By Loretta Humble/Around the Town
Last week I tried to offer you a peace offering for my talking so long about all the Thanksgiving dinners I had. I told you if I offended you, to let me know and I’d give you a cup of the gumbo I was going to make from the Thanksgiving leftovers. I got no requests, except a broad hint from Michael Hannigan, who told me how much he likes gumbo. That shouldn’t surprise me. You never take me up on my offers. You wouldn’t take my purselane; you wouldn’t take my lamb’s quarters, and when I ask you for a solution for something that is puzzling me, you never respond. Well, sometimes Fran Estes and Donna Rinn do, but they are a VERY small percentage of you. At least I think they are. Oh my, what if they are IT? What if they are the only ones reading my chatter? Well, they didn’t request gumbo, either. I guess it’s because they thought the column was OK. But then maybe it’s because they, and the rest of you if there are any more of you– don’t think I can make good gumbo. Well, you’re all wrong. I make excellent gumbo.
But now you’ve missed your chance. I’ve been reorganizing my freezer, and I found a bunch of gumbo from previous batches, and I’ve got to eat that up before I can make more. I’m certainly not going to feed you gumbo that’s been in the freezer since spring. And by the time I get around to making more we will all have forgotten all about it.
I got to do two fun things this week. First Jo Ann Surls took me as her guest to a fashion show at the Arboretum sponsored by the Athens Women’s Clubs. And we both won door prizes—Jo Ann won fancy jellies and I won a wool scarf, which we immediately traded with one another. We had a great lunch and learned the latest styles are not exactly what Jo Ann and I are wearing. And because Charlene Hughes was there I learned something else I’d been wondering about for a while.
Charlene and Don Hughes live just down the road from me, and I am so impressed with their garden. I want to grow a garden like it. So I watch them all the time, trying to learn their secrets. One thing Don does is save up lots of leaves to plow into the soil in the fall. He has had them in big black garbage bags stacked up neatly on the side of the garden all year. But for the last week, all those bags had been sitting in neat rows all over his garden. Aha! I said, he’s got some secret reason for leaving them in the bags instead of dumping them on the ground. I’ve got to find out if there is something here for me to learn.
But Charlene cleared it up for me. When Don started to dump the leaves, fire ants came out of the bags and attacked him. So he left them in the bag till he figured out how to deal with the fire ants. I didn’t ask what that entailed, but I guess he figured it out, because now they are out and tilled in.
The other fun thing of the week was when Carl and I got to visit Michael and Catherine Lenz’s new place, which is the lovely house on East Tyler Street when Vivian Tumlinson used to have her real estate office, where we heard a wonderful young singer from South Africa named Noa Milan. It seems Amanda Whatley was in South Africa doing good deeds, when she happened to go to a little concert that Noa, whose day job is teaching music, was putting on. She was so impressed with Noa that she persuaded her to come to the states and see if she can make it big time. And I promise you, Noa is THAT good. And she is starting that effort right here in Henderson County. She is going to do a benefit performance at Henderson County Performing Arts Center, on December 19. I know it is a busy time of year, but take my word, if you go, you will be glad you did.
You can get more information and buy tickets by contacting Catherine Lenz at 903 677 4247, or messaging her on Facebook.