October Missouri Melons
The Forge of Vulcan
Gene’s Salsa
This epic sauce is a Promethean combination of wood-fired vegetables, not some thin tomato gruel ground in that cute little molcajete you bought at a tourist trap in San Antonio. The recipe makes about a quart, and it’s great with any smoked meat. Use hickory and grill two tomatoes, six tomatillos, an onion, at least one jalapeno (all halved) and two cloves garlic; puree with a cup of chopped fresh cilantro, a tablespoon of crushed cumin, a tablespoon of salt and the juice of a lime. Serve warm.
Lawrence on Lycoris, the Red Spider-Lily
In her luminous classic A Southern Garden (1942), horticulturalist and Welty correspondent Elizabeth Lawrence (1904-1985) tells the story behind the red spider-lily, Lycoris radiata, one of the South’s most beloved flowering perennials.
Toward the middle of September every garden in the South is filled with the flame-like flowers of red spider-lilies, Lycoris radiata. On the first days of the month, when the bloom of phlox is done and chrysanthemums are not even showing color, the season for flowers seems to have passed. Then the naked scapes of the red lilies spring from bare ground and flower almost overnight, lighting all of the dark corners and even the waste places. In any garden where there are a few, there will soon be many, for the bulbs require shallow planting if they are to bloom, and with shallow planting they multiply rapidly. In my garden (Lawence lived in Raleigh, North Carolina jly) they have increased until they are everywhere—everywhere except in the borders, because there are few flowers of a color that is agreeable with the brilliant nopal red of the stiff long-stemmed lilies. They are most beautiful when planted to themselves, and there cannot be too many of them. The quick color that flares up suddenly as a flame burns out almost as soon. After scarcely more than two weeks they are gone.
Until recently when it was discovered that these red spider-lilies are identical with the Japanese Lycoris radiata, they were known in the South as Nerine sarniensis, the Guernsey-lily. In Herbitaria, vol. IV, Mr. Wyndham Hayward gives an account of how the mistake was at last cleared up. In North Carolina, we might have wondered before, if we thought at all about the flowers that grow in out garden, about the name nerine. For the nerine is a South African genus, and the first red spider-lilies in North Carolina (and probably in this country) came directly from Japan to a garden in New Bern. They were brought to that garden nearly a hundred years ago by Captain William Roberts who was with Commodore Perry when he opened the ports of Japan. The Captain brought three bulbs which were, his niece Mrs. Simmons says, in such a dry condition that they did not show signs of life until the War between the States. The original bulbs have increased and have been passed on until they have spread across the state. They grow as far west as Morganton but do not survive in Asheville. Maryland is the northern limits of their hardiness; near Baltimore they sometimes survive and bloom in sheltered places. The best time to divide the bulbs is after the foliage dies down in spring.
Tabasco Rain
Theda Mott’s Grocery
Faulkner Montage
Making Pepper Vinegar
Blue Suns
Smith Park Redux
On August 21, a Notice of Intent was presented to Mississippi Landmarks Coordinator Katherine Anderson at the Mississippi Department of Archives & History. This notice was to inform her and the Historic Preservation division of MDAH that the owners of Smith Park, “the city of Jackson” intended to alter the park, which had been declared a Mississippi Landmark this past April 21. The notice reads, “In 1972 (sic) a concrete ‘creek’ was installed at Smith Park. This abandoned creek needs to be removed and filled in and sodded. It is dangerous at it is and non-functioning. This will generally double the size of the usable park, also smooth out berms and use dirt for filling in creek.” The date cited for initiation of this alteration is November 1.
Though the notice bears a stamped signature of Mayor Lumumba, the original was presented to Ms. Anderson by John Kane Ditto III. What this document proposes is nothing less than a razing of the park, essentially the first phase in the so-called renaissance that the “Friends of Smith Park” (of whom Ditto III is a charter member) have been planning, a makeover that would destroy the historical elements of the park (e.g. the Order of the Eastern Star Memorial, the iconic A-frame stage and the 1900 monument on the southwestern edge) and reduce its landscaping to a featureless, treeless plaza, nothing more than a nexus of concrete walks. The Notice of Intent states that the “creek”, which is actually a symbolic model of the Pearl River conceived by award-winning landscape designer Rick Griffin, has become “abandoned, ignored, a trash ‘receptacle’, dangerous and non-usable”. The fountains and pools are in fact functional, and they are no more “abandoned and ignored” or “dangerous and non-usable” than any number of many other features of downtown Jackson, Mississippi.
In affirming this document, Mayor Antar Lumumba–a self-confessed champion for the homeless–has abandoned his pledge to be mayor for “all the people” of Jackson and has thrown in his lot with the moneyed interests in the city, particularly those of Downtown Jackson Partners, a state-ordained fiefdom of Ben Allen, and the Dittos, who own the only available commercial property (200 North Congress) adjacent to the park. If this Notice of Intent is approved by the 9-member Mississippi Department of Archives & History board of trustees, which as it so happens is presided over by John Kane Ditto, Jr., then the last remaining greenspace in downtown Jackson will become a featureless “McPark”, without character, without history and without shade. If you, the citizens of Jackson, let your city government do landscaping for John Kane Ditto père et fils, then you’re a bigger bunch of suckers than I think you are.
