7 minute read
Our Town
THE USUAL OUR
Members and guests of the Raleigh Garden Club gather for a National Arbor Day dedication of two trees at Cameron Park in Raleigh in honor of former club members Rita Ann Quinn Roberson and Rosalyn Adcok Dupree.
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“We are an organization of doers.”
–Joyce Moses, president, Raleigh Garden Club
Raleigh Garden Club members take their mission seriously. You can fi nd them planting wildfl owers along roads and public greenways, volunteering at the JC Raulston Arboretum, providing trees for City of Raleigh parks in honor of members who have passed away at the annual Arbor Day memorial ceremony (pictured above), decorating the L.L. Polk House during the holidays, or teaching young girls to plant vegetables and eat well. “We are all over the place,” says president Joyce Moses. Since 1925, the club, which is open to interested gardeners, has been sowing seeds literally and fi guratively. “We have activities and committees for all levels of gardening. We really make sure that everyone feels welcome, and there’s a camaraderie with all of our members,” Moses says. She joined a few years ago as an amateur gardener – she’d always been interested, she says, but with a corporate career and kids, never had the time. Now she’s halfway through a two-year term as president, overseeing the club’s many moving parts. Th e club motto under her term? “ ‘Celebrating gardening pleasures and treasures.’ We talk about what we love about gardening, and then as a result, the treasures we receive fr om the hard work put into our gardening eff orts.” During monthly lunch meetings – June is when they hold an annual potluck gathering – members plan how they’ll share their treasures with the greater community. Philanthropic eff orts include a garden therapy program that has members gardening alongside inmates at prisons, at rehab facilities alongside residents, and at job training and life skills program centers. Raleigh Garden Club also teaches its own membership. “We have master gardeners in our group. Th ey’re fun to learn fr om. … We have a plant sale every year, and garden tours.” Moses says it’s the best of all worlds, a community pursuing a hobby and civic engagement alike. “We are philanthropic and educational. It’s an encouraging group.” –J.A.
“If you want style, if you want knowledge about how to wear your clothing, if you want free personal styling about the rest of the stuff in your closet, we can help
you out.” –Brian Burnett, founder and owner, Glenwood South Tailors and Alterations Brian Burnett knows how to mix old and new: It’s how he first became interested in tailoring clothes, and it’s how he’s making his custom alterations business in Glenwood South relevant for busy customers. “We’re living in a time-pressed world,” Burnett says. “Just this morning I watched a guy holding an iced coffee in his left hand and his kid in the carrier in his right hand, on the phone. If he rips his trousers in the next 8 hours and he needs somebody to come pick those up, who’s he going to call?” The answer, Burnett hopes, is Glenwood South Tailors and Alterations. Customers can call or text Burnett and his team of seven seamstresses to have their clothes picked up, repaired or altered, and delivered back. Customers can also come in for a fitting and have their altered clothes delivered to their home or office. Or, Burnett is proud to say, they can text photos of clothes in their closet for style advice “to see if it’s worth bringing in for tailoring.” The market “is still sort of flabbergasted,” Burnett says. “But people have been having pizza delivered for years. People here are now having $9 juices delivered. I mean, if you trust somebody with your pizza, why not trust them with your trousers?” Burnett grew up in Raleigh, where he learned to love to sew as a child, altering vintage clothes he found with his grandmother at Goodwill. As a student at UNC-Chapel Hill, he worked as a stylist at Nordstrom, where he developed “an understanding of size and fit.” Postgrad, Burnett traveled abroad and fell in love with the “relationship-based” tailor shops on European street corners. He returned home to a career in digital marketing. Today, he’s combining all of it at Glenwood South Tailors, which he opened two years ago. “We don’t do a lot of really exotic stuff … but I know the details of quality fit, and fit based on lifestyle. What’s your profession, how will you wear this? It has to fit you.” –J.A.
743 W. Johnson St., Ste. A; glenwoodsouthtailor.com
OUR Town GAME PLAN
Father and daughter Deac and Ashlyn McCaskill
–Ashlyn McCaskill, 15-year-old UCAR short-track racer
Car racing is in the McCaskill blood. “It’s something that you’re born into as a little kid,” says Deac McCaskill, who first drove a race car when he was about 12. “I’ve been going ever since.” Among the now-39year-old’s favorite aspects of round track racing (“this McCaskill says she “pretty much grew up at the racetrack” and has loved it since she first hopped in a car at age 13. She’s apparently a natural, having won two races within the first few months of her driving career. “I don’t want to brag on my kid,” Deac McCaskill says, “but she’s picked it up really fast.” is Saturday night racing at your local short track … a hobby”) is the camaraderie, McCaskill says. “You’re competitors on the track but when anything bad happens, it’s a huge family that supports you.” For McCaskill, the family environment is literal: Last year, his 15-year-old daughter, Ashlyn McCaskill, started racing UCARs, which are slower and more affordable models. “I run up to 150 mph, and she runs 100 mph.” To the average non-racing driver, that might sound fast, but “it’s really safe,” McCaskill insists. He knows because he works on cars by day, alongside his dad Boyce McCaskill at Boyce’s self-named auto service shop in northeast Raleigh. “I enjoy working on (the cars) as much as I do driving them.” Like her father (and her cousin, Bradley McCaskill), Ashlyn After her first accident earlier this year, the Garner high school sophomore had a concussion that required her to take a few months off of racing. Already, her racetrack peers are mostly men in their 20s and 30s, not the teenaged best girlfriends she spends most of her time with. Neither fact has her wanting to hang up her helmet anytime soon. “I’m not scared, I (was) ready to get back to it. I love it.” “She wants to race every weekend,” Deac McCaskill says. “Some weekends I want to relax and stay home. Ashlyn gets mad because she wants to go racing. But, hey, I guess I’d rather my 15-year-old daughter want to be at the racetrack than somewhere else.” –J.A.
Deac McCaskill races with the CARS Racing Tour, which will be at the Orange County Speedway in Rougemont June 24. photograph by TRAVIS LONG
from left, Lindsay Bissell and Emily Slater
–Emily Slater, co-founder, A Signature Welcome Planning a wedding is no small feat these days. After her own 2013 nuptials, Raleigh resident Emily Slater remembers feeling bogged down by one of the many details she had to tackle beyond the ceremony and reception: putting together welcome baskets for her guests. When her best friend, Lindsay Bissell, asked her “what the one thing was that I would have changed about my wedding,” Slater immediately responded: the welcome gifts. “They were time-consuming, and the process of putting them together was kind of unorganized. It quickly turned into an idea, and we got to work on a business plan.” In the spring of 2014, Slater and Bissell launched A Signature Welcome, their Charleston-based custom gift basket company. The two put together personalized gift packages, full of goodies like local snacks, monogrammed bottled water, and muslin-bagged “revelry remedy” kits with chapstick, advil, breath mints, and even bug wipes and sunscreen for destination weddings. “Details are part of the overall wedding design now. We pay attention to what the bride’s dress looks like and what the color scheme is; we can add the couple’s crest or monogram to many of our items. We want the gift to really reflect the couple and the wedding.” Bissell mans the official HQ in Charleston while Slater is based here in Raleigh; and they both travel frequently to clients throughout the Southeast. Since so much of the packaging can be personalized, A Signature Welcome has organically grown to include corporate events, including past season kick-off gifts to the Carolina Panthers players’ wives. They’ve put together everything from luxe baskets for Martha Stewart’s niece’s wedding in 2015 to elegant, simple party favors for the opening of the new Eatman’s Carpets and Interiors showroom in Raleigh this spring. No matter the occasion, “we work closely with clients and wedding planners throughout the process … the end result is a cohesive, beautiful, and thoughtful gift. It doesn’t look like something that’s just thrown together.” –J.A.
