Shades of Blue

I have crossed over to the dark side.  Dark blue, that is.  I am a card carrying member of the Blue Devil Duke community.  I can now converse with authority about things such as K-ville and the rules of tenting.  I understand that the term Cameron Crazies is an endearment.   I refer to things happening “on West” and have ridden the Bull City Connector.   Mad Hatters makes me think of coffee instead of Cheshire cats and misplaced girls.

As a Chapel Hill resident, I live in Tar Heel country.   The clear blue of Carolina colors everything from La Residence’s Tar Heeltini to dorm room doors to the local fire engines.   On game days, cars fly team flags as they line up to park for the buses to the stadium which are draped in, of course, Carolina blue.    After nearly two years here, I have my particular preferences.  I love Foster’s smoothies and Elmo’s greek grilled cheese.  Weaver Street Market has the best chocolate croissants and Chocolatier Stam makes the best soy milk hot cocoa.  

My husband works with UNC, so we had been full family tar heels until my defection.  Luckily, there is precedent for this split in our marriage.  We were a mixed baseball marriage.  As a jersey boy, my husband is a NY Yankees supporter while I am a member of Red Sox Nation.   We might have graciously (or not) acknowledged the skill of the spouse’s team but neither one of us was switching sides. 

The lines of the battle of the blues are not quite so clearly drawn.  Without prior personal stakes in these teams, we are at something of a loss.   Duke is a private school.  UNC Chapel Hill is public. Duke is in Durham, twenty minutes away.  Carolina is quite literally in our backyard.  While both schools field good football teams, it is all about basketball here.   Carolina has the football scandal.  Duke still flinches each time you mention lacrosse.   It’s tough to work it out.

 We’ve decided that we won’t even try.   We’re feeling pretty lucky to live in a place we love, doing work that seems useful.   If that means that there are neighbors who can only speak to one of us at a time accordingly to school allegiances... well, we do still talk to each other.

Healthy Junk Food - A farm tour journal

Food is one the most important defining characteristics of a region. Any person can name a food that is tied to a particular location. Having lived all over the world, I tend to associate food with markets and restaurants. Here in Chapel Hill, this has meant an endless exploring of farmer's markets and local food vendors. I have found local purveyors of just about any food I could imagine from homemade sausage to hand poured chocolates to vegan casseroles and raw food crackers. There is always something new to find just around the corner. This meant that, of course, I had to go on the Farm Tour.

The idea behind a farm tour is that you travel to a farm or farms to see the environment, meet the farmers and get a better understanding of where your food comes from. The orange county farm tour was no different. There were probably forty farms involved in the tour, divided into three areas of exploration. Each farm submitted a brief description of their farm and agreed to have us drive over and wander all over their land. If there was an item of particular interest, it was highlighted in the description. One farm, for example, had the UNC mascot, a blue-horned ram, living with them. There were two farms who listed themselves as Eco-institutes, capable of teaching us to grow our own food or process wool from local sheep. I wasn't really expecting the need to spin my own wool anytime soon but there was another reason to buckle up and head off - healthy junk food.

Stop number one on the farm tour - Home of the UNC Ram. This was a picture perfect cattle farm fifteen minutes from my house. A one hundred year old barn rose behind the front-porched farmhouse. A couple of tractors were parked inside the electric fence behind which roamed two beautiful cattle-like creatures. We met the family that farmed the more than one hundred acres that wrapped around us. They were patient, kind, very friendly and made farm life look like something manageable. I knew I'd have that steer dead in a week but they made me believe that I had a chance. Still, the highlight of the farm was in carb form. Fresh bread made from wheat grown in a couple of side fields of the farm was the junk food here. A local baker is working with area farmers to grow ancient grains as well as wheat. Each loaf of bread had local wheat, teff, spelt or some other grain. It also might have chocolate or spicy black olives. I bought a loaf of every flavor and hid in the car to eat the last chocolate croissant before my son got back.

Farm number two was a creamery. I was actually really excited about this farm. I've been buying cheese from this woman-owned and predominantly woman run farm since we moved south. They have a variety of cheeses that are uniformly yummy. These folks were anxious to have visitors, but very careful. We had to park about 1/4 mile away from the actual farm and wear protective booties on our feet. Hundreds of people shuffled down that stretch of road looking like escapees from a local hospital. But it was so worth it. There were wonderful demonstrations of milking and cheese-making. One of the women had created a video to watch. There were even adorable piglets to distract the smaller children. I didn't care. I went for the cheese. Two new kinds of mozzarella and a tangy farmer's wheel were my first scores of the visit. Then, a heavenly scent filled the air - hot oil. Freshly dipped and fried balls of the newest mozzarella washed down with thick strawberry banana yogurt smoothies. I could have died happy right there.

Farm number three should have been a local dairy. Renowned in the area, they make and sell ice cream at two separate locations. The farm is, I'm told, quite beautiful. Nestled into a small set of hills, it has the requisite farm house and barn as well as milking and ice-cream making buildings. I'm told these things but I can't swear to them because I never made it past the ice cream stand. Sitting on the porch, looking out over the valley while sipping on a root beer float, I reflected on the fact that I had eaten an obscene amount of food over the course of the afternoon. BUT, every bit had been locally grown and prepared from the freshest of ingredients possible. I had been extremely kind to my body while I was stuffing it mercilessly. I decided that I really did like farm tours after all.

The garden tour

I woke up today and realized that this was one of "those" days. This was one of the days that I promised myself when I was packing boxes, packing children and packing pets. I told myself that there would be days when I would be so glad to have put our entire life into boxes and cars and headed south.

Today, you see, is garden tour day. It is a lovely day and I get to spend it wandering around chapel hill looking at beautiful gardens that someone else has to tend. If you are not a garden person, the appeal can seem weak. But if, like me, you are someone who looks at gardens the way chocoholics look at the Godiva window, it doesn't get much better than this.

There are eight private homes that have opened their gates to teeming hordes of flower-crazed fans. As with other community wide activities, tickets have been sold and maps have been printed. Signs sprouted on curbs overnight with arrows and bouquets directing those in search of outer beauty to the promised land.

Knowing my own limitations, I have only planned to see four of the eight gardens. After consulting neighbors, I plan to focus my efforts on one corner of the show neighborhood. I arrive in the show area at around 11:30. It is like parking for a concert. I knew gardening was more important in this area but this is like a sale at Filene's Basement. There are people in straw hats and yellow vests directing us to open spots along the sides of the road. Everyone, as is nearly always the case down here, is pleasant and patient while we jockey for road position. At one point, my parking guru laughingly waves me into a u-turn and parking space as he explains that there is no space left on the length of the road to the first house I want to tour.

The tour is concentrated in a particular neighborhood of Chapel Hill, which allows for multiple garden viewing without moving your vehicle too often. With most of the neighborhood roads parked off and people dressed in their garden viewing best (note to self - next year wear a straw hat), it feels like we are headed to an enormous afternoon tea party.

The first garden is breathtaking. The second garden is splendid. The third garden is perhaps the most interesting use of a vertical lot I've ever seen. The fourth garden looks like something that Hollywood visits when it is looking for garden settings. The goal of the tour is to raise money for the garden club and their various community activities. The goal of the gardeners who go on the tour is to steal good ideas. At the end of two hours, my head is exploding. It would never have occurred to me to tuck a fern garden underneath a two story deck on a sloped lot. I had no idea that simply shifting the material used for a walkway would define a different area of the garden so effectively. One of the gardens has triangular cut-outs of one patio carefully planted with tiny tiny succulents. Another garden uses slant cut wooden boards to create a deer fence that looks like an architectural element while not blocking any of the view. I find myself mentally redesigning the deck on the back of our house so we could incorporate more planters.

Tired and sated, I collapse onto the couch at home. My feet ache, my hands are cramped from note-taking. I let my eyes wander towards our backyard, recently denuded of four trees to open up more space. I could probably put a small pond near the woods, couldn't I? How hard could it be?