A candle in the window

A candle in a window can mean a number of things. It can signify waiting for a loved one to return home. It can mean a warm fire and good food is waiting or announce the birth of a child. To me it means coming home to a place filled with goodness and comfort. I’ve lived all over the place as MrD had to change duty stations quite a bit while in the Air Force. New England is so charming because they have a year round tradition of lighting the candle in the window. Some are drawn to that area just for that reason.

My little community of Old Salem, NC that I talk about quite often is dotted about with a few homes that celebrate with a candle in the window. It’s pretty shining both night and day. I use to have candles in all my windows and keep them on all the time. I’m thinking about doing that again. I will be the only one in my neighborhood that does unless I can talk Gail, Almeda, and Mary Ann in to doing the same. You know—Gail may have one—do you?

( no candle but I couldn’t resist the geraniums and the pretty cyclamen in the window)

I love to walk in  my neighborhood at night and look at the lights twinkling from the life inside. Do you do that? Do you take walks at the evening edge and gather peace from the warmth of a neighbor’s home? I am so fond of neighborhoods and communities that display their welcome faces. I think a candle in the window is a friendly gesture that says—we are in our home making memories by the hearths of our hearts.

Enlarge the photo—-From my hearth to yours———–big hugs.

I hope you are making memories at the hearth of your heart. I’m not at my computer consistently this week but if you would like to leave a comment about today’s article, I’ll be checking in periodically and would enjoy hearing your comments.

My Garden Center Commercial

My commercial airs tomorrow. I’m so excited about having this new opportunity. One of the air times is during the Martha Stewart show and Paula Deen. It airs three times in the morning and then at random times from there on. I’ve got the DVD recorder set to record my first professional moment on television. ( The original piece is in better quality)

I can see lots of ways to improve it already. My part was to take the pictures, write the script, and I created all the text advertising. Deidre came over to my house and sat down with me to show what she wanted on each page.

A professional reader read my script but I may do the voiceovers in the future. I created this commercial on my Mac using Imovie, Powerpoint, Garage Band, and Iphoto. I’ve had a few request recently to do more as it saves the customer a good deal of money.

I get better each time I make one. The customer gets to take the final podcast and have it aired in the television time slots they have purchased. I can cut production time in half at least.

The Briar Patch is going in to their fresh produce phase of the season. They want the people of our community to know they carry gourmet foods along with home and garden decor. I buy from them on a regular basis. They have the best strawberries and strawberry cake I’ve ever eaten.

I’d like to do a live podcast for this garden center for their next commercial. I certainly do hope it gives the attention they so much deserve. I see too that they are having a big sale with the launch of the commercial. I’ll have to go add that to their website that I maintain for them.

Let me know what you think. I can use some constructive criticism for my next project.

Thelma’s Out of Control Hobby

A car honked as it passed Thelma’s iris garden in Winston Salem, North Carolina. Thelma and her daughter threw up a hand and chuckled. There goes our pastor who preaches every Sunday for people to bring their hoes and help me weed the iris beds.

This is how I met Thelma. She was sitting on a bucket in the middle of her irises. She greeted me with a delightful twinkle in her eye. She had me summed up before I ever uttered a word. “You like flowers?”, she said. “I’ve got to get these weeds cleared out but that is something not many folks like to do–but I do.”

“That’s a lot of irises Thelma”, I said. “How come you grew so many?”

Evening Glow

Evening Glow @ Tanglewood Park in Clemmons NC  featuring the big Oaks.

A Sea of Blue Ageratum at The Briar Patch

Ageratum from The Briar Patch & Sweet Pea’s Market in Winston Salem, NC. Damien and Deidre Johns demand quality at their nursery. I worked there for several years and Damien is a conscientious nurseryman. He uses only the best growing mediums and stays on a strict schedule while growing his plants. He grows and sells his plants from The Briar Patch garden center on Stratford Road in Winston Salem, NC. I was a customer long before I worked for them. I can highly recommend their plants.

They have a unique assortment and the best quality plants around. Their Sweet Pea’s Market offers locally grown produce and many gourmet mixes you can’t find anywhere else. The Briar Patch & Sweet Pea’s Market are decorated with gardening items you can purchase for your home. They are a Proven Winners nursery also.

The Briar Patch and Sweet Pea’s Fresh Market  on Stratford  in Winston Salem is one of my first choices for buying plants in my yard.

There have plenty of shrubs, roses, perennials, ground covers, vegetabes, locally grown produce, cooking mixes, and garden decorating items waiting on you to visit. They have soil amendments and fertilizers. They carry the Espoma natural and organic fertilizers that I use every year. They also carry mushroom compost which I can’t live without.

They don’t have a website but I wrote another article on them……..More on The Briar Patch and Sweet Pea’s Fresh Market

Street Address:
2366 S. Stratford Road
Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27103
Phone: (336) 768-6990

Why Mushroom Compost Works

Coreopsis Explosion

Coreopsis

Photos from my Tanglewood Park in Clemmons, NC collection

Sit A Spell Stories, The Still

My daddy use to say–If the lead burns red you are dead. Proofing moonshine was done in one of two ways. You could light a match under a spoon of it and if the flame turned blue it was a good proof. A good proof means it had a lot of alcohol in it. If the flame turned red, it had toxins and you’d be blind or dead. Lead burns red.

 Another way was to shake it in the bottle. If it made big bubbles that popped quickly, then it was good. Neither of these methods is reliable cause you can’t detect certain additives that men used back then to boost the proof of their batch. The toxins added like lye and methanol would be deadly but it would make it bubble correctly. 

Many people went blind due to the use of car radiators being used as the condensation coils. The radiator parts or welded points had lead in them.  White Lightening or Moonshine is made from yeast, sugars, corn mash, water, and sometimes  flavorings.  You make moonshine in a Still. You can read about making ‘Shine here. It’s basically all the ingredients above boiling and fermenting away making vapors wich cool in the coils and drip in to the jug waiting at the end. 

I never understood as a child how come we had so much corn and sugar around the house. I thought everybody needed that much. I assumed every house in America needed 2 or 300 lbs of sugar and just as much cornmeal. He’d buy it several times a month in big old huge quantities. My daddy made 190 proof Moonshine. 200 is pure alcohol. My daddy had the most sought after Moonshine in several counties. No one ever went blind or got sick drinking my dad’s ‘Shine. They got divorced and lost their jobs but they never did die. 

The Still looks like a barrel with a cone at the top. Coming off that cone is a long piece of copper tubing in a spiral shape. My daddy use to fill that copper tubing full of sand and wrap it around a fence post in a loose type fashion. The sand inside the copper tubing assured the tubing from getting a kink. Once you got the right spiral shape, you washed the sand out and attached it to the barrel and the jug. 

If you couldn’t afford the copper tubing for the distilling part, then you used a car radiator. My daddy never would use a car radiator cause he said they had lead in the soldered joints. The lead contaminated the ‘Shine and was what made folks sick. 

The mash mix of corn meal, sugar, and yeast started boiling and fermenting. Fermenting means the little yeast critters are eating the sugar and corn and producing a gas as their by product. That gas is your vaporized alcohol and rises to the top of the Still.  The vapors will cool in the spiraled coils and become a liquid. Daddy would let the fist liquid drip on out without catching it cause it had cleansed the coil. Soon he’d determine it was time to start collecting it in a jug. 

I bragged to all my friends that we had a few Stills in our backyard. I was proud of it. My daddy was the son of a mechanic who was the son of an engineer. Our family knew engines and how to construct a good Still. Those are fine ingredients when running “Shine. Those government workers who weren’t buying from you were arresting you. A good fast car came in handy when out running the law. My dad had one of the first 1957 Chevy’s with a 454 and a 4 barrel carburetor. I had three brothers who ran the Shine with him. 

This is how NASCAR got started. Those boys ran ‘Shine at night and made the best race car drivers on the face of the earth—well that’s what daddy said. He and a few well known racing men of today sat around that Still with all the boys and talked racing. I hid in the ring of knowledge. All my stories were learned in the ring of knowledge. It’s that boundary where you can disappear from sight but still hear the conversation. It was very educational.

 He use to take me and my brothers to Bowman Grey race track in Winston Salem, NC and we’d come home with bits of rubber and junk stuck to our scalp. It was fun, loud, and dirty to go to a race back in the 1950s and early 60s. We would always have enough ‘Lightening to please a crowd. They went to Rockingham, Charlotte, Daytona, Darlington, and on and on. I only went when they were home. It was good father and daughter time. 

Daddy drove drunk all the time. Everybody loved my daddy. You’ll find me writing about the good and bad side of my dad. This was actually one of my fond memories. I rather liked all the excitement. That old Still was in our backyard for more than 30 years. The smoke trailed up and danced off the moonlight thus gettting its name—Moonshine. If you ‘Shined during the day the law would see your trail of smoke and find you. Daddy didn’t care sometimes. If he had a big order, he’d ‘Shine all day long. 

Some of you might think I’m from the mountains. I’m not. I’m from the outskirts of a furniture making town. My daddy owned a furniture factory and was a respectable business man. He gave a great deal of money to the Shriners Children Hospital. He gave money and paid the way for many a family to make ends meet. 

Our Still was famous. It was famous with the fire department too. It caught the woods on fire and blew up a couple of times. The vapors would build up too much pressure and blow the top off. That would upset the fire and coals would rain on the dry parched Pines. The firemen loved to come see daddy cause all his profits weren’t burned up in the fire. He always had reserves. The firemen and daddy would talk all night. I’d listen in the ring of knowledge. 

He died in his sleep in 1980. My momma was in the hospital dying of diabetes. I was married about 2 years and living in North Dakota. I’d just had my first child when the call came. I was for sure it was my momma and shocked to find it was my dad. He willed that a autopsy not be performed. We don’t know it— but suspect that he died of lung cancer. My dad was a non-stop smoker. He was good hearted and loved me. I loved him too but there is lots more to this story and some of it not so pretty. But today—we made Moonshine.

*******A hello from the gang at The Shed Blog. You inspired me to go ahead and write this article. They talk about home brew a lot!   http://www.shedblog.co.uk

Water The People Not The Plants

I have many a fond memory of standing here admiring the shade plants. Standing here in the cool mist of the hose….or is it the gush of water from the leaky hose? Who cares when it’s humid and hot. I looked forward to watering time. Anytime is watering time if you work around little pots of flowers. A windy day will drive you nuts.

Our vegetables were out by the road and dried up about as fast as you could blink. They came in little 2″-4″ cups. The soil was light and airy. That spelled disaster on windy days. The tomato plants took the worst beating and looked like victims of a tornado.Their little body parts all dismembered and thrown across 7 counties. Not a sight for the faint of heart.

It was nice standing under the canopy and enjoying the view. The plants under the canopy didn’t need watering as much as the victims baking in the sun. Have you seen a nursery worker water hanging baskets? Do you feel sorry for us? Do you think about what you are going to give us for Christmas? You should. And remember, they had to be hung to begin with. Most of the time when you are watering, there are little old ladies holding on to their canes about to tip over at any moment. Your hose is a lawsuit waiting to happen or worse….a funeral home’s best case scenario.

The inside hanging baskets are on drippers. See the water lines running over head? They have to be turned on one row at a time. You turn on the master valve and then start a sequence of turning on and off until water runs out the bottom of the pot. If all the drippers are on it takes more time cause of less pressure in the system. Takes you a little longer if you have to add fertilizer to the system. Fertilizer gets siphoned into the system with the turn of another set of valves. The geraniums are on another system that has drip lines. Two lines go in each pot. If you water geraniums from the top, the blooms will look horrible and the leaves not so pretty.

One of the customers ask me if wearing my crocs made my feet dirty and how did I stand it. If I don’t wear crocs, my feet rot. That does not sound nice but it is the most kind word I can think of for this situation. The lady looked at all the holes in my shoes and could not stand the thoughts of her feet getting dirty. Crocs keep your feet dry and clean. You can toss them off quickly and rinse them off in fertilizer water;) and they will dry in a few minutes. Tennis shoes and socks stay wet and make your feet look like prunes and smell like fermented road kill. Crocs are soft  so walking on all the uneven ground does not kill ya.

The drippers don’t drip on the flowers cause they are situated so they drip right down to the center of the pot. Unless, one went haywire and is squirting all over creation–you, the blooms, the plants below, and heaven forbid–the customer. That is what we call —little old lady killer no.2. So we see that the indoor hanging baskets are on drippers but what about those other 1,000 outside in the wind?

We must have been bringing some baskets from the main greenhouses cause I don’t see many hanging baskets but believe me there was always plenty. Look at that cute little yellow Sunbini and it’s friend Diamond Frost Euphorbia in the white. They won’t be this pretty in an hour if I don’t get busy watering the outside hanging baskets and move along to them which aren’t so cute all dried out. Nursery workers have a bad hair day every day. We have a leaky wand on the end of the hose. It will more than likely hopefully reach in to the pot of the hanging basket without spraying little old lady in the glasses. In the process of trying to be careful, you soak your arm and undergarments. The water follows gravity and on it’s way gets absorbed by anything and everything on its way. Here is where I strip naked and finally kill off the little old lady..not really.

You have to drag the watering hose carefully past little old lady and her wagon. If not, she will topple to the ground and skin her fragile self. The owners of this little/big garden center where I worked are sticklers for watering practices. You can water the flats from overhead but not the expensive 4″ and above pots. You must get the wand in there just so and let the stream of water hit the flowers at an angle. That way the water fills the pots without damaging the flowers. We don’t care if it downpours on them once you get them home;)

You play this watering game all day. You will water the vegetables several times a day. You’ll water one table one hour and another the next. Yes, we water first thing in the morning before the customers get there and once at closing after they have gone. But come on People…..the hot sun takes its toll and we know you aren’t going to buy a plant that has a frowny face are you?

The trees and shurbs are on a sprinkler system as are the perennials on the other side of the nursery. They come on twice a day. Although, I have been known to drag the hose out there when the sprinkler didn’t reach or new plants came in the middle of the day. My arms got longer and longer as the day went on. You can not turn the indoor drippers and lines on at the same time you run the out door sprinklers. If you do, you could out run the water coming out of the lines its so slow. And heaven forbid you flush a toilet.

Don’t drown the display flowers in the fountain out front cause it holds water and plants can’t swim. Don’t over water the succulants. Don’t forget to water the customer’s containers waiting to be picked up. Don’t forget to water the plants out by the road and hit the vegetables again. Remember to turn off the coffee pot and let the cats in. There is so much more I could tell you about why you should water the plants and not the people. And there is so much more involved in running a nursery. I’m just getting started. I haven’t killed the little old lady yet. We’ll save that for when she gets inside.

This is The Briar Patch in Winston Salem, NC. The owners are Damien and Deidre Johns. They grow some of the very best plants around. He grows most of his own stock here and at their home where they have greenhouses. He grows the plants in quality soil and is a real stickler for keeping up with the needs of each plant. If you go, tell them Anna sent you.  I don’t work here anymore but have only the best things to say about this couple.