in rental-house beds usually occupied by small children. A ceiling fan crashed to the floor in a den where we were watching a basketball game on TV. One home in an upscale neighborhood was overpopulated with ceramic wildlife and jungle-cat artwork. I had a Tiger painting on my bedroom wall, on tasteful velvet. In recent years, I’ve stayed in a clean but spartan (no closet, just hooks on the wall) hotel on the western outskirts of ever-growing Augusta.

Whatever the quirks of the temporary quarters for a particular Masters, you’re usually up early and back late. The work, whether with a camera or keyboard, has been rewarding.

I have wonderful memories of my years as a photographer, the satisfying images having supplanted the stress of trying to be in the right place at the right time, at an event where, unlike most golf tournaments, photojournalists must work outside the gallery ropes, finding shooting positions among the large galleries. In a large photo on my wall by friend and longtime colleague Stephen Szurlej — a wide angle of Augusta National’s 18th green as Jack Nicklaus finished his stunning 65 on Sunday in 1986, taken with a remote camera — there I am on the front row of spectators at the rear of the putting surface having scrambled into position on the historic afternoon. You can just see my left arm and hand steadying a telephoto lens and dark brown hair spilling out of a green visor. It was a long time ago.

If I had to guess how many words I’ve written in Augusta over the decades on a deadline of one sort or another, I venture it’s close to 100,000, the length of a novel. Sometimes those words came easily, but on other occasions it was like trying to two-putt from 60 feet on a slick, sloping surface — you’re happy when the task is completed.

I’m glad I got to experience those Masters of the 1980s and ’90s, before so many holes were lengthened in reaction to how far the ball was going thanks to inaction by those responsible for equipment regulation. Sure, things were more manicured than they had been in the 1930s, ’40s or ’50s, but the design was still largely as it had been for Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan and some of the other greats who walked the fairways in the mid-20th century or before. Now, the walks from green to tee are longer, less natural. Augusta itself has grown like the course, and it isn’t so sleepy the other 51 weeks a year.

Still, come Sunday evening, after a week when the flowers and shrubs have popped and memorable shots have been played, golf has been the language and currency of a city, and a champion full of pride is filling out a sport coat in that distinct shade of green, what has changed yields to what hasn’t. PS

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

Gateway to Mysteries

John Beerman deeply sees and paints the natural world

By liz A RoBeRts

Before John Beerman paints a landscape, he studies the place that’s caught his eye and picks a particular day and time. Maybe it’s a low-lit evening in fall, or maybe it’s a morning hour that only exists over a span of days in spring, when the angle and energy

of the sun provides a certain glow. And then he goes there, day after day, at that appointed hour, building his painting bit by bit until the moment is over — the hour has passed, the shape of light has changed, that bit of season is gone.

One spring morning not long ago, he arrived at a field at Chatwood, the Hillsborough estate owned at the time by his close friend, the author

White House from Studio Winter Morning with Figure, 2024. 15.75 x 17.75 in. Oil on canvas

PHOTOGRAPH BY LISSA GOTWALS

presents

INTRIGUE AND ELEGANCE featuring Maxwell Brown, violin

Saturday, April 27, 2024

• 7:30pm

Maestro David Michael Wolff leads The Carolina Philharmonic through a soul-stirring program of Brahms, Saint-Saëns and Sarasate, featuring the mesmerizing thirteenyear-old violinist prodigy Maxwell Brown.

Get tickets while they last!

www.carolinaphil.org (910) 687 0287

All concerts begin promptly at 7:30pm Owens Auditorium, BPAC, Sandhills Community College

The Carolina Philharmonic is a 501(c)3 non-profit and donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

ART OF THE STATE

Frances Mayes. Beerman arrived well in advance of his chosen hour, because it takes some time to set up his easel. He has a wonky system of clamps and slats to hold boards in place that will serve as a perch for both his canvas and his paint. His paint is of his own making, too: It’s a homemade egg tempera, created with pigment and egg yolk that he keeps in an airtight jar.

To accompany him on one of these plein air excursions is to realize that Beerman doesn’t just look like Monet at Giverny, with his straw hat, wooden easel, linen shirt and leather shoes, but that he sees like Monet: He views the natural world with the same kind of reverence. Beerman studies the landscape as if it had a soul, character and moods. He learns its nuanced beauty out of a deep respect — and only then does he paint what only he can see.

“I have always found the natural world a gateway to the greater mysteries and meanings of life,” Beerman says. At a time when the world faces so many problems, he says, “it’s important to see the beauty in this world. It is a healing source.”

Beerman has often ventured to notably beautiful places around the world to find this gateway. To Tuscany in springtime, coastal Maine in summer, the glowing shores of Normandy or the estuaries of South Carolina. Recently, he is choosing to stay closer to his Hillsborough home. “Sometimes I feel rebellious against going to those beautiful places and painting those beautiful sights,” he says. “My appreciation and love of the North Carolina landscape continues to grow. I feel we are so fortunate to be here.”

This year, so far, he has been painting the views from his studio windows. “I am struck by the idea that every day the sun moves across the sky, the seasons change,” says Beerman. “I’m looking at one house in five different versions throughout the day.”

The particular house on his easel now is a millhouse currently under renovation.

White House from Studio Winter Sunny Morning, 2024 15.75 x 17.75 in. Oil and acrylic on canvas

Winter Dusk from Studio Window 2024 11.75 x 11.75 in. Oil on linen.

Liverpool, Charlie B, Tribal, Clara Sunwoo, David Cline, Jude Connally, Gretchen Scott, Krazy Larry, Dizzy Lizzie, FDJ, and more.

He has a bird’s-eye view of the millhouse from his second-story studio, but it constantly evolves with the men working on it and the light that suffuses it. What Beerman is painting, though, isn’t “a house portrait,” but an attempt to capture “the luminosity of that particular light.” Also compelling him is the energy of the project at hand: “The guys working on the house are just as interesting to me,” he says, so he has begun to paint them into the scene, even though figures have rarely appeared in his landscapes.

The ability to revisit the subject of his fascination day after day as he completes a painting is a refreshing change, he says. Typically, he’d paint small oil sketches in the field, then bring them back to the studio to inspire and inform his large oil paintings. Here, he can continue to study parts of the house, the men and the project that elude him; he can “get more information” as he goes.

But if his proximity to his subject has changed, Beerman’s essential practice has not.

“I’ve always felt a little bit apart from the trend,” he says. “I love history. And one also needs to be in the world of this moment, I understand that. I’m inspired by other artists all the time, old ones and contemporary ones . . . Piero Della Francesca, he’s part of my community. Beverly McIver, she’s part of my community. One of the things I love about my job is that I get to have that conversation with these folks in my studio, and that feeds me.” Beerman’s work keeps company

Rooftop and Trees from Studio, Winter Sunny Morning, 2024 11.75 x 11.75 in. Oil on linen.

ART

with some of “these folks” and other greats in the permanent collections of some of the nation’s most prestigious museums as well, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and governor’s mansions in New York and North Carolina.

The paintings that have made his name include celebrated landscapes of New York’s Hudson River early in his career (he is a direct descendant of Henry Hudson, something he learned only after 25 years painting the river), of North Carolina in later years and of Tuscany, where he has spent stretches of time. They all share a sense of the sublime, a hyperreal unreality, a fascination with shape and volume, space and light, a restrained emphasis on color and an abiding spirituality.

“Edward Hopper said all he ever wanted to do was paint the sunlight on the side of a house,” Beerman says. “And I so concur with that. It’s as much about the light as it is about the subject.” A painting of the lighthouse at Nags Head includes only a looming fragment of that famous black-and-white tower, but it’s the glow of coastal sun Beerman has depicted on its surface that make it unmistakably what and where it is.

“With some paintings, I know what I want, and I try to achieve that. And other paintings start speaking back to me,” he says. Beerman’s talking about another painting, of a wide rolling ocean and a fisherman on a pier. As he painted it,

childhood memories of Pawleys Island, South Carolina, came into play: “In this old rowboat, we’d go over the waves. And in doing this painting, that came in . . . ahh, maybe that’s where I am. Sometimes it bubbles up from memories that are right below the conscious.”

The rhythm of the work he has underway now suits him well, he says: “I’ve traveled a good bit, but I’m a homebody. I like cooking on the weekends, and making big pots of this or that. I love being able to walk to town, or ride my bike to town.”

And he’s eager to stick close to his chosen subject. “I love the long shadows of the winter light,” he says. “I want to capture it before the leaves come back on the trees. I have that incentive: to get in what I can before the leaves come back.”

Whatever he’s painting, Beerman says he’s always trying to evolve: “One hopes you’re getting closer to what is your core thing, right? And I don’t want to get too abstract about it, but to me, that’s an artist’s job, to find their voice. I’m still in search of that. And at this time in my life, I feel more free to express what I want to express, and how I want to express it. I don’t feel too constrained.” PS

This is an excerpt from Art of the State: Celebrating the Art of North Carolina , published by UNC Press.

Dissecting a Cocktail

Shannon Mustipher’s Lorikeet

By tony CRoss

When Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails hit the stands five years ago, I had just become familiar with the book’s author, Shannon Mustipher. I found Shannon on Instagram and immediately became a fan. Her extensive knowledge of rum was highly impressive from the getgo, but it was how she was able to get the information across that lured me in. The relatability in her delivery is uncanny. I purchased Tiki right away and couldn’t take my eyes off it.

A few months after ordering her book, I hosted a cocktail class, and one of the drinks I taught was her Lorikeet cocktail. The crowd I was entertaining was a blast and up for anything, so I thought that this rye whiskey-based cocktail, Shannon’s spin on the Jungle Bird classic, would be a treat. The spice from the rye pairs nicely with the banana liqueur, cinnamon syrup and pineapple juice. What I love about this cocktail is how you can convert those who aren’t fans of whiskey while turning on whiskey fans who don’t do tiki.

Lorikeet

SPECIFICATIONS

2 ounces rye whiskey (preferably Rittenhouse)

1/2 ounce banana liqueur (preferably Giffard Banane du Brésil)

1/4 ounce cinnamon syrup

1 ounce fresh pineapple juice

3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice

6 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters

4 dashes Angostura bitters

GARNISH

Orange twist

Pineapple spears

EXECUTION

Combine all ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake hard for 5 seconds and strain into a Collins glass filled with crushed or pebble ice. Top with more ice and garnish with orange twist and 2 pineapple spears. PS

Tony Cross owns and operates Reverie Cocktails, a cocktail delivery service that delivers kegged cocktails for businesses to pour on tap — but once a bartender, always a bartender.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN GESSNER AND TONY CROSS

Hold the Sugar

The sweet, sweet world of cakes and frosting

American buttercream frosting is what happens when you leave your toddler unattended in the kitchen with access to baking supplies. Too harsh? Well, let’s look at the basic recipe together. To frost a medium-sized layer cake, you need about 2 cups of butter mixed with — brace yourselves — 2 whole pounds of powdered sugar. That’s two bags of sugar! I’m genuinely curious who the first baker was to not just contemplate this mélange, but actually go through with it. It would never cross my mind to use even one-half the amount of sugar this recipe calls for in pretty much anything — mainly because I like to taste flavors other than, you know, tooth-achingly sweet. In case you were wondering, American buttercream is practically what is referred to as “mock cream.” Enough said.

Now that I have trampled all over your family tradition, you might be wondering: What frosting could possibly be better than the one Nana has been making for over half a century? It depends on what you need it for — “better” being a relative and subjective term anyway. To make a stable cream takes a bit more effort, involving more ingredients and equipment (a double boiler, for example), which can be intimidating to some. Frankly, though, I have relied on various types of simple, fluffy, cream-based frostings or, more recently, cake creams made with silky, rich mascarpone, for all sorts of frosting endeavors, and for layering cakes. Mascarpone holds up wonderfully at room temperature. It wouldn’t be my first choice at a sweltering midsummer picnic, but then again, what doesn’t sweat, melt or disintegrate when Dante’s Inferno takes hold in North Carolina during July and August? Exactly.

While actual cake recipe options can be a bit overwhelming, I tend to stick with my top three tried and true choices, one of them being this grain- and gluten-free cake recipe that stays fresh and dewy for many days thanks to the addition of yogurt. I have adapted this recipe many times over but this lemony, sunshiny variation — my tribute to springtime — is a family favorite. Goodbye winter, hello spring!

Gluten Free Lemon Cake with Mascarpone Cream (Makes 10-12 servings)

Cake ingredients

4 eggs

3/4 cup full-fat milk

1/2 cup yogurt

1/2 cup coconut oil, melted and cooled

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

3 cups almond flour

1 cup tapioca flour

1/4 cup coconut flour

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

zest of one organic lemon

Frosting ingredients

16 ounces heavy whipping cream

1/2 to 3/4 cup powdered sugar, to taste

16 ounces mascarpone cheese

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon lemon zest (optional)

Preheat your oven to 350F and line the bottom of two 6-inch springform cake pans with parchment paper. Grease the sides, if needed. Add all wet ingredients to a large bowl and whisk until smooth. In a separate bowl, combine all dry ingredients, then add the entire contents to the wet ingredients. Stir to combine and divide the batter between the two springforms. Bake for about 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Allow cakes to fully cool down, release from springforms and divide each cake into two layers (four total) and set aside.

For the frosting, chill a large mixing bowl (metal or glass) for about 20 minutes. Add heavy whipping cream and powdered sugar and beat until stiff peaks form, then add mascarpone and continue whisking until smooth. Distribute cream evenly between layers and frost the outside of your cake. If the cream feels a little soft, chill for 10-20 minutes and resume working on your cake. PS

German native Rose Shewey is a food stylist and food photographer. To see more of her work visit her website, suessholz.com.

HORSES BENEFIT KIDS

MAY 4, 2024 • 3 - 8 PM

BBQ, BOURBON & BLUEGRASS DERBY DAY BARNRAISER

Join us on Saturday, May 4, for a Derby Day Watch Party event to benefit Weymouth’s free after school program, WEYMOUTH EQUESTRIANS, providing young people the opportunity to learn to ride and care for horses on Weymouth’s historic property. Day will include the Weymouth Equestrians Team Show Jumping Invitational.

Each team will be comprised of 2 professionals and 2 amateurs. Courses will be laid out in the meadow in front of the barn with tailgate spots. This event is spearheaded by Southern Pines’ own Olympic gold medalist and Technical Advisor/Chef d’Equipe for USEF Eventing, Robert Costello. Enjoy bourbon, BBQ and bluegrass at the Barn.

Compete in best hat and best dressed contests, prize & raffle for your win/place/show Derby picks, Wine, Beer, and Mint Julep toast with Kentucky Derby watch party, hope to see you there! weymouthcenter.org 555

Top of the World

The Cattleya maxima “Southern Pines Striata”

By JA son h ARPsteR

The American Orchid Society gave an Award of Merit to Cattleya maxima “Southern Pines Striata” on Oct. 15, 2022. This plant, along with one other that was recognized with a similar award in Colombia in 2014, shares the honor of being the finest example of flower quality for the species on record in the world. The judges commented on the extraordinary arrangement and spacing of the nine flowers along the inflorescence (the cluster of flowers aligned on a stem). They were also impressed by how the bright white blooms were enhanced by fuchsia striations on the petals, and the deep fuchsia veining and golden-yellow color on the lip. When viewed in sunlight, the crystalline texture makes these flowers sparkle. “Southern Pines Striata” was chosen as a clonal name to

highlight these properties as well as to honor and recognize the author’s hometown.

A species from Ecuador and Peru, Cattleya maxima was described in 1833. Maxima is Latin for “greatest,” which is an appropriate name for this orchid as it is one of the only Cattleyas capable of producing several large, well-arranged flowers on an inflorescence. Cattleya maxima can have flowers that are over 7 inches across, with a distinctive lip that has a yellow stripe with richly colored veining, making the blooms quite attractive and readily identifiable.

Another interesting trait of the species is the multitude of horticultural forms with colors ranging from lavender, dark purple (rubra), white (alba), white with a fuchsia lip (semi-alba), blue (coerulea), rose-pink (carnea) and concolor. Some of these forms can have additional veining on the petals, which is very desirable. PS

Jason Harpster is an accredited American Orchid Society judge and works at his family’s business, Central Security Systems. He hopes to share his collection of 1,500-plus orchids by starting a botanical garden in Southern Pines.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JEREMY LOSAW

By deBoRA h sA lomon

Climate change

Climate Confusion

It’s beginning to look a lot like spring, summer, fall

is a phrase fraught with enigma. Is the change beneficial? Difficult? Misinterpreted? Catastrophic? Earth Day, another relatively recent concept celebrates . . . what? Is it the “good earth” or an Earth dying under the blistering sun, washed away by powerful floodwaters?

The seasons have jumbled, with buds appearing during a January warm spell, then blown off the branches by an “unseasonable” winter hurricane.

Scary.

What’s also unsettling is that the last two generations — be they called X, Y or Z — have mixed memories of anticipating, or dreading, seasonal benchmarks.

Spring makes me want to remember, before the icons become a mirage.

Spring brings joy for itself, also for winter’s end. I grew up in damp, cold New York City, where children wore scratchy woolen leggings or cumbersome snowsuits because we walked to the park, or at least the subway station. No dashing from the front door to a waiting SUV that had been pre-warmed remotely. Hats

with earflaps were de rigueur, as were short-sleeved cotton undershirts. I begged and pleaded to ditch them the first warmish weekend. Nothing doing. Did I want to “catch my death of a cold”? No, but I tingle at the memory of standing close to the fire my Tar Heel granddaddy built in the grate, which toasted my front while my back froze. Gas fireplaces offer no such sensation.

Spring was “just around the corner” when the local bakery filled its counters with shamrock-shaped cookies iced in green. My mother was strict about sweets; I was allowed only one. I can still feel its buttery richness crumbling in my mouth.

After St. Paddy came, in immutable order, crocuses, daffodils, tulips and irises.

Years later, as an adult living in New England, I foraged for fiddlehead ferns, which grew by the swollen streams. You had to catch them just before they unfurled, usually late March. Sautéed in browned butter . . . quintessential spring freshness. I even put them on pizza.

Longer days meant spring asparagus, which I hated as a child, adored as an adult.

Finally, I was allowed to shed the undershirt, run outside to welcome the Good Humor ice cream truck, which commenced its rounds when school ended. No oratorio, no symphony rivaled its bells as the truck turned the corner, bringing raspberry popsicles called I-Sticks and bittersweet chocolate sundaes. June

OUT OF THE BLUE

meant big, dark purple Bing cherries from Washington State. Chilean cherries, now “in season” in November, disrupt, as do seedless green grapes, my circadian-like rhythm of produce.

Catching lightnin’ bugs in Mason jars and spitting watermelon seeds represented the best of summer. The worst was staying home to avoid polio. Thanks, Dr. Salk, for giving summer back to children.

Daffodils may be my favorite flower but autumn, not spring, is my favorite season. Toast it with apple cider, fresh from a cider mill that emits a fragrance unrivaled by French perfume. Not even Dom Perignon goes down easier. No technology rivals a yellow oak or crimson maple. Maybe the azure Caribbean, but that’s far from the front yard. Please, Mother Nature, don’t take autumn. Bad enough that Sept. 11, 2001, is also remembered for perfect weather — cool, crisp, dry, blinding sunshine. Please leave us the chilly starry nights and chrysanthemums. And football.

Football isn’t my favorite sport but for two glorious autumns my son was the star running back on his high school team. He is gone, but the crystal-clear air and bright leaves remind me. Through the sadness, I smile.

Polar bears don’t burn fossil fuel. The blame for climate change rests with humans. Its acceleration is truly frightening. I’m worried that when billions of cicadas emerge from the ground in a few weeks they will look around and burrow back down, like animals running for higher ground after sensing an approaching tsunami.

Just don’t whine we weren’t warned. Instead, bid farewell to fiddleheads, maple syrup, clover honey, daffodils, dogwood, strawberries, dandelions, hummingbirds, snowflakes, ducklings, apple cider and a thousand other simple pleasures brought forth from and supported by the good earth. Because like the woolly mammoth, once gone, never will they return. PS

For 27 years, Ashten’s has been dedicated to keeping all menus seasonal and reducing our carbon footprint by sourcing the best local and regional ingredients. At our Southern Pines farm-to-table restaurant, we proudly support artisanal and local growers, local breweries, cider houses, distilleries and potters. Join us for a true taste of our region.

Sandhills Photography Club: Solitude Competition

The Sandhills Photography Club meets the second Monday of each month at 7 p.m. in the theater of the Hannah Marie Bradshaw Activities Center of The O'Neal School at 330 Airport Road in Pinehurst. Visit www.sandhillsphotoclub.org.

“To A Tee Dryer Vents gave us a free estimate, which included complete photo evidence of the problem. Then, the technician arrived on time, performed the repairs, showed step by step photo evidence of the repairs, and cleaned up afterwards! 5 stars! “

Charles Y.

Tier 2, 1st Place: Pondering By Susan Bailey

Tier 2, 2nd Honorable Mention: I Alone By Jacques Wood

Tier 3, 1st Place: Missing By Gisela Danielson Tier 3, 3rd Place: Into the Unknown By Donna Ford

Harbingers of Spring

Return of the red-winged blackbirds

By susA n CA mPBell

For some, the sound of spring is the song of the American robin, our melodious and most familiar songster. But for me it has always been the sounds of red-winged blackbirds. As a beginning birdwatcher in New York State, migration begins a lot later than here in North Carolina. And some of the first returnees riding the warmer winds back north are red-wingeds. The “chuck”ing coming from the ribbons of birds as they passed overhead was the very first sign that winter was losing its grip. Not long after, I would be greeted by the first males giving their loud “konka-ree!” songs from the tallest of the cattails in the nearby marsh.

Red-wingeds get their name from the bright red epaulets on the wings of the adult males. These patches are actually set off on the black wing by a patch of yellow feathers just below. Otherwise the birds are completely dark. Females, not surprisingly, are quite drab. Their brownish, streaky appearance is superb camouflage against the tall grasses in the wet habitat that they tend to inhabit. Young birds are also entirely streaked, which makes them harder to spot as they learn their way in the world, well into their first winter.

These blackbirds can be found inland in our state year round. However, in the winter months, they gather in large flocks so

they are not widespread. Aggregations of thousands of birds can be found closer to the coast from late fall into early spring. But by now, they are returning to local bottomlands, lakes and ponds to breed. Red-wingeds are unusual in that they are a species that is polygynous. Males may have a harem of mates within the territory that they defend. Experienced males will pair with two or more females as early as mid-March. Females will create substantial nests in low vegetation by weaving wet leaves and shoots together to form a dense cup. They will add mud to the inside and then finally line it with fine grasses before laying two to four pale eggs with dark streaks.

Although blackbirds are generally known to feed on seeds, of both native and agricultural origins, in the summer they hunt mainly insects. They are known to probe at the base of aquatic plants with their slender bills and are very capable of prying insects from the stems. Young red-wingeds, like so many species, require lots of protein. It is the mother birds that forage for the family. Males spend most of their time defending their territories from high perches, singing throughout the day and fiercely chasing interlopers that venture too close.

As abundant as these birds may seem to be, their numbers have been declining for several decades. It is likely due to the continuing loss of wetland habitat throughout their range. Additionally, terrestrial predators are on the rise in areas where they breed — including cats. If you have red-wingeds in your neighborhood this spring, consider yourself lucky, and be sure to get out and enjoy their antics as well as that unmistakable song. PS

Susan Campbell would love to hear from you. Feel free to send questions or wildlife observations to susan@ncaves.com.

Spring in the Pines

A place where wonders abound

Alongleaf pine forest on a warm spring day is a magical place.

Bright sunlight dances across clumps of wiregrass, setting the forest floor ablaze with golden hues. The sweet, trilling whistles of a Bachman’s sparrow carry across warm southerly breezes heavy with the scent of pine. Redcockaded woodpeckers flit from tree to tree, searching for grubs. The loud, harsh “keeer-r-r-r” of a soaring red-tailed hawk echoes from high above.

Wildflowers bloom. Dwarf iris, cloaked in petals of vivid yellow and violet blue, provide wonder to those that look carefully. Patches of sandhill lupine, replete with hairy leaves and pale blue flowers, attract bees and rare butterflies. Pineland phlox add a splash of pink to soil blackened by a recent fire.

On sloping hills of sand, underlain with moisture-retaining clay soil, yellow pitcher plants stretch up toward a Carolina blue sky. Looking like something straight out of a James Cameron movie, pitcher plants are the most spectacular floral wonders of the Sandhills. Standing 4 feet tall,

stoRy A nd P hotogRAPhs By todd P usseR

Fox Squirrel

Longleaf Scenic Sandhills Gamelands

NATURALIST

their modified trumpet-shaped leaves hint at an extraordinary lifestyle. The pitchers are carnivores. Releasing a scent of sweet-smelling nectar, a pitcher plant lures insects from near and far to its cavernous maw. As insects crawl down the pitcher’s funnel, fine hairs trap them inside. The insects eventually fall into a pool of rainwater that has accumulated deep inside. There, digestive enzymes slowly break the insects down, providing life-sustaining nutrients to the pitcher plant.

At the base of a longleaf pine, a fox squirrel, the size of a house cat, stands at attention — its white paws and ears contrasting sharply with a fur coat the color of midnight. When it comes to ripping open green longleaf pine cones to reach the nutrient-rich seeds inside, size matters. As the largest tree squirrel in North America, fox squirrels are the only ones capable of that feat.

Next to a fallen tree, beneath a clump of wiregrass, a northern pine snake lies quietly coiled. As beautiful as it is rare, the powerful, nonvenomous constrictor is among the state’s largest snakes. Feeding on abundant small mammals, the black and white serpent spends as much time underground as it does above.

Among the rolling hills of sand, a patchwork of shallow, blackwater streams meanders across the landscape. Beneath water stained the color of strong tea, unique and endemic fish swim. Colorful pinewoods darters, just 3 inches long, hunt the shallows for aquatic insect larvae. A male sandhills chub excavates a nest in the sandy substrate in hopes of enticing a female to deposit her eggs. Where currents have deposited piles of leaves along the bottom, Sandhills spiny crayfish lurk.

As dusk approaches, in dense tangles of vegetation bordering the

Pine Barrens Treefrog at Sunset Dwarf Iris

NATURALIST

streams, the calls of pine barrens tree frogs resonate. Red bats take to the air to hunt moths while the incessant calls of a chuckwill’s-widow echo through the pines.

Indeed, a longleaf pine forest is a repository of biodiversity. Unfortunately, intact, healthy longleaf pine forests are just as rare as many of the animals that call them home.

At the time of European colonization of the North American continent, majestic longleaf pine forests stretched nearly unbroken from Norfolk, Virginia, to Florida and all along the Gulf Coast to East Texas — an estimated 90 million acres in total. Today, less than 3 percent remains, most of which are just scattered trees. The vast forests have been converted to agricultural fields, housing developments and strip malls. The longleaf pine forest is among the continent’s most threatened ecosystems.

Fortunately, in the North Carolina Sandhills, there still are a few places where it is possible to see a healthy, functioning longleaf pine forest. Weymouth Woods Nature Preserve, as well as the nearby Calloway Forest Preserve, provide opportunities to explore and hike among mature longleaf. The entirety of the world’s largest military base, Fort Liberty, is longleaf pine forest — as is the 63,000-acre Sandhills Gamelands, managed by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. These tracts of

land are precious, and should be enjoyed and celebrated at every opportunity.

To step into a healthy longleaf pine forest on a warm spring day is like stepping back in time, where nature is alive and thriving, unencumbered by the excesses of humanity.

Birds sing. Flowers bloom. A warm wind blows. And fox squirrels play. PS

Naturalist and photographer Todd Pusser grew up in Eagle Springs. He works to document the extraordinary diversity of life both near and far. His images can be found at www.ToddPusser.com.

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Yellow Pitcher Plants

A Love Affair

Payne and Pinehurst

By lee PACe

Another U.S. Open in the offing.

And this one just so happens to roll around one neat quarter-century after one of the most famous strokes in Open history — Payne Stewart’s 20-foot putt on the final green to edge Phil Mickelson by a shot in June 1999. Three months later, Stewart was gone, the victim of a mysterious airplane malfunction that took his life and five others on a planned flight from Orlando to Dallas.

The “Payne Pose” statue sits today by the 18th green of No. 2 and is the most photographed visual in Moore County. Stewart’s spirit remains strong in other corners of town, among them at the Pine Crest Inn.

Stewart was just out of Southern Methodist University in the summer of 1979 and was preparing to compete for his PGA Tour playing privileges in the tour’s twice-a-year Qualifying School, the next one to be held in November at Waterwood National Country Club near Houston. He traveled to Pinehurst in midSeptember to enter a series of four mini-tour events run by the National Golfers Association. Seventy-two hole tournaments were scheduled for Whispering Pines, Seven Lakes, Pinehurst No. 4 and Hyland Hills. The players put up their own money and competed for purses between $30,000 and $40,000 per tournament. A handful of players stayed at the Pine Crest Inn, where proprietor Bob Barrett gave them a generous price on room and board.

if he didn’t get through the upcoming Tour Q-School (he did, in fact, miss qualifying and go to Asia), and Barrett didn’t figure the Pine Crest needed exposure in the Far East. And $500 in 1979 was a lot of money.

“What an investment that would have been, huh?” Barrett says ruefully.

“It was like golf camp for a month,” remembers Peter Barrett, one of Bob’s two sons. “Payne was the funny guy of the bunch. He had control of the whole group. There were a lot of different personalities there. They were on a mission. They all had their eyes on the big-time, and they were playing with their own money. They were pretty serious, but they still had some fun.”

After the four tournaments — two won by Scott Hoch, one by Kenny Knox and one by Mike Glennon — Stewart packed up his car and was saying goodbye to Barrett in the parking lot. There he offered a marketing deal to Barrett: Stewart would put the Pine Crest’s name and logo on his bag for $500 a year. Barrett said he’d pass. Stewart had talked about a potential trip to Asia

Stewart became smitten that fall with the personality of the Pine Crest, its homey feel and the ebullience of “Mr. B’s Old South Bar,” a renowned watering hole. Whenever the PGA Tour returned to Pinehurst over the years — for the Hall of Fame Classics in the early 1980s or the Tour Championships of the early 1990s — Stewart returned to the Pine Crest, if not to bed down at least to eat and drink. In the early 1990s, he negotiated his NFL clothing deal over dinner in the Crystal Room, an adjunct of the main dining room. He sang and hung out with his buddies and bet on NFL football in the bar. He also ate a lot of banana cream pie. Marie Hartsell, a cook in the inn’s kitchen for some 35 years until her retirement in 2010, prepared one of the inn’s signature desserts, and whenever Stewart visited over the years, he’d dive into a banana cream pie.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN GESSNER

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GOLFTOWN JOURNAL

“He’d eat a whole pie by himself,” says Barrett.

Stewart rented a house on Pinehurst No. 6 during the 1999 Open but visited the Pine Crest early in the week to see his old friends. He signed his name in huge script letters on the wallpaper of the men’s rest room (an iteration of that signature is framed and hangs in the lobby today). Stewart also told Barrett he was playing quite well.

“Pete, I think I can win this thing,” he said.

Stewart spent a few minutes that evening talking to Patrick Barrett, the 9-yearold son of Bob Barrett Jr., also a son of the longtime owner of the inn. Patrick had shrugged off his introduction to golf two years earlier, primarily because it had been forced upon him by his grandfather. But now that the youngster was making his own connection to the game, golf seemed like something that might be fun to pursue. Stewart made quite an impression.

“They connected because Payne sat down, looked Patrick in the eye and made him feel special,” says Andy Hofmann, the boy’s mother. “Patrick spent the entire Open week following Stewart.”

Patrick is now 34 years old. After graduating from the University of North Carolina and playing on the Tar Heel golf team, he entered medical school and today is a surgical resident at a hospital in Seattle. Like all of us who were there somewhere along the 18th hole on June 20, 1999, he marvels that blink — 25 years are gone.

“Grandpa knew a lot of players,” Patrick says. “He knew them before they were famous because they’d stayed at the Pine Crest. The only golfers I knew then were Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus. He called Payne over and introduced me. Grandpa said, ‘This guy is going to win it.’ Payne shrugged it off and said good to meet you, made a fuss over me. It was kind of embarrassing thinking back on it. I didn’t even stand up.

“He signed a piece of paper for me. It said, ‘To Patrick, keep swinging, Payne Stewart.’ I’ve got that piece of paper somewhere. Now all of a sudden golf was cool. My mom gave me lunch money and

An Independent, Interdenominational Church

An Independent, Interdenominational Church

An Independent, Interdenominational Church

Welcoming Christians of All Denominations

Welcoming Christians of All Denominations

Welcoming Christians of Al Denominations

Unifying all Christians through the Word of God

Unifying all Christians through the Word of God

Unifying all Christians through the Word of God

Three Distinct Sunday Worship Services

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A healthy future begins with proper nutrition

Communion Service

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8:15am 9:30am 11:00am 8:15am 9:30am Communion Service

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GOLFTOWN JOURNAL

turned me loose every day that week.

“I was so short, I couldn’t see much of the action, but I could feel the energy. I was more interested in autographs and celebrities than the golf. But that week I decided I wanted to play golf, to learn the game. I was absolutely golf-obsessed from then on out. I started to play with a real purpose.”

The dominoes fell that week for Stewart. He was a “feel player” competing on a golf course that rewarded rightbrained tendencies. He’d missed the cut at Memphis the week before and got to Pinehurst five days early to map out his game plan. He was playing clubs and a ball suited to his skills after a half-decade of chasing endorsements with ill-fitted implements. He had matured from his younger, petulant ways, losing on the final day of the Open at the Olympic Club in 1998 with grace and composure.

And Stewart was confident and comfortable in Pinehurst.

He made eye contact and smiled at the locals in the grocery store. He joked with the ladies at check-in on Sunday when asking for scissors to cut off the sleeves of his rain jacket (starting a new fashion trend, by the way). He had a heartfelt reunion with old friend and instructor Harvie Ward before he took off for the final round in his navy plus-fours, red/ navy striped shirt, navy tam, and white socks and shoes.

“I think it’s safe to say I love Pinehurst,” Stewart said when it was over. “This is a special place. It was a perfect way to win. I think everyone in the field will attest to how great No. 2 is and what a special place this is. To win here means a lot to me. This place is a gem. It’s beautiful. It’s phenomenal. We never see a golf course like this on the tour. It’s a refreshing change of pace.”

Needless to say, the echoes from ’99 will reverberate through the pines over the coming months. PS

Author Lee Pace chronicled Payne Stewart’s magical week in 1999 in his book The Spirit of Pinehurst , published in 2004.

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April ����

Penumbra

My father taught me a civil trick. If you get caught during a rainstorm at a downtown restaurant, just ask the bartender if someone left a black umbrella. They will present you with a cardboard box chock full of them. It is not a lie: Someone really has left behind each one. You have left many. Part of the loophole is to make sure to give that umbrella to someone who needs it, or at the very least, leave it in a shady vestibule, on the coat rack next to that sad windbreaker. Otherwise it doesn’t count. Now they could call this all a life hack, but I consider that lacking. The process of inheritance is about so much more than getting what you need.

— Maura Way

Maura Way’s second collection of poetry, Mummery, was published in November 2023 by Press 53.

The Legend Next Door

Three acclaimed poets, Stephen E. Smith, Shelby Stephenson and Joseph Bathanti, share their recollections of St. Andrews University’s Ronald Bayes, a driving force in North Carolina’s literary world

Making Magic in the Hinterland

By Stephen e. Smith

The sun is at our backs as we turn off U.S. 1 onto 15-501 South toward Laurinburg, ticking away the 25.2 miles to the least likely poetry mecca in America — the tiny St. Andrews College campus. It’s January 15, 1980, and my brother-in-poetic-crime, future N.C. Poet Laureate Shelby Stephenson, and I are on our way to hear Black Mountain poet Joel Oppenheimer, poetry editor for The Village Voice, a news and culture publication known for being the country’s first alternative newsweekly, give a reading from his new St. Andrews Press book, Names, Dates, & Places.

Trust me: Laurinburg, North Carolina, for all its attributes, is a far, far distance, socially and intellectually, from Greenwich Village, New York. So how is it that a significant 20th century American poet was reading at what was then called St. Andrews College? Maybe there was mystery and magic at the heart of it. But if you adhere to the Great Man Theory, the answer is, in a literary sense, simple: Ron Bayes.

I met Ron in July 1972 at a meeting of the North Carolina Writers Conference in Wilmington. I happened into the luncheon meeting where he was holding forth on his literary plans for St. Andrews College — a creative writing major, a national literary magazine (The St. Andrews Review), a student literary magazine (Cairn), a literary press that would publish 15 books a year, a reading series that would, if his plans came to fruition, be the envy of every college and university in the state, a visiting artist program, weekly student poetry readings, etc. It seemed overly ambitious for a newly cobbled-together college in the hinterland, but Ron was emphatic. He would do it all.

The assembled writers, many of whom were college professors who organized readings and edited literary magazines, were skeptical. They understood the time and effort necessary to accomplish the litany of projects Ron enumerated. He’d have to contend with the college bureaucracy, academic politics, the scarcity of funding, department jealousy and infighting, and an underlying lack of interest from students and faculty. The barriers were formidable. And Ron would have to carry out his plans while teaching his classes and writing and publishing his own work. It seemed an impossible undertaking.

More than 50 years later, it’s safe to say that Ron Bayes delivered on every promise: America’s finest poets visited the

St. Andrews campus, gave readings, and conducted workshops. Literary magazines flourished. Student readings were held every Thursday night, and chapbooks of their work were published. Writers of national and regional import had their books published by St. Andrews Press.

For at least 20 years, Shelby Stephenson and I attended the readings, and we can testify that the St. Andrews campus was a hotbed of literary enthusiasm. Where else in North Carolina could you have dinner with James Dickey, James Laughlin or Robert Bly in a mediocre Chinese restaurant?

On that January night in 1980, I had a lengthy conversation with Joel Oppenheimer, and we became fast friends, corresponding until he died in 1988. I learned all I needed to know about the Black Mountain School of Poetry. On another memorable occasion, Robert Creeley, an unassuming and generous Black Mountain devotee, and I talked for hours at dinner at one of Laurinburg’s restaurants. I could list a hundred such evenings fraught with enlightenment if time and space permitted. The St. Andrews poetry scene was vibrant and enticing. I was never disappointed by an evening listening to aspiring poets read their creations on the tiny campus tucked away in languid Laurinburg.

Alas, all things pass away, and so it was with the St. Andrews poetry scene. Literary magazines moved online, poetry readings became less popular with students, publishing and distributing books proved prohibitive, and the college’s institutional focus shifted to more financially rewarding pursuits. Shortly before he retired, Ron, who remained steadfastly enthusiastic about his teaching, told me that his students stared out the window and yawned, their interests attracted by more practical pursuits. The college’s financial foundation was always tenuous, and the emphasis on the academic experience adapted to ensure institutional survival. But none of these inevitable transformations detract from Ron’s achievement. He was a leader in North Carolina’s writing community for over 50 years, and a poet of national reputation who taught and inspired thousands of students.

A few years ago, I pulled into a parking lot on the Delmarva Peninsula behind an old clunker with a St. Andrews parking sticker peeling off the back bumper. I asked the middle-aged driver if he knew Ron Bayes. He beamed and nodded. “That guy changed my life,” he said. “My world is a lot more interesting because I had Ron Bayes as a teacher and mentor.”

Ron would have been pleased.

Lyrical Earthliness

By ShelBy StephenSon

Ronald H. Bayes wooed and wowed the universe with poetry and his love for the arts; moreover, his compassion for helping others get into print still seems miraculous to me; plus, he created the atmosphere for hundreds of writers to read at the St. Andrews Forum, which he also founded. The roll of writers seems endless: James Laughlin, Robert Bly, Betty Adcock, Julie Suk, Stephen Smith, Joseph Bathanti, Tom Wolfe, Mary de Rachewiltz, Agnes McDonald, Shirley Moody, Margaret Baddour, Ann Deagon, Jonathan Williams, Jeffery Beam, Guy Owen, Paul Jones, Tom Hawkins, Anna Wooten, Marty Silverthorne, Fred Chappell, Terry Smith, Joel Oppenheimer, Robert Creeley, Lenard Moore, Glenna Luschei, Tom Patterson and on and on, even as he was writing his own poems seemingly right out of worlds of conversations.

What a beautiful life! To create situations for himself and others to find themselves in the Arts!

Fred Chappell: “Few poets have written so broadly and intensively of our modern culture as Ronald Bayes has done.” Betty Adcock: “Ron Bayes and his work have been our connection to schools of thought and poetry outside the South, as far away as Japan. A chief mentor and publisher of poets in North Carolina for decades, he is one of our treasures.” North Carolina’s current poet laureate, Jaki Shelton Green, aptly describes the Bayesian predicament: “A perpetual feverish stimulation navigating extreme terrain and a resounding fate of the senses.”

Ronald H. Bayes’ The Collected Poems (St. Andrews University Press, 2015) teems with the politics of resonant symbols. The Bayesian artistry presents, “in minutest detail, a poignant and intense emotional lingering, lyrical as hollyhocks forever blooming,” Fred Chappell has written, adding, “We owe him ebullient thanks.”

Here are some of the titles of books Ronald H. Bayes has written: Dust and Desire; History of the Turtle; The Casketmaker; Porpoise; King of August; Tokyo Annex; A Beast in View; Guises: A Laurinburg Litany; Fram.

I cannot overstate the fact that Ronald H. Bayes has been outfront, always making new worlds for word-lovers. Every entry in The Collected Poems shows that he is on his own, always experimental, carrying on out of his love of Black Mountain writers and artists and, especially, Ezra Pound. All the while Bayes gives his own beautifully aesthetic songs of emotions moving freely in and out of the music of his lines. In Fram, for example, he presents his life as a boy in Umapine, Oregon. Bayes’ vision dazzles word-games and pun-puns. Inner experiences seem outer; yet what appears beyond the page sings with feeling. “Home”: “I think / think of the years and long light and the end of light.” The syllables buoy longing. Images keep moving: “A matter of toward. / A matter of affirmative through.”

Readers enjoy entering his lines. Joseph Bathanti has written: Ronald H. Bayes “has given his life to the state of North Carolina, to the state of poetry in North Carolina, and made it the state of poetry.”

Patron Saint of Poetry

By JoSeph Bathanti

No one of Ron Bayes’ stature — as poet, critic, playwright, renowned iconic professor for years and years at, then, St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg — was more selfless, more over-the-top generous, or turned on more people to poetry. He was beloved by his students, beloved by anyone with whom he crossed paths, including cats and dogs — cats especially — whom he adored.

Ron never married, and he never had his own blood-children, but the legions of St. Andrews student-poets he launched over his long, sterling career remain his children; he loved them passionately without stint.

Hundreds of testimonials to Ron from former students have been recorded, and here’s just one sampling from Tom Patterson, St. Andrews, class of 1974, an illustrious North Carolina writer, art critic, and renowned authority on Outsider Art: “Ron Bayes changed my life. Had it not been for him I would not have attended St. Andrews, and wouldn’t have become the kind of writer I am. Had it not been for Ron, in fact, I might not have become a writer at all.” Neal Bushoven, Ron’s great friend and another iconic St. Andrews professor, once declared: “At one point, Ron Bayes had over half of the campus writing poetry.”

But it was not just St. Andrews students and faculty who sat at Ron’s bronzed feet. More than anyone before him, or after him, he democratized poetry across the state of North Carolina. Ron made writing poetry, for so many of us, not only the thing to do, but the only thing to do. Through his visionary and blazing work ethic — and the fact that he seemed to know every living writer on the planet — Ron single-handedly created in Laurinburg, N.C., of all places, on the campus of St. Andrews, the crosshairs, the nexus, the very heart of poetry in our fair state.

In 1969, he founded not only St. Andrews Press, but also the college’s Writers Forum. For 41 years, every blessed Thursday evening, without fail, he hosted readings on campus by poets, fiction writers, essayists, playwrights, you-name-it. Imagine: 41 years — like DiMaggio’s streak of hitting safely in 56 straight games. A record that will never be broken.

Yes, very famous writers arrived — Carolyn Kizer, Reynolds Price, Romulus Linney, James Dickey, Diane Wakoski, Tom Wolfe, Dana Gioia, Richard Blanco. The list of luminaries who read at The Writers Forum is mind-blowing. Ron was also intimates with Black Mountain College legends like Robert Creeley, Jonathan Williams, Joel Oppenheimer, Charles Olson, Ed Dorn, Fielding Dawson — and he hauled them to campus as well. But there were also student and fledgling poets, poets from the community, voices seldom heard, voices yearning to be heard, who also, in many cases, were launched at the St. Andrews Writers Forum. He evangelized so many of us.

I remember receiving my invitation from Ron to read in The Writers Forum in 1985. I nearly fainted — not only that I had been invited to read at the premier haven for writers in North Carolina, but that Ron Bayes (everyone with a stake in poetry in North Carolina knew who that was) — had written to me and had

signed his very name on the postcard-invitation. A postcard I still have and cherish.

I also want to be very clear: Ronald Homer Bayes was a giant among North Carolina writers, as well as writers well beyond our state’s borders. He was very much celebrated and known in Japan, especially. In fact, he was great friends with Yukio Mishima, one of the most significant writers of the 20th century, considered again and again for the Nobel Prize for Literature during the 1960s. Ron is the author of 14 groundbreaking, often avant-garde and always ahead of their time volumes of poetry; two books of prose; a monograph of literary criticism, John Reed and the Limits of Idealism; as well as two works for the stage, An Evening with Ezra Pound and An Evening with William Carlos Williams.

What’s more, I have never known another with more extemporaneous facility in spinning the English language into the most voluptuous and surprising locutions at a whim. He quoted verbatim, down to the syllable, Pound and Auden, Kipling and Yeats. He was powerfully funny, gloriously irreverent, charismatic, and notoriously philanthropic. Ron always managed to surreptitiously scoop up the check after those Thursday night feasts — near-bacchanals — at Fong’s and New China before the wild motorcade to campus for the ritual Thursday night readings.

But let me circle back to Ron’s students and close on that note: how he loved them, how they worshipped him. The holy man at St. Andrews, he handed them fire. He remains, to my mind, North Carolina’s patron saint of poetry. On that sacred note — and not a whit of blasphemy intended from this acolyte of St. Ron’s — here’s an excerpt from the penultimate email I received from him: “I think from the middle of Nov. til Xmas week was the most satisfying and pleasant time ever. 9 former students flew out to Asheville for a reunion at Black Mt. They are now all in their late 40’s and early 50’s and came from as far away as Chicago, NY, and Atlanta. All that time back ! and as a highlight of the first of two nights, they gave a reading from my works they had put together. I was the audience of one. It was too sweet and flattering to tear up. I just smiled.” PS

Apprentice House Press will publish Stephen Smith’s memoir The Year We Danced in May. Shelby Stephenson was North Carolina’s Poet Laureate 2015-18; his current books are Cow Mire Songs and Country. Joseph Bathanti was North Carolina’s Poet Laureate 2012-2014 and is the author of the recent books, Light at the Seam and The Act of Contrition & Other Stories.

Philadelphia Airport

Rather tired at the Philadelphia Airport

And the plane to board

An hour and three coffees away.

What irony that at five-thirty a.m.

I am at last moved by emotion (It has been a long time)

When the unavoidable, continual soft-music loudspeaker Romps a certain German polka.

And I remember another airport, Other years,

And I who have never wished to go back before Wish to go back.

But one never can in time

(And does space matter much?).

Want some irony?

In Germany it was (you weren’t there)

And I loved you: Christ! With what passion of intensity, Jealous of whomever you were with

With the dawn pink and blue and grey and The trees mushrooms clumping

Like wanting Breughel

To red-in country rompers

— Or maybe someone good at satyrs—

And I remember the other airport

I remember a polka

And that I loved you.

Now each in maze muddled and oh-so-adjusting

And we no longer love . . . why kid? And I am not

Even jealous in wild imaginings.

A few people

A few more people

Now we move . . . you move . . . I move . . . from progress

To progress

Unlove to unlove

Anticipating only departures.

— Ronald Bayes

buzzing with the bees

How Midnight Supply came to “bee”

By Jenna Biter • photographS By John geSSner

OPEN

glows red on the window near another sign advertising local honey for sale.

In the space between the two, what resembles a stack of wooden bankers boxes, or maybe a tall wooden filing cabinet, can be seen through the glass, sitting near the front of the country store. It’s quiet on the outside but, inside, it’s a veritable — sorry — beehive of activity.

The peculiar woody contraption won’t be there long.

The next customer will push through the shop’s happy honey-yellow door, tender payment at the counter, and in exchange, haul the thing away to fill it with the humming of a colony of tens of thousands of honeybees.

That’s because, as you might have figured, the thing isn’t a pile of hand-carved bankers boxes or a filing cabinet hewn from pine. It’s a beehive, one of the many that Erin and Calvin Terry Jr. make and sell at Midnight Bee Supply, their beekeeping storefront/woodshop on East Maple Street, in Vass.

“A bee box is like a mayonnaise jar,” Calvin says. “It’s a mayonnaise jar because it’s got mayonnaise in it.” He pauses. “If that same jar’s got jelly in it . . . ”

Erin joins in, as if they’d rehearsed the line 100 times like Abbott and Costello, Wheeler and Woolsey, Bert and Ernie, “ . . . it’s a jelly jar.

“So a box is a box, but when you fill it with bees, it’s a bee box,” Erin says, delivering the punchline.

The couple’s 1-year-old daughter, Maggie, babbles approvingly from her Pack ’n Play behind Mom’s chair. An enlarged printout of a Google review hangs above her on the office wall. “The store smells wonderful, like fresh cut wood,” it reads. From a room over, the buzzing of saws adds an exclamation point.

Midnight Bee Supply has been operating out of that brick warehouse in Vass since 2016, a handful of years after Calvin got into the business on something of a whim. While studying at N.C. State, the construction engineering major registered for a beekeeping course, enjoyed it, got high marks in it, and parlayed the experience into a parttime job working for Jack Tapp, a beekeeper who ran Busy Bee Apiaries out of the basement of his Chapel Hill home.

“Whoever was building his hives at the time wanted some ridiculous price for a cypress hive body,” Calvin says.

“His background is in construction and things like that,” Erin says of her husband. “So he looked at that and went, ‘Oh, I could build that.’”

Calvin spent his Fourth of July learning how to construct bee boxes for Tapp. “I took him five, and he said, ‘Yeah, give me 50,’” Calvin says. He filled the order, no problem, then follow-ups, and more after that, eventually taking orders from David Bailey, who bought Busy Bee in 2013, renamed it Bailey Bee Supply, and moved the business to a plaza in Hillsborough.

“David took it to the next level,” Calvin says. “I was still in school, and we were doing a lot of deliveries to Bailey Bee Supply at midnight.”

Hence Midnight Bee Supply. The business had a name before it had a place.

At first Calvin built the bee boxes in his grandfather’s Johnson Street workshop and sold out of his parents’ garage on Saturdays. Now, a dozen or so years later and a mile across town, he’s ripping through more than 100,000 board-feet each year.

Calvin points to a stack of softwood planks piled high on the woodshop floor. He says something but the mechanical droning of planers and table saws drowns out his words. Back on the other side of the shop door, the noise fades and, with the lilt of a fourth-generation Vass native, he explains that cypress makes all the difference in the high-quality preassembled hives like the ones at the front of the store. The wood’s oils provide a level of natural waterproofing that extends hive longevity. Pine, on the other hand, is the budget option. Regardless of the material, Calvin and his handful of employees shape the wood into the Langstroth hive body preferred by the vast majority of customers.

Considered the father of American beekeeping, Philadelphia native Rev. Lorenzo L. Langstroth patented his eponymous beehive on Oct. 5, 1852, and it remains the most common style used in North America today.

Langstroth’s design is modular, constructed from a series of vertically hung boxes and removable frames with 3/8-inch gaps called “bee space.” The small gaps ensure that the bees won’t seal their home shut with honeycomb or bee glue, making it easier for beekeepers to conduct hive inspections and honey collection without irritating the colony.

Calvin starts in on the anatomy of a Langstroth hive. “You’ve got a bottom board,” he says, patting the stack at the front of the store, almost as if he’s patting the rump of the family dog. “That’s a deep box.” The lesson swivels into something more like internal medicine. “If you want your top box honey only, no eggs, a queen excluder keeps . . . ”

Calvin and Erin whirl through the store, pointing to and naming all the accoutrements a beekeeper could want — specialty boxes for harvesting honeycomb, slat-

ted racks, and different frames and feeders, as well as pest control supplies and supplemental honeybee food for the hard winter months.

“That’s basically a large centrifuge used to separate the wax from the honey,” Erin says, eyeing a silver-bellied cylinder called a honey extractor. “We’ve got a little bit of everything for anything you might be doing.” And that includes Erin’s expert beekeeping advice.

Like Calvin, she attended N.C. State, though their time on the Raleigh campus didn’t overlap. Erin, who has a degree in natural resources, conducted research with mosquitoes and genetics, and post-graduation, took a job with the school’s honeybee research lab. It was a six-month temp job tailor-made for her research experience that transformed into a happy seven years.

“I loved the bees,” Erin says, “so the longer I was there, the more I was getting into beekeeping, not just research. And then when we met, it just kind of snowballed into this,” she says, her voice lifting as she looks around the store. The earthy aroma of sawdust hangs in the air.

For consumers who prefer honeybee products without the chance of stings, the Terrys sell beeswax candles, quilts handmade by Grandma, and of course, raw and creamed honeys produced from their own apiary and bottled by Calvin’s parents.

Honey production has always been part of Calvin’s business model. “We keep several hundred hives of bees,” Erin says. “You keep bees, you make honey.”

Anticipating the life cycle of the honeybee, which revolves around the flow of nectar, is what the Terrys do, both as beekeepers and as a beekeeping supplier. “First of February starts spring for us,” Erin says. “Spring is busy on all fronts because this is when beekeepers are thinking about their bees most.” After enduring the freezing winter — all the while feeding on honey stores and protecting the queen bee from the elements — the vulnerable survivors emerge from the hives to forage for nectar and restart honey production. Beekeepers help that process along.

It’s that brisk but sunny time of year when customers flow steadily into the front while wholesale orders ship out the back. Sixteen pallets of hives are waiting to be picked up.

“We stay busy, absolutely,” Erin says.

As busy as . . . well, you know. PS

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

When nothing can keep a good man down

By Claudia Wat Son d photographS By l aura l . gingeriCh

Acres of farmland rest under the rays of golden sunlight, soothing the bareness of winter’s rough edges. But there’s a surprise at the turn on the highway. A tidy roadside patch of vibrant tulips bursts through the hard-crusted earth, shouting, “Look at me!”

Families, children dressed in their Easter best, grannies and young lovers, all tiptoeing through fields of tulips, not in Holland, but bucolic White Hill. Photographers follow. All sharing the unexpected joy and the promise of hope at Blueberry Hill Farm.

This April marks the second year Blueberry Hill Farm, known for its juicy-sweet, plump blueberries, hosts a festival of blooms, a much-anticipated harbinger of spring. And that’s just what the farm’s owners, Anthony and Janice Dyson, wished for.

“I wanted the area in front of our retail storefront to be colorful and welcoming with a small roadside patch of flowers,” says Janice. “We felt folks would stop to see the flowers and come in to see all the fresh products we offer from the farm, not just at the blueberry time.”

Then she grins, adding that their eldest son, David, ignited with imagination, had a more significant dream.

A graduate of N.C. State University’s Landscape Agriculture program and a professional landscaper, David always shared his mother’s fondness for flowers. “When I graduated, I managed a commercial landscaping business. We used a lot of fall, spring and summer flowers,” he says. “When my mom told me her idea, I thought, ‘Hey, I can do this but on a larger scale.’”

After months of research and meetings with large tulip farm owners in North Carolina, David did the implausible. In the fall of 2022, instead of planting a simple flower bed for his mom, he planted 20,000 tulips in several trial plots by the roadside and on the gentle slope that borders a large pond on their 25-acre farm. Success followed.

“Last spring it wasn’t uncommon to see people blow by us on the highway, turn around, and come back to walk in the fields and cut some flowers to take with them,” he says. “That made my day.”

The new technicolor landscape on Blueberry Hill Farm is joyful and optimistic, revealing its poignancy only after you discover how it’s been achieved.

On a summer’s day in 2017, David, his wife, Katie, younger brother, Derek Dyson, and others took a couple of river boats to a swimming spot on the Black River in Sampson County.

“We’d been there a lot over the years, and I knew it well. I dove into the water several times, but the last time I didn’t come back up,” says David, recalling the terror of being helplessly submerged under water. “I felt like I had 10 seconds to live.”

The others jumped in and searched the murky river. Nothing. Then Derek, a firefighter for Sanford, found him, and they pulled David to the river’s edge. He was airlifted to the New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington.

David had crushed the C5 vertebra in his spine, causing him to be paralyzed from the waist down and classified as a person with quadriplegia. After surgery he was transferred to the Shepard Center in Atlanta, one of the nation’s top hospitals for rehabilitation, where he remained for nine weeks.

“When we came home, I couldn’t sit up without help,” he says. He and Katie sold their two-story home and built a

handicap-accessible home for themselves and their son, Carson. His physical therapy regimen is nearly a full-time job. Now, he frequently drives his handicap-accessible van from their home in Greensboro to White Hill. Anthony says David can get anywhere in his standing power chair.

Amodified ATV, courtesy of North Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation, has put David back into the fields at Blueberry Hill Farm, where he’s in control and savors every moment.

“Though I can’t plant, this ATV gives me the ability to go anywhere in any weather condition on the farm,” he says, using a dashboard lever to lock his chair into the ATV floorboard. I hop in and fasten my seatbelt. “Do you want to go 5 mph or 50?” he says with a smile as we take off. It’s November, and it’s tulip-planting day.

“I utilize my entire agriculture background for the farm,” he says, pointing to the rows of dormant blueberry, raspberry and blackberry bushes and muscadine vines. “Now, it’s the flowers, too. We handle it all, from the soil amendments through harvest and everything in between.”

A few days before my visit, over 45,000 tulip bulbs arrived in a refrigerated semi-trailer and were off-loaded into the farm’s cooler. “This is all David’s doing,” says Anthony, opening the cooler door where stacks of plastic crates marked with the bulb’s

variety and color waited. “He’s a whiz on the computer and quite adept at sourcing, and all of our tulip bulbs are shipped to us directly from the Netherlands.”

The tulip often invokes thoughts of the Netherlands, and indeed, the Dutch deserve credit for its global popularity and exciting history. However, it is not indigenous to that country. The tulip is native to a vast area, including the arid climates of Africa, Asia and Europe. It’s a perennial, bulbous plant that blooms in various colors from early to mid-spring. Like most bulbs, it needs cool dormancy (vernalization) to bloom, making it challenging to grow in North Carolina.

“The weather is finicky — especially nowadays — it’s hot, then cold,” says David, a loyal Wolfpack fan sporting his N.C. State cap as he steers the ATV. “When planting, the soil temperature must be 55 degrees or below to ensure good root development before winter sets in.” Last November the soil was too warm to plant until late in the month, as referenced in the region’s newly acquired 8A growing zone. Pre-cooled bulbs from the Netherlands ensure proper root development and avoid stunned blooms.

“Soggy soil is the kiss of death for bulbs,” he says. “But our soil is very sandy, and it drains a bit too fast to hold the needed moisture for tulips.” Organic matter should be worked 10 inches into the soil, followed by applying slow-release nitrogenphosphorus-potassium fertilizer (10-10-10 or 3-5-3). Tulips also need plenty of sunshine.

This spring at Blueberry Hill Farm, visitors will experience vari-

ety. Tulipa Darwin hybrids are among the showstoppers, including the vibrant yellow ‘Novi Sun’ and one of the tallest tulips, ‘World’s Favorite’, a tomato-red flower with golden yellow petal edges.

If you crave sweets, ‘Tom Pouce’, aptly named for the lusciously sweet Dutch pastry, is your treat. This flower is pale to bright pink with a creamy, golden-yellow base. And just in time for spring weddings, the pure white and very statuesque ‘Wedding Dress’.

“

We’re also planting some remarkable mixtures of Triumph, Darwin hybrid, Double, Lily-flowering and Single Late tulips to offer constant color throughout the spring season,” says David.

At the edge of one field, he stops the ATV a few feet from a beloved orange 1952 Allis-Chalmers tractor nicknamed Allis. She’s just recovered from a spitting and sputtering session that called for repairs. Healthy again, Allis is pulling a bulb-planting machine the farm purchased from the Netherlands.

“It’s our new tool and we’ll get all 45,000 bulbs set out in the next couple of days,” David says. “In 2022 my dad made a template out of PVC pipe that the workers pushed into the soil to plant the 20,000 bulbs. It took weeks.”

Standing by the bulb planter, Derek hollers, “Hey, what color do you want next? Yellow?”

“No. Yella!” shouts Janice, enthusiastically correcting her son’s pronunciation. “In my family, it was always ‘yella’ and they tease me about it.”

Derek dumps a crate holding hundreds of “yella” tulip bulbs into the bulb planter. Allis pulls the planter over an intended row, using its steel discs to cut a 10-inch-deep trench, drop one bulb with roots down, and then cover the trench with its three rear wheels, settling the soil.

“Hey, no bulbs left behind!” says eagle-eyed David, pointing to some bulbs that jumped the trench and need planting.

“It’s only our second year, and this is amazing,” he adds as he presses the accelerator lever on the ATV and takes off across the edge of the farm. Here, he’s carefully choreographed mixed planting to include a mood-lifting view of thousands of perennial daffodils (Narcissi), anemones, globes of alliums, Spanish bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica), and cobalt-blue grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum) blooming en masse along with the tulips.

Once those early spring flowers fade, a stunning display of 10,000 peony-like ranunculi will appear, including Ranunculus aviv and Ranunculus picotee varieties. Hundreds of unfurling peonies and poppies will inspire the romantic.

When the summer heat rises, the landscape gives way to summer perennials, including natives, rose mallow (Hibiscus lasiocarpos), black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), and lupine (Lupinus). Vibrant zinnias and sunflowers grown from seed will provide an energizing space in late summer.

After a final pass of the farm, we head back to the pond, where it’s time for a family photo with Allis, the tractor.

“It’s truly magic,” Janice says as she surveys the farm in the

late afternoon sun. “David is strong, determined, courageous and unstoppable. Along with our faith, this farm heals us and keeps us moving forward.”

David stands next to Allis with the assistance of his chair, mother and father. He is quiet but smiling. Perhaps fueled by gratitude, he understands the power of the moment — a moment of joy for life on the land that provides their hearts with peace, plenty and purpose.

Spring is nature’s reminder that resilience blooms from within. PS

The Dyson family actively encourages visitors to take a stroll, cut flowers or just come and share the joy of spring. Blueberry Hill Farm, located at 3250 White Hill Road, Sanford, is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. It’s a u-pick farm for berries and flowers (they supply the clippers and flat box for flowers). Fresh-cut flowers are available for pickup, as is a tasty jar of sugar-free Traffic Jam, or Blueberry Jam made with the farm’s berries, in the storefront. Admission: $4 per person; u-pick flowers $1.50 per stem. No pets, please.

(Instagram @blueberryhillupick).

Claudia Watson is a freelance writer and longtime contributor to PineStraw and The Pilot who finds joy daily, often in a garden.

A Touch of England

Creating a cottage garden in Pinehurst

By roB VanderVoort • photographS By John geSSner

Cottage gardening originally developed in England, using dense, informal plantings of native flowers and herbs to create the most charming effects. When I was asked to design a garden for a property off Pinehurst No. 3

I was excited because I knew the house and was sure

it would work perfectly with the cottage garden style. The beds feature foxgloves, daisies, iris, larkspurs, columbines, snapdragons and violas, all traditional cottage garden plants.

I like to keep the iris and columbines close to the path. Columbine is best there because the flowers are

so complex. They are usually two-toned, the light petals contrasting with the darker, spurred sepals that make the flowers look like a group of small birds. This intricacy has to be seen up close to be appreciated. Columbines look great by a gate but are lost in the distance.

Iris, in contrast, can be seen from the street. I keep it by the path to show off its foliage. Unlike most perennials that go dormant in the winter, the grayish, lance-shaped leaves of the iris persist year-round. They have a striking, sculptural quality that is enhanced by proximity to hardscape elements like fences and walks. They also play nicely with masses of fuzzy gray lamb’s ears, the contrast-

ing texture set off by a similarity of color. Larkspurs and oxeye daisies form the bulk of the planting. These bloom consistently at the same time as foxgloves, so their cool blue and the white can set off the warm dark pink of the foxgloves. And, oh, the foxgloves! They are truly magnificent. Their height and spire-like form give an architectural element to the mixed plantings. Snapdragons echo their form on a smaller scale, and violas bring the color down to the ground plane.

You won’t often find foxgloves in garden centers, except the occasional blooming plant in the spring. I start mine from seed in midsummer and set them out in the fall. I find

this technique works for many biennials and perennials that do well in regions north of us but can’t take our summer heat. Essentially you treat them like over-wintered annuals. Sow them in the summer, transplant them out in the fall, enjoy the flowers in the spring, and then remove the plants when they’re finished blooming in May or June. Hollyhocks, delphinium, sweet William, bells of Ireland, snapdragons and sweet peas all do well with this treatment, although I’d wait till Christmas to sow the sweet peas.

If you’re interested in trying a cottage garden of your own, a handy resource is Cool Flowers, a great short book by Lisa Mason Ziegler. Ziegler is a cut flower grower in the Virginia Beach, Virginia, area, in the same horticultural zone as Pinehurst. She explains this technique in greater detail. I wish you luck! PS

Robert VanderVoort studied and taught landscape architecture at N.C. State University and has gardened in the Sandhills for more years than he cares to say. Reach him at voortex16@gmail.com.

Elegance and Mystery

Historic estate thrives in its second century

By deBorah Salomon

photographS By John geSSner

Green with envy: a color-coded assessment of how Pinehurst society, circa 1929, might have greeted the overwhelming but exquisite home of Nils Hersloff of Orange, New Jersey, his wife and three children, who christened it, simply, The Pines. This family residence — not to be confused with the “cottages” of the same era — eclipsed most vacation homes built before the crash. It was the last brick home constructed in Pinehurst before the Great Depression and is one of the featured homes on the 76th Annual Southern Pines Garden Club Home & Garden Tour this month.

Superior materials were plentiful and expert craftsmen, hungry. In fact, a more suitable name might be The Moldings. Double, triple, quadruple, grooved, carved and overlaid, they tastefully delineate each window, door and fireplace — big money, well-spent on 6,000-plus square feet with servants’ quarters and adjacent three-bay garage topped off by an apartment for the chauffeur. Few homes of any era boast a zinc-lined closet for storing furs.

The Pines has weathered nearly a dozen ownerships. Renovations have been minimal and respectful. Since purchasing the house in 2015, John and Elizabeth Webster, appreciative of

solid construction and timeless design, have adorned it with British, American, Spanish and South American antiques and art — from traditional bird motifs to small statuary (called Santos) rescued from church altars.

The result is Gatsby-era elegance with a sweet Southern drawl.

The Pinehurst Outlook once described the structure as Colonial Revival with Flemish bond brickwork, gabled roofs, a five-bay façade with central pedimental entrance porch and two-story side wings. The Swedish-born Hersloff, who began as a simple accountant but would amass a fortune in oil, shopped for art at Sotheby’s, was a Tin Whistle and rode in field trial competitions. After deciding to winter in Pinehurst, Hersloff didn’t blink at hiring Charles Platt, a landscape designer/self-taught architect and stalwart of the American Renaissance movement whose clients included Rockefellers, Astors, Carnegies and Roosevelts, as well as the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Construction costs, not including the 1 1/2 prime acres in Old Town, were listed at $75,000 — an enormous sum in the late 1920s. Platt, great-grandfather of award-winning actor Oliver Platt (The West Wing, Chicago Med), died in 1933. The Pines may have been among his last projects.

In 1935, the partially clad 22-year-old newlywed hotel heiress Elva Statler Davidson was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in The Pines’ garage. Statler Davidson, unhappily married to a man twice her age, lived in nearby Edgewood Cottage, built by Hersloff in 1917. In Death of a Pinehurst Princess, Steve Bouser writes that the yards of The Pines and Edgewood “were open, and one could hardly tell where the boundary between the two lots ran.” Statler Davidson had standing permission to park her Packard in the neighbors’ garage. An inquest was held, but the mystery never solved.

After almost a century, what makes The Pines a showcase is no mystery, beginning in the copious foyer with de Gourney hand-painted wallpaper panels flanking the door, a teardrop crystal chandelier and the Tara staircase, ideal for bridal photos. The Webster blended family includes seven daughters and one son. “I keep hoping . . . ” Elizabeth says.

An attorney and Realtor, Elizabeth grew up in the Weymouth neighborhood on Highland Road. John, a financier and serious gardener of British lineage, moved to Southern Pines from Spain. Each owned beautiful things in need of a home. Pinehurst presented possibilities, since “we both love old houses,” Elizabeth says. They discovered The Pines, vacant for several years, online. “It appealed to me because of the light,” she says, which streams in on both sides of the elongated asymmetrical layout. No wonder its blueprints are part of the Cornell University Library collection. For Elizabeth, this would be both homecoming and challenge: retain historical significance while blending her furnishings with John’s.

She settled on a creamy French vanilla, tinged with lemon, for the main floor walls and divided the living room into sections by furniture placement. Over the sofa, a Virgin of Pomata (Peru) in a voluminous gown dominates an entire wall. Beneath it, the Persian carpet in shades of crimson and blue was woven especially

for this room. The black coffee table, Asian in style, makes the sole contemporary statement. A gaucho’s stirrup and dagger are laid on it. Elizabeth’s sentimental favorite stands nearby: a “secretary” called a marriage piece because the top and bottom, English and American — although from separate desks — align perfectly. “It fits with our story,” says Elizabeth.

This retro salon may be suitable for entertaining but not for watching the evening news, which the Websters do in a sunroom off the living room. Striped turtle-green wallpaper accenting high ceilings was hung here by a previous owner. “I like flowers, John likes stripes, so we left it,” Elizabeth says. Each has an office, on separate floors.

Staffordshire, Staffordshire, everywhere: figurines, dishes, teapots, lamps. Elizabeth’s passion is on display in dining room builtins surrounded, again, by layers of carved molding. The proportions of this room allow for two mahogany sideboards, one from Elizabeth, the other from John, which are almost twins. Here, she

has held events to benefit The O’Neal School, her alma mater.

The mid-sized kitchen is another surprise, remodeled by a previous owner using some original painted cabinets. The Websters put in an island, took down a wall and added banquettes to make the servants’ dining room their sunny breakfast corner. On the wall remains the maid’s call box. Even without a butler, the butler’s pantry with warming drawer, wine storage, sink and dishwashers is a dream at dinner parties.

Upstairs, the bedrooms seem endless; the master suite opens onto a full-sized sitting room and double bathroom, one of six and a half spread throughout the house and garage. The most unusual was done in 1929 in avocado tile with tankless toilet and a sink supported by chrome legs.

The grounds are John’s domain: designing, planting, pruning, mowing. Behind the house stretches a long and grassy lawn, perfect for passing a football — or hosting a garden party, perhaps a wedding. It’s bordered by flower beds, the entirety enclosed by a brick wall constructed from materials surviving a Sanford factory fire. The Websters filled in the swimming pool, deemed beyond repair and a liability. They also removed overgrown ivy lest it damage the brick. Despite the estate name, the tree dominating the circular drive is a 40-foot magnolia, not a loblolly pine.

Ancient legends surrounding The Pines may have once

deserved investigation, but this is a happy house, light and airy, spacious and livable, historic but unencumbered by dark, massive furnishings and stern ancestral portraits.

Elizabeth Webster is thrilled, seeing herself and John as caretakers, steering the house into its second century, a deal sealed with words she will never forget. “After we saw this house,” she says, “my husband said he had to buy it because of the smile it put on my face.” PS

HOME & GARDEN TOUR

The 76th Annual Southern Pines Garden Club Home & Garden Tour on Saturday, April 13, features houses, farms and their notable landscapes. Presenting ideas for inspired living in our modern times, ticket sales to see this year’s collection of “idea” homes and gardens will benefit the landscaping and beautification of Woodlawn Cemetery in West Southern Pines. The tour begins at 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.southernpinesgardenclub.com.

An Evening with Diane Flynt

Wild, Tamed, Lost, Revived: The Surprising Story of Apples in the South

April 10 at 6:30 PM

A cider tasting and cheese pairing featuring new and rare vintages of southern heirloom cider At James Creek Cider House (tickets available at James Creek)

RomCom meets Historical Fiction: Joy Callaway and Melissa Ferguson

April 11 at 6:00 PM

Tom Maxwell A Really Strange and Wonderful Time

April 16 at 6:00 PM

Kathleen DuVal Native Nations

April 17 at 5:00 PM

Jill McCorkle Old Crimes

April 23 at 5:00 PM

Natasha Lance Rogoff Muppets in Moscow

April 28 at 3:00 PM

140

Cheryl L. Mason J.D.

First woman and military spouse Chairman of the VA Board of Veterans Appeals

Dare To Relate: Leading With A Fierce Heart

May 1 at 5:00 PM

Stephen Smith

The Year We Danced

May 7 at 5:00 PM

Mary Kay Andrews Summers At The Saint

May 8 at 11:00 AM

Max Brallier

The Last Comics On Earth: Too Many Villains!

May 8 at 4:00 PM

Tommy Tomlinson

Dogland: Passion, Glory, and lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show

May 15 at 5:00 PM

Kristin Harmel

The Paris Daughter

May 16 at 11:00 AM

ALMANAC April

By a Shley Wal She

April is a tapestry of sound, rich and delicate.

Listen.

Coral honeysuckle sings in color, sultry and seductive, calling out to ruby-throated suitors.

Can you hear the whir of tiny wings?

The beating heart of hummingbird?

The melodious supping of nectar?

Lean in.

Chrysalis whispers of metamorphosis. Wet and crumpled wings. Grueling and glorious expansion.

The rustling of budding trees tells of new life.

Fuzzy squirrel kits with just-opened eyes. A clutch of blue eggs, days from hatching.

Chorus frogs swell with rhythmic longing. A swallowtail sails through warm air like a bow across a brightly toned string. Wild violets titter.

One hundred songbirds, yet none are so loud as a single dandelion. The soil? Boisterous.

Don’t you see? Each green leaf is the note of an everswelling symphony. When the rat snake sheds his winter skin, a rapturous movement begins. Whippoorwill is drunk on the splendor of its own name. Bullfrog bellows jug-o-rum! Dogwoods tremor in a cool flash of rain.

As cardinal crafts her cup-shaped nest — a wonder of twigs lined with leaves, grasses, roots and pine needles — she stops to drink in the soundscape. Each thread has a home in this living anthem, this resonant fabric of spring.

Spring has returned. The earth is like a child that knows poems.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Wild Bloomers

April showers bring mayapple flowers.

Not to be confused with apple blossoms (although the flowers do look similar), Podophyllum peltatum is a native perennial wildflower that thrives in deciduous woodlands. Most commonly called the mayapple or the American mandrake, other nicknames for this April bloomer include Indian apple root, racoonberry, hog apple, ground lemon, duck’s foot, umbrella leaf and devil’s apple.

Rising over a foot above the forest floor, mayapples grow in dense colonies, their distinctive leaves making them relatively easy to spot. Two deeply lobed, umbrella-shaped leaves radiate from the top of the plant’s single stem; a white flower hides beneath the canopy.

While most of the plant is considered toxic (foliage, roots, unripe fruit and seeds), the ripe mayapple fruit is considered a forager’s delight and a favorite summer snack of the Eastern box turtle.

What does the golden fruit taste like? Wild foods bloggers have described it as exotic, sweet-and-tart, citrusy, or, as Adam Haritan of Learn Your Land wrote, “like a mix between pineapple and Starburst candy.” That said, since even the ripe fruit can have a laxative effect, best not to gorge.

Sow the Love

Earth Day is celebrated on Monday, April 22. Make it a garden party. Or, better yet, a garden-planting party.

The last frost is nigh. Sow your green beans, sweet corn, squash and zucchini. Wait until month’s end to plant cukes, peas and tomatoes. Longer, still, for the frost-sensitives (melons, peppers and eggplant, to name a few).

Invite the pollinators to join you by weaving native plants and wildflowers into the mix. From asters to elderberry and bee balm to dogwood, consider what thrives in your region and start there. The wild ones will thank you. PS

HOME MAKEOVER

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“Trim Time absolutely had everything we were looking for — river rock, small boulders, trees, and grasses. Prompt and professional customer service and delivery. They definitely take a customer-focused approach in their business. Plan to visit them for our future landscaping needs.”

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arts & entertainment

Although conscientious effort is made to provide accurate and up-to-date information, all events are subject to change and errors can occur! Please call to verify times, costs, status and location before planning or attending any events.

TECH HELP SESSIONS. SPPL offers one-on-one Technology Help Sessions. A library staff member will sit with you to assist with accessing eBooks, learning how to use a new device, navigating a computer, and to answer any other basic technology questions. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. To make an appointment come into the library or visit www.sppl.net.

APRIL EVENTS

Monday, April 1

QUILTS OF VALOR. 12 - 4 p.m. Quilts of Valor meets the first Monday of each month to create lap quilts made especially for veterans. If you sew, bring your machine; if you don’t sew, you can iron or cut out fabrics for new designs. This is a free program. Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. 15-501, West End.

ART EXHIBIT. View the work of Josiah King, a North Carolina artist and teacher, whose work focuses on moments of beauty in nature. The exhibit will be on display until April 20. Hastings Art Gallery, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst.

PLANT SALE. The Pinehurst Garden Club holds its annual plant sale fundraiser through April 5. Green Haven Plant Farm, 255 Green Haven Lane, Carthage. Info: (910) 603-2279 or www.pinehurstgardenclub.org.

Tuesday, April 2

BRAIN FITNESS. 10 - 11 a.m. Adults 18 and older are invited to enjoy short relaxation and brain enhancement exercises, ending with a mindfulness practice. Eve Gaskell will be the instructor. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

TEEN CREATIVITY CLUB. 4:30 p.m. Teen Creativity Club is a new meeting space for creative teens in grades 6 - 12. From creative writing to storytelling to drawing and more, come by and see what other teen artists are doing. The club will be working on a Spring Zine issue to showcase its work. Bring your friends. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: kbroughey@sppl.net.

Thursday, April 4

AFTER SCHOOL PROGRAM. 3:30 p.m. Drop by to get a snack, pick out a book, and take home a craft. Elizabeth Rounds Park, 570 Pee Dee Road, Southern Pines. Info: www.sppl.net.

SUPPORT GROUP. 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. On the first Thursday of each month there is a meeting for the Sandhills Chronic Kidney Disease Support Group. Clara McLean House, Shadowlawn Room, 20 First Village Drive, Pinehurst. Info: angela@sandhillsckd.com or kathy@sandhillsckd.com.

FILM SERIES. 7 p.m. Watch Four Weddings and a Funeral, during the British Are Coming Film Series. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 420-2549 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

Friday, April 5 LUNCH BUNCH. 11:30 a.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to dine on different cuisines each month as you visit area restaurants. Carpool with friends or meet at the restaurant. Dining locations will be chosen the week before. Info: (910) 692-7376.

ART EXHIBIT. 5 - 7 p.m. The Artists League of the Sandhills will host an opening reception for The Art of Golf exhibit, featuring the works of Linda Nunez and Paula Spinner. It will be on display through April 26. Artists League of the Sandhills, 129 Exchange St., Aberdeen. Info: www.artistleague.org.

LIVE FUNDRAISER. 7 p.m. Come to Broadway Baby Jr., a Sunrise live fundraiser and singing competition. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 420-2549 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

COMEDY SERIES. 7 - 8:15 p.m. BPAC’s comedy series continues with comedian Rondell Sheridan performing “If You’re Over 40 and You Know It, Clap Your Hands!” Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

FIREFEST. A two-day celebration of using fire to create incredible artwork. Demonstrations, workshops, and exhibitions in glass, ceramics and metal. Tickets are $10 each day. The celebration continues through April 6. Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

Saturday, April 6

KIDS’ SATURDAY. 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. Families are invited to a monthly themed craft event to socialize and get creative. Geared toward ages 3 - 10. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-3642 or www.vopnc.org.

PAINTED PONIES. The 5th Annual Painted Ponies Art Walk ends with a live online auction for all 16 ponies. Info: www.carolinahorsepark.com.

Sunday, April 7

LIVE JAZZ. 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. Enjoy the outdoors on the Weymouth grounds for live jazz with Hornheads’ Kenny Holmes and his saxophone. Bring your own blanket, chairs and a picnic. There will be a cash bar available. Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, 555 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.weymouthcenter.org.

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JOSIAH KING'S FACEBOOK

WRITING GROUP. 3 p.m. Are you interested in creating fiction, nonfiction, poetry or comics? Come to the Sunday Afternoon Writing Group. Connect with other writers and artists, chat about your craft, and get feedback about your work. All levels welcome. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: lholden@sppl.net.

SPRING CONCERT. 4 p.m. The Moore County Choral Society presents Illumination. The community choir is led by Anne Dorsey and accompanied by pianist Stephen Gourley. Free admission. Brownson Memorial Presbyterian Church, 330 S. May St., Southern Pines. Info: www.moorecountychoralsociety.org.

Monday, April 8

PHOTO CLUB. 7 p.m. Sandhills Photography Club monthly meeting will be a competition. The theme is “Worm’s Eye View.” Guests are welcome. Sandhills Horticultural Gardens Visitors Center, 3245 Airport Road, Southern Pines. Info: www. sandhillsphotoclub.org.

Tuesday, April 9

HATHA YOGA. 10 - 11 a.m. For adults 55 and older. Increase your flexibility, balance, stability and muscle tone while learning the basic yoga principles of alignment and breathing. You may gain strength, improve circulation and reduce chronic pain practicing gentle yoga postures and mindfulness. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

CALENDAR

AARP TALK. 12 - 12:30 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to join AARP for a fraud talk. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

AFTER SCHOOL PROGRAM. 3:30 p.m. Drop by to get a snack, pick out a book, and take home a craft. Morganton Road Sports Complex, 100 Fire Lane, Southern Pines. Info: www.sppl.net.

Wednesday, April 10

SENIOR EXCURSION. 9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to join Southern Pines Parks and Recreation to travel to Fayetteville for a fun spring day of baseball. Enjoy lunch at one of the many tasty concession stands. Cost is $32 for residents and $44 for non-residents. Info: (910) 692-7376.

FIRE SAFETY. 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Learn helpful fire safety tips that can save your life. Free event, registration recommended. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

Thursday, April 11

HOT GLASS COLD BEER. 5:30 p.m. Join a live glass blowing demonstration. Tickets are $5. Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

BOOK EVENT. 6 p.m. Authors Joy Callaway and Melissa Ferguson talk about their latest books. The

Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

FILM SERIES. 7 p.m. Watch Hot Fuzz during the British Are Coming Film Series. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 420-2549 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

Friday, April 12

KARAOKE NIGHT. 7 p.m. Free of charge. Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

Saturday, April 13

CRAFT DAYS. Children and their families can come by the library for Drop-in Craft Days and work on crafts and coloring at their own pace. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

COMMUNITY YARD SALE. 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. Enjoy shopping 20 - 40 individual outdoor booths offering everything from handmade crafts, modern tools and electronics, vintage and antique collectibles, and even an assortment of everyday household items or clothes. A food truck will be on site. The Bee’s Knees, 125 N.C. 73, West End. Info: (910) 420-8970.

WORKSHOP. 9 a.m. Learn the art of blacksmithing from instructor Ian Thomsen and take home your creations. There is another workshop at 1 p.m. at Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

MOORE COUNTY FARMERS MARKET

Courtesy of the Town of Southern Pines

THURSDAYS

604 W. Morganton Rd Southern Pines, NC (Armory Sports Complex)

9 am to 12:30 pm | YEAR ROUND

SATURDAYS

Downtown Southern Pines

SE Broad & New York Ave Southern Pines, NC

8 am- Noon | March 16- Nov 23

For more info on vendors and special event closures please visit: www.MooreCountyFarmersMarket.com

A Southern Land Title Agency provides Title Insurance for Residential and Commercial properties throughout North Carolina and South Carolina.

We love what we do and We truly appreciate your referrals

540 NW Broad Street Southern Pines, NC 28387

Office: 910.420.2300

titleorders@aslandtitle.com

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CALENDAR

WORKSHOP. 10 a.m. Use a signature in-house clay body to make your own ceramic mug with instructor Andrew Tran. Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

HOME AND GARDEN TOUR. 10 a.m. The 76th annual Southern Pines Garden Club Home & Garden Tour features houses, farms and their notable landscapes. Presenting ideas for inspired living in our modern times, enjoy this year’s collection of “idea” homes and gardens, a tour to benefit the landscaping and beautification of Woodlawn Cemetery in West Southern Pines. The tour will start at 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: www.southernpinesgardenclub.com.

SPRING FLING. 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. Celebrate the arrival of spring with fun games, face painting, bounce houses, entertainment and more. Concessions will be available for purchase. Children must be accompanied by an adult. For ages 3 - 12. Free of charge. Memorial Park Baseball Field C, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

MUSIC FESTIVAL. 3 - 10 p.m. The Herb Cameron Music Festival will feature headliner Tyler Halverson. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 420-2549 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

Sunday, April 14

LIBRARY PROGRAM. 2:30 p.m. Did you know you can get free eBooks, audiobooks and magazines using the Libby app and your library card? Come to an “Introduction to Libby” program to learn all about using the app. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: msilva@sppl.net.

Tuesday, April 16

BRAIN FITNESS. 10 - 11 a.m. Adults 18 and older are invited to enjoy short relaxation and brain enhancement exercises, ending with a mindfulness practice. Eve Gaskell will be the instructor. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BINGO. 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to play 10 games of bingo. Cost is $4 for residents and $6 for non-residents. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

TEEN CREATIVITY CLUB. 4:30 p.m. Teen Creativity Club is a new meeting space for creative teens in grades 6 - 12. From creative writing to storytelling to drawing and more, come by and see what other teen artists are doing. The club will be working on a Spring Zine issue to showcase its work. Bring your friends. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: kbroughey@sppl.net.

BOOK CHAT. 5:30 p.m. Join a perfect blend of books and crafts at the Book Chat and Craft Night at Southern Pines Brewing, 565 Air Tool Drive, Southern Pines. Info: mhoward@sppl.net.

BOOK EVENT. 6 p.m. Enjoy a free conversation with Tom Maxwell about his book A Really Strange and Wonderful Time — The Chapel Hill Music Scene 1989-1999. Register in advance. The Country

Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Wednesday, April 17

WHITEHALL BOOK CLUB. 2 p.m. The Southern Pines Public Library’s book club for adults meets to discuss this month’s book. The book club is open to the public. Whitehall Property, 490 Pee Dee Road, Southern Pines. Info: mmiller@sppl.net.

BOOK EVENT. 5 p.m. Author Kathleen DuVal speaks about her book Native Nations: A Millennium in North America. Free event. The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

ALBUM RELEASE. 6:30 p.m. Attend Tony Low’s album release party. Free of charge. Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

Thursday, April 18

BRUNCH. 9:30 - 11:15 a.m. Join the Sandhills Christian Women’s Connection for a relaxing and uplifting morning with a brunch buffet, musical selections, inspirational speakers and a visit from Hollyfield Design floral, decor and gift boutique. Doors open at 9 a.m. Cost is $24 cash or check. Country Club of Whispering Pines, 2 Clubhouse Blvd., Whispering Pines. For reservations call (910) 215-4568 or email patsyrpeele@gmail.com.

AFTER SCHOOL PROGRAM. 3:30 p.m. Drop by to get a snack, pick out a book and take home a craft. Downtown Park, Southern Pines. Info: www.sppl.net.

OPEN MIC. 7 p.m. Come enjoy an open mic night. Free of charge. Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

FILM SERIES. 7:30 p.m. Watch A Fish Called Wanda during the British Are Coming Film Series. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 420-2549 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

Friday, April 19

ROCK ‘N’ RUN. 6 - 9 p.m. Friend to Friend presents its 8th annual Rock ‘n’ Run 5K. Whiskey Pines will play music at the start line, and there will be beer and a concert at the finish line. There will be activities for kids, live music and food trucks. Southern Pines Brewing Company, 565 Air Tool Drive, Southern Pines. Info: www.runsignup.com/Race/NC/SouthernPines/ FriendtoFriendRockNRun5K.

SPRING CONVENTION. 6:30 p.m. Enjoy live music at the two-day Carolina’s District Spring Convention and Contest hosted by the Golf Capital Chorus. The weekend events continue through April 20. Lee Auditorium, 250 Voit Gilmore Lane, Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

MAINSTAGE SERIES. 7 - 8:30 p.m. The Paul Taylor Dance Company performs under the leadership of artistic director Michael Novak. Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Saturday, April 20

PARTY FOR THE PINE. 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. Gather

at the Weymouth Woods Boyd Tract meadow for a free festival to celebrate the oldest longleaf pine in the world. Learn about the native habitat, see turpentine demonstrations, play games and watch a prescribed burn demonstration. Food trucks on-site. Info: www.partyforthepine.org.

SPRING FESTIVAL. 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. The town of Vass is hosting a spring festival with a live band, vendors and food. Seaboard St., Vass. Info: (910) 245-4677 or vassnc@townofvass.com.

CLENNY CREEK - HERITAGE DAY. 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. The Moore County Historical Association has its annual Heritage Day showcasing the Bryant House and McLendon Cabin. There will be tours, farm petting areas, live music and food. The Bryant House, 3361 Mt. Carmel Road, Carthage. Info: (910) 692-2051 or www.moorehistory.com.

ANNIVERSARY PARTY. 11 a.m. - 11 p.m. Hatchet Brewing Company celebrates four years of serving the Sandhills. There will be food trucks and a BBQ contest as well as special beer releases and vendors. Free entry. Hatchet Brewing Co, 490 S.W. Broad St., Southern Pines.

MET OPERA. 1 p.m. La Rondine, live in HD. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 420-2549 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

DANCING. 6 p.m. Carolina Pines Dance Club invites everyone to a fun evening of swing, shag, ballroom, Latin and line dancing. Doors open at 6 p.m. Dance lessons from 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. Dancing until 9:30 p.m. Beginners and experienced dancers, couples and singles all welcome. Cost is $20 per person, cash at the door. Tyson Sinclair Ballroom, 105 McReynolds St., Second Floor, Carthage. Info: (910) 331-9965.

CONCERT. 6 - 9 p.m. Departure, the Journey Tribute Band, performs during the Cooper Ford concert series. Moore County Airport, 7425 Aviation Blvd., Carthage. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

TRIVIA. 7 p.m. Trivia night hosted by Jordan Watson. Free of charge. Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

CINEMATIC CELEBRATION. 7:30 - 11 p.m. Enjoy a double feature with Reefer Madness and Cheech & Chong’s Up in Smoke. Cameo Art House Theatre, 225 Hay St., Fayetteville. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Sunday, April 21

STEAM. 2:30 - 3:30 p.m. Elementary-aged children and their caregivers are invited to learn about topics in science, technology, engineering, art and math and to participate in STEAM projects and activities. This month celebrate Earth Day. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or kbroughey@sppl.net.

FAMILY FUN SERIES. 3 - 4 p.m. Big Bang Boom! performs a parent-friendly, children’s rock concert. Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

CONCERT. 4 - 5:30 p.m. The Pembroke Singers will be in concert. Community Congressional

Church, 141 N. Bennett St., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Monday, April 22

BOOK EVENT. 12 p.m. Join a virtual conversation between Kimberly Daniels Taws and Becca Rothfield chatting about Rothfield’s book of essays All Things Are Too Small. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Tuesday, April 23

HATHA YOGA. 10 - 11 a.m. For adults 55 and older. Increase your flexibility, balance, stability and muscle tone while learning the basic yoga principles of alignment and breathing. You may gain strength, improve circulation and reduce chronic pain as we practice gentle yoga postures and mindfulness. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

MEDICAL MINUTES. 1 - 2 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to learn about different topics each month beneficial to the senior community. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BOOK EVENT. 5 p.m. Author Jill McCorkle returns to chat about Old Crimes, a collection of stories. Free event. The Country Bookshop, 140 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Wednesday, April 24

LUNCH ‘N’ LEARN. 10 a.m. Lunch n’ Learn presents “Spring Forward with Beautiful Flowers” by Carol Dowd of Botanicals Fabulous Flowers and Orchids. Presentation begins promptly at 10 a.m. followed by a Chef Katrina lunch and dessert. Cost is $30 per person, reser vations required. Sandhills Woman’s Exchange, 15 Azalea Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-4677 or www.sandhillswe.org.

JAZZ NIGHT. 6:30 p.m. Enjoy jazz music featuring local duo Soul Noises. Free of charge. Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

Thursday, April 25

WELLNESS CLASSES. 10 - 11:30 a.m. Adults 18 and older are invited to learn about different topics each month involving information that will improve mind, body and spirit. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

DOUGLASS CENTER BOOK CLUB. 10:30 a.m. Multiple copies of the selected book are available for checkout at the Southern Pines Public Library. The Douglass Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: mmiller@sppl.net.

FASHION SHOW. 11:30 a.m. Women of the Pines presents a fashion show and luncheon. Cost is $75 per person. Reservations and payment due by April 19. Fair Barn, 200 Beulah Hill Road S., Pinehurst. Info and tickets: www.womenofthepines.org.

FILM SERIES. 7 p.m. Watch Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels during the British Are Coming Film Series. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St.,

Southern Pines. Info: (910) 420-2549 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

OLD TIME JAM. 7 p.m. If you play old-time music or are interested in learning more about it bring your instrument (banjo, mandolin, fiddle, guitar) and join the jam. Spectators are welcome. Free of charge. Starworks Cafe and Taproom, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: www.StarworksNC.org.

LECTURE SERIES. 7 - 8 p.m. The Ruth Pauley Lecture Series continues with Dr. Anne Weiss speaking on exploring NASA. Owens Auditorium, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst. Info: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

Saturday, April 27

CRAFT DAYS. Children and their families can come by the library for Drop-in Craft Days and work on crafts and coloring at their own pace. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

ART EXHIBIT. 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. The Garden Club of the Sandhills ushers in the spring season by hosting the “Blooming Art” exhibit, featuring professional floral designers, local garden club members and local artists. Tickets are $20. The exhibit continues on April 28 from 12 - 4 p.m. Campbell House, 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info and tickets: www.ticketmesandhills.com.

CONCERT. 7 p.m. Join Trinity Music Academy for the finale to its concert series, a gala evening with Sophia Pavlenko and friends. Info: www.trinitymusicacademy.org.

BROADWAY CONCERT. 7 p.m. The Sandhills Repertory Theatre puts on an operatic Broadway concert. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 420-2549 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

Sunday, April 28

BROADWAY CONCERT. 2 p.m. The Sandhills Repertory Theatre puts on a Broadway concert. Sunrise Theater, 250 N.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 420-2549 or www.sunrisetheater.com.

CALENDAR

UPCOMING EVENTS

Saturday, May 11

CONCERT. 7:30 p.m. The Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra presents Bad to the Bones with Joseph Alessi. Seabrook Auditorium, 1200 Murchison Road, Fayetteville. Info: (910) 433-4690.

Sunday, May 12

LATINO FESTIVAL. 1 - 6 p.m. Latinos Activate JOCO announces the eighth annual JOCO Latino Festival, a vibrant celebration of Latino culture and community engagement. The festival will be held at 105 S. Raiford St., Selma. Info: www.latinosactivatejoco.com.

Saturday, May 18

CORVETTE SHOW. 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. Corvettes of Sandhills is hosting its third annual Corvette show. There will be a silent auction, trophies, dash plaques, door prizes, music, food trucks and more. Rain or shine event. Sandhills Community College, 3395 Airport Road, Pinehurst.

WEEKLY EVENTS

Mondays

WORKSPACES. 7 a.m. - 3p.m. The Given Tufts Bookshop has a new pop-in co-workspace open on Mondays and Thursdays in the upstairs conference room. Bookshop floor and private meeting room by reservation only. Info: www.giventuftsfoundation.com.

WORKOUTS. 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to get their workout on. Open Monday through Friday. Cost for six months: $15/ resident; $30/non-resident. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

CHAIR YOGA. 9 - 10 a.m. For adults 55 and older. Help offset body aches encountered with desk work. This is an accessible yoga class for bodies not able to easily get up from and down to the floor. Do standing or sitting in a chair. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

STRENGTH AND BALANCE WORKOUT. 11 - 11:45 a.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to

enjoy a brisk workout that focuses on balance and strength. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

RESTORATIVE YOGA. 12 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Practice gentle movements that may help alleviate pain and improve circulation and general wellbeing. Bring your own mat. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

GAME ON. 1 p.m. For adults 55 and older. You and your friends are invited to come out and play various games such as corn hole, badminton, table tennis, shuffleboard, trivia games, and more. Each week enjoy a different activity to keep you moving and thinking. Compete with friends and make new ones all for free. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BRIDGE. 1:30 - 4:30 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Enjoy games of bridge with friends. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

Tuesdays

SOUND BATH. 9 - 10 a.m. Adults 18 and older can enjoy the rhythm and vibration of this medicine drum sound bath moving body and mind into deep rest mode. Your body will be refreshed and your mind clear and quiet. A unique and ancient healing arts practice. Cost is $16 for residents and $24 for non-residents. Train Station, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

SLOW FLOW YOGA. 9:30 - 10:30 a.m. Adults 18 and older can learn how mindfulness can change your life with Brian O’Grady. Please bring your own yoga mat. Cost is $25 for residents and $35 for non-residents. Train Station, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

PLAYFUL LEARNING. 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. Come for a drop-in, open playtime for ages birth - 3 years to interact with other children and have educational playtime. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-3642.

BABY RHYMES. 10:15 a.m. Baby Rhymes is spe cially designed for the youngest learners (birth- 2) Award Winning Pressu SERVICES HOUSE WASHING WINDOW CLEANING GUTTER CLEANING ROOF CLEANING DRIVEWAY CLEANING DRYER VENT CLEANING before after before before after

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and their caregivers. Repetition and comforting movements make this story time perfect for early development and brain growth. There will be a duplicate session at 10:45 a.m. An active library card is required. Dates this month are April 2, 9, 16, 23 and 30. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

HEALING YOGA. 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Adults 55 and older can try an entry-level class, for a mind and body workout that fuses dance moves with gentle aerobics, tai chi and yoga. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

GAME DAY. 12 p.m. Enjoy bid whist and other cool games all in the company of great friends. For adults 55 and older. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

CHESS. 1:30 - 5 p.m. Come join a chess group, whether you have been playing for a while or you have never played. This is a free program. Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. 15501, West End.

LINE DANCE. 4:45 p.m. Put on your dancing shoes and line dance. This is for beginners and is a free program. Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. 15-501, West End.

SOUND BATH. 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. Adults 18 and older can enjoy the rhythm and vibration of this medicine drum sound bath moving body and mind into deep rest mode. Your body will be refreshed and your mind clear and quiet. A unique and ancient healing arts practice. Cost is $16 for residents and $24 for non-residents. Train House, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

Wednesdays

CHAIR YOGA. 10 - 11 a.m. For adults 55 and older. Help offset body aches encountered with desk work. This is an accessible yoga class for bodies not able to easily get up from and down to the floor. Do standing or sitting in a chair. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BRAIN BOOST. 10 - 11 a.m. Test your memory while creating new brain connections. This is a free program. Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. 15-501, West End.

KNITTING. 10 - 11 a.m. Learn how to knit or just enjoy knitting with other people. This is a free program. Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. 15-501, West End.

LEARN AND PLAY. 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. Come in for an open play date with your toddler or preschooler. There will be developmental toys and puzzles as well as early literacy tips on display for parents and caregivers to incorporate into their daily activities. April 3, 10, 17 and 24. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

JEWELRY MAKING. 10:30 - 11:30 a.m. For adults 55 and older. Come with friends to create fun designs and memories. Supplies are on-site. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave.,

Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

PIANO. 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Join Flint Long to play piano or just listen. This is a free program. Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. 15501, West End.

SLOW AND STRETCHY. 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Adults 55 and older can flow through yoga poses slowly and intentionally, moving breath to movement, stretching everything from your head to your toes. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

LINE DANCING. 12 - 1 p.m. Looking for new ways to get your daily exercise in and care for yourself? Try line dancing. For adults 55 and older. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

CHAIR VOLLEYBALL. 1 - 2 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Get fit while having fun. Free to participate. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BRIDGE. 1:30 - 4:30 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Enjoy games of bridge with friends. All materials included. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

DANCE. 2 - 2:30 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Instructor Maria Amaya will introduce you to dance fitness in this class designed for anyone who wants to gently and gradually increase cardio function, mobility and balance. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

LINE DANCING. 2 p.m. The town of Vass will host line dancing for seniors every other Wednesday. Cost is $5 per session. Vass Town Hall, 140 S. Alma St., Vass. Info: www.townofvassnc.gov.

LIBRARY PROGRAM. 3:30 p.m. At The Library After School (ATLAS) is an after-school program for children from kindergarten through second grade who enjoy activities, crafts, stories and meeting new friends. Dates this month are April 3, 10, 17 and 24. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

TAI CHI. 6:30 p.m. Come learn tai chi. There is no age limit and the classes are open to the public. Cost is $10 per class. Seven Lakes West Community Center, 556 Longleaf Drive, Seven Lakes. Info: (910) 400-5646.

YOGA. 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. Grab your yoga mat and head to Hatchet for a yoga session with Brady. Session cost is $10. Hatchet Brewing Company, 490 S.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.hatchetbrewing.com.

Thursdays

WORKSPACES. 7 a.m. - 3p.m. The Given Tufts Bookshop has a new pop-in co-workspace open on Mondays and Thursdays in the upstairs conference room. Bookshop floor and private meeting room by reservation only. Info: www.giventuftsfoundation.com.

MOORE COUNTY FARMERS MARKET. 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. The year-round market features “producer only” vendors within a 50-mile radius providing fresh, local and seasonal produce, fruits, pasture meats, eggs, potting plants, cut flowers and local honey. Crafts, baked goods, jams and jellies are also available. Market is located at the Armory Sports Complex, 604 W. Morganton Road, Southern Pines.

GIVEN STORY TIME. 10 a.m. Bring your preschooler to enjoy stories, songs and activities. Given Memorial Library, 150 Cherokee Road, Pinehurst. Info: (910) 295-3642.

BALANCE AND FLEXIBILITY. 10 - 11 a.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to enjoy a class that will help reduce the risk of taking a tumble while increasing your ability to recover if you do. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

MUSIC AND MOTION. 10:15 and 10:45 a.m. Does your toddler like to move and groove? Join Music and Motion to get those wiggles out and work on gross and fine motor skills. For ages 2 - 5. An active library card is required. Dates this month are April 4, 11, 18 and 25. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

CROCHET CLUB. 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to come with friends to create fun designs and memories. Supplies are

CALENDAR

on-site. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

STRETCH, STRENGTH, BALANCE. 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Adults 55 and older can enjoy exercises performed standing or sitting that will improve overall quality of life. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

ADAPTIVE YOGA. 12 - 1 p.m. Adults 55 and older can enjoy yoga that meets you where you are. Create a sense of balance and ease by slowly increasing your range of motion and mobility while maintaining your natural abilities. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

CHESS AND MAHJONG. 1 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Bring a board and a friend. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

MEDITATION. 1 - 2 p.m. Adults 55 and older are invited to connect with nature and with themselves in this 30-minute meditation. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

CABIN TOURS. 1 - 4 p.m. The Moore County Historical Association’s Shaw House grounds, cabins and gift shop are open for tours and visits. The restored tobacco barn features the history of children’s roles in the industry. Docents are ready

to host you and the cabins are open Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Shaw House, 110 W. Morganton Road, Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-2051 or www.moorehistory.com.

IMPROVERS LINE DANCE. 3 - 5:30 p.m. Put on your dancing shoes and line dance. This is a free program. Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. 15-501, West End.

LITTLE U. 3:30 p.m. Southern Pines Public Library’s new preschool program for children ages 3 1/2 to 5. There will be stories, songs, rhymes and activities that explore the world of books, language and literacy. Little U is a fun and interactive program designed to help preschoolers develop early literacy skills in preparation for kindergarten and beyond. April 4, 11, 18 and 25. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

SOUND BATH.

6:30 - 7:30 p.m. All ages can enjoy the rhythm and vibration of this medicine drum sound bath moving body and mind into deep rest mode. Your body will be refreshed and your mind clear and quiet. A unique and ancient healing arts practice. Cost is $4 for residents and $6 for nonresidents. Train House, 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

TRIVIA NIGHT. 7 - 9 p.m. Come enjoy a beer and some trivia. Hatchet Brewing Company, 490 S.W. Broad St., Southern Pines. Info: www.hatchetbrewing.com.

CALENDAR

Fridays

AEROBIC DANCE. 9 - 10 a.m. For adults 55 and older. Enjoy this low-to-moderate impact class with energizing music for an overall cardio and strength workout. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

JAM SESSION. 9:30 - 11:30 a.m. Do you like to play an instrument, sing or just listen to music? Come join a music jam session. This is a free program. Moore County Senior Enrichment Center, 8040 U.S. Highway 15-501, West End.

TAP CLASS. 10 - 11:30 a.m. For adults 55 and older. All levels welcome. Cost per class: $15/resident; $30/non-resident. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

QIGONG. 1 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Classes will consist of chair and standing movements that can help soothe achy feet, tight hips, lower back pain and ease restriction in mobility. Free of charge. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

BRIDGE. 1:30 - 4:30 p.m. For adults 55 and older. Enjoy games of bridge with friends. All materials included. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

HOMESCHOOL HANGOUT. 2:30 - 4:30 p.m. Homeschool Hangout is for homeschooling families. Share ideas, triumphs, challenges, and questions while you get to know other families in the area. This is a drop-in program. Board games, coloring sheets and snacks will be provided. Dates this month are April 5, 12, 19 and 26. Southern Pines Public Library, 170 W. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-8235 or www.sppl.net.

LINE DANCING. 3 - 4 p.m. For adults 55 and older. If you’re interested in learning dance moves and building confidence on the dance floor, this class is for you. Leave your inhibitions at the door and join in. Cost for a monthly membership is $36 for residents and $52 for non-residents. Douglass Community Center, 1185 W. Pennsylvania Ave., Southern Pines. Info: (910) 692-7376.

Saturdays

MOORE COUNTY FARMERS MARKET. 8 a.m. - 12 p.m. The market features “producer only” vendors within a 50-mile radius providing fresh, local and seasonal produce, fruits, pasture meats, eggs, potting plants, cut flowers and local honey. Crafts, baked goods, jams and jellies are also available. The market runs through November. Downtown Southern Pines, 156 S.E. Broad St., Southern Pines. PS

Saturday, April 27, 10am - 4pm

A Festival of Horal Arrangements Interpreting Art Garden Club of the Sandhills presents

Campbell House Gallery 482 E Connecticut Ave | Southern Pines, NC General Admission: $20

Sunday, April 28, 12pm - 4pm Benefiting: Local Horticultural Projects - SCC Gardens and ScholarshipsThe Boys and Girls Club of the Sandhills

New

OWENS AUDITORIUM, BRADSHAW PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, PINEHURST

A New Era

Appalachian Spring

TUE, MAY 14 | 7:30PM

OWENS AUDITORIUM, BRADSHAW PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, PINEHURST

Michelle Di Russo, conductor

Your North Carolina Symphony performs music from Star Wars by John Williams, Copland’s Appalachian Spring, and selections from Grieg’s Peer Gynt plus, Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries.

Immerse yourself in live music with your North Carolina Symphony performing at our new home in Moore County.

Landscape Tips - 4 Week Series - Harry Neely - April 22, 29, May 6, 13, 10:00-12:00 $101-wait list

Next Step Acrylics - Beth Ybarra - May 8, 9, 10:00-2:00 $96

Silk Painting Introduction - Kathy Leuck - April 8 & 9, 9:30-12:30 $112

Creating Altered Nat Geo Papers - Carol Gradwohl - April 11 & 12, 10:30-3:30 $113

Intro to Encaustic Wax - Pam Griner - April 10, 1:00-3:00 $34-wait list

Enhanced Acrylics - Pat McMahon - May 21 & 22, 10:00-12:00 $48

CARLOS MIGUEL PRIETO MUSIC DIRECTOR

Woofstock

Memorial Park

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Photographs by Diane McKay

Don Sugg, Oso & Ewock

CeCi Neill, Cassie Drexel, Joan Meade, Denver

Mack & Alexandra Coffey, Cosmo

Clara, Cecelia, Emma & Natalia Taylor, Marlowe & Nate, Lilly & Harper

Sile Michaela & Mr. Dimples

Rob & Marcia Turley, Bruce Wayne

Donna Turner, Miss Gracie, Annie

Dan & Mia, Billy, George & Jane

Sandhill Seen

Young People’s Fine Arts Festival

Campbell House

Friday, March 1, 2024

Photographs by Diane McKay

Jarred, Atticus & Rose

Grace Stroud, Victoria Landers

Jin, Julia, Jacob & Jumi Yoon Ann, Garland, Erin & Benton Parsons

Donald & Baylee Sebastian Abby Adkins, Nicole Davis, Makla Sanders

The Yow Family

Miles, Meagan & Justin Miller

The Matthias Family Krissy & Cecilia Jones

Mark, Ava & A.J. Dwyer

April PineNeedler

ACROSS

DOWN

ONOMATOPOEIA

(A word that sounds like the noise it describes)

Puzzle answers on page 134

Mart Dickerson lives in Southern Pines and welcomes suggestions from her fellow puzzle masters. She can be reached at martaroonie@gmail.com.

Sudoku:

Fill in the grid so every row, every column and every 3x3 box contain the numbers 1-9.

“I See Great Things in Baseball”

The boys of spring, summer and fall

The first time I saw Jim “Catfish” Hunter up close was during spring training in the late ’70s. The New York Yankees, who trained in Fort Lauderdale, were playing the Pittsburgh Pirates, who called Bradenton their winter home. We drove south all night and managed to get to Florida in time to see a game — we didn’t care which one, we were on vacation. I believe, though I can’t swear to it, that this was the year my wife, the War Department, who was educated at a fine Midwestern university famous for its engineers and astronauts, looked around the stands at the great number of people wearing black baseball caps with a gold ‘P’ on them and said, “This must be some kind of Purdue alumni society.” Of course, she hadn’t slept in 24 hours.

Anyway, we saw Hunter outside the ballpark. Like us, he was just arriving. Fueled by caffeine, we were wearing T-shirts and sunscreen. He was wearing a powder blue leisure suit and the easygoing demeanor of a man who would be spending the day lounging in the bullpen. Catfish was looking stylish — I said it was the ’70s, right? — but he had nothing on Willie Stargell, who was often seen driving around Bradenton in his Rolls-Royce.

For those who don’t remember Hunter, he won 224 games in his Hall of Fame pitching career for the A’s and the Yankees. He was an eight-time All Star and pitched for five World Series champions. Though it was Curt Flood who led the charge to overturn baseball’s reserve clause (it finally happened in 1975), Hunter became the game’s first million-dollar free agent when Charles O. Finley, owner of the A’s, failed to live up to the terms of Hunter’s contract. It was Finley who, after drafting the promising prospect from the bucolic eastern outposts of North Carolina,

decided the young man with a bum foot needed a nickname. How he lit on Catfish, I have no idea. Hunter, weakened by diabetes and plagued by arm trouble, retired at the end of the ’79 season at the age of 33. He remains the last pitcher in Major League baseball to throw 30 complete games in a season. Twenty years after hanging ’em up, he died at age 53 of Lou Gehrig’s disease.

The next, and last, time I saw Hunter up close was when I was sent to his home in Hertford, North Carolina — where everyone knew him only as Jimmy — to take his photograph along with his son, Todd, and his brother, Peter. Todd was 14 years old and hitting .444 for the Pirates of Perquimans County High School. Peter was the team’s coach. He was also, incidentally, the brother involved in the hunting accident that cost Jim a toe and embedded buckshot in his right foot.

Jimmy was 39, plus or minus, the day I showed up to take his picture. His most recent appearance on the mound had been in a Perquimans alumni game, where he hung a curve ball that Todd pulled down the left field line for a double. The next batter homered. Catfish did have a knack for giving up the long ball.

While Peter and I waited for Jimmy to join us for the photo shoot — it was a working farm and he was on a tractor plowing the fields behind his house — Peter was throwing a little batting practice for Catfish’s youngest son, Paul, who was maybe 6 at the time. Make no mistake, athletic genes are real. Peter would throw the ball (a regulation baseball) underhand to Paul, who kept hitting frozen ropes right back through the box. Bam. Bam. Bam. When Jimmy finally arrived, he watched his son’s hitting exhibition for a few moments in silence, then looked at his brother and said, “Throw it overhand.” With that, he went inside to clean up.

After taking a couple of photos, one with Catfish and the two Pirates posed in front of a sign painted on the side of a barn that said “The Pride of Perquimans,” Jimmy invited the War Department (my assistant) and me into his house. The balusters supporting the railing going upstairs were made completely of baseball bats. More impressive was the silver replica of the World Series trophy on the table next to the stairs.

“Reggie Jackson had this made for me,” Jimmy said. It was by way of saying thanks. Mr. October telling a teammate that, if it wasn’t for him, they never would have gotten that far.

It may only be April, but fall is always in the air. PS

Jim Moriarty is the Editor of PineStraw and can be reached at jjmpinestraw@gmail.com.

HARRY BLAIR

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