Churches in Venice

I’m not a birder but I do have a “kitchen window” bird list that I started when I moved to this house and put feeders up. I love watching them while I’m cooking but it’s been several years since I’ve added a new one…until today when I saw a Brown-headed Nuthatch! I had to dig out the bird book to ID him and find the list so I could add him. He was a cute little guy, much smaller than the White-breasted Nuthatch that I see all the time.

I call my kitchen window “LuLu’s TV set” because she loves to sit there and watch the birds too. She’s very calm when it’s just birds but gets pretty riled up when a squirrel comes along.

I took this at a garden shop this past weekend. The mushrooms are glass but the daffodils are real. And now we have possible snow flurries in the forecast and it's going to be in the low 20's tonight. No matter, spring will be here soon.

I love visiting garden shops even though I don't garden as much as I used to. My current yard is mainly shade which isn't that inspiring for gardening. Plus I planted a bunch of stuff when I first moved here, and the deer came and ate almost everything. A few perennials have survived - some bearded iris, shasta daisies, an heirloom rose bush, daffodils - but they ate the rest. I've even had deer come on my porch and eat plants out of pots! They're virtually tame and don't even run when I come out to chase them off - they just slowly mosey off to go eat someone else's plants. Some neighbors built a very elaborate fence and one day when I was out walking, I saw a deer jump that fence and start eating the birdseed out of their feeder. I guess they are very hungry.

I do have one sunny spot inside a deer-proof fence that's for tomatoes, herbs, peppers, and zinnias. Maybe some sunflowers too. But it's about 6 weeks or so before it'll be safe to plant any of that.

We went to a big Southern folk art show last weekend and saw so much amazing and inspirational art. The best part was that all the artists were there too, and you could meet them and buy art directly from them.

I love art shows and will go look at anything, but these days there seems to be a lot of cynical and depressing modern art out there. Folk art is just the opposite – it’s innocent and much of it is hopeful and uplifting. Some of it is hilarious, and the sad works are poignant and moving rather than depressing.

Another name for folk art is “outsider” art – I’m not crazy about that term since it sounds kind of snobby. Self-taught or visionary art are better labels. One of my favorite museums in the world is the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore; it’s a branch of the Smithsonian that focuses on artists with vision and talent and inspiration, but no formal art training.

The Southern show had so much beautiful and/or funky art that I wanted to buy. I walked around the whole show twice trying to decide what I loved the most, and I ended up buying two paintings from an artist named Eric Legge.

And of course, one of them is a church! Not a church in Venice – this looks more like a church in the mountains of NC where I grew up. It’s beautiful. I’d never seen any work by Eric before; he’s a very nice young man and I really enjoyed meeting him. So when I got home I googled and found an interview with him with this incredibly wise quote:

“I don’t paint to sell. I sell so that I can paint.”

This nice pink animal was made by Clyde Jones, one of North Carolina’s most well-known folk artists. He calls his sculptures “critters,” and his home, Critter Crossing, is listed on Roadside America: Guide to Off-Beat Tourist Attractions. You can see his critters all over this area, in restaurants and in other people’s yards. I like his work a lot.

A few years ago, Clyde had a show at the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh, and there were about 50 of his critters in the woods behind the museum. I took my nephew (who was about 3 years old at the time) and we had a blast – it was completely magical to hike through the woods and see all these crazy colorful animals spread out over several acres of forest.

Clyde is a character and is known for being quirky about selling his art. Sometimes he will, mostly he won’t, and sometimes he just gives it away, especially to children. The most famous story is when he refused to sell a piece to Mikhail Baryshnikov who was in the area for a performance and went out to Clyde’s house to see the art. Clyde does lots of presentations in local schools and at the art show last weekend, he was in his booth surrounded by a bunch of happy kids. More photos below.

Our Farmer’s Market is still on its winter schedule (every other Saturday from 10-12) but goes back to the weekly schedule in April (every Saturday from 8-12). I went this morning and it was very crowded and fun – everyone has spring fever, I think, and it’s a beautiful warmish morning here. Not that many vendors were there but lots of buyers with their kids and dogs. A young girl was playing the banjo, and an Easter Egg Hunt was in the works in the daffodil-filled garden next to the market. I wish I’d taken my camera!

I’ve learned that you need to get to the market right when it opens because things like figs and asparagus sell out very quickly. Too early in the year for either of those but today’s hot item was rainbow chard. I bought a bag at 10 am and by the time I left at 10:30, all the chard was gone.

I also bought arugula, parsley, green onions and green garlic, radishes, and eggs. I love my egg man because a few years ago he told me that his chickens are not livestock, they are his pets with 15 acres to roam around in. His eggs are delicious – almost as good as those orange-yolked eggs in Italy.

I bought chocolate chip cookies for my nephews from Emma, who has one of several baked goods booths. I was tempted by her coconut pie but went with the cookies because they are the boys’ faves. I was surprised to see strawberries at one booth – they were beautiful but the man was honest and told me that they were greenhouse-grown and not as sweet as the field-grown ones will be, so I decided to wait.

I also bought six red tulips. They are in a vase in the kitchen, and LuLu is in there now circling them and rubbing against them – she loves fresh flowers and it’s probably just a matter of time before she knocks the vase over. Only one of the tulips is open so I’m looking forward to seeing them bloom this week if my crazy cat doesn't destroy them.

It’s that time of year. Here in North Carolina, we are all in the “eat, breathe, sleep, dream, and talk about nothing but basketball” zone that overtakes our state like clockwork every March. To call it an obsession is no exaggeration at all. We’re hoops mad all the time but once the tournament begins, we get even crazier. Forget Easter or spring fever, for now it’s all hoops, all the time.

My team is the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, known affectionately as “the Heels.” The typical conversation starter these days is “How ‘bout those Heels?” and I hear that at work, in the grocery store, at the dentist, and from both friends and strangers pretty much everywhere I go. People carry their brackets around with them everywhere, and we compare notes about who we picked. I'm starting to get emails from old college buddies who want to talk about our chances. We pull out old “good luck” clothes or charms that helped us win previous championships in 1957 or 1982 or 1993 or 2005 and do various other things to try to please and appease the hoops gods (I have a very tattered but very lucky pompom that I build a shrine for).

I’m cautiously optimistic about our chances this year. We’re ranked Number One in the country, have the best player in the nation, have healed from some mid-season injuries, and are playing very very well. But winning it all in a “one-and-done” tournament like the NCAA is very difficult, and it only takes one giant killer playing the game of his life to knock a better team out. So while I’m trying to take it one game at a time (survive and advance), I can’t help but smile when I think about cutting the nets down on April 7. We’ll see what happens.

Here are a few photos. First is my nephew scoring a basket at the recently opened Carolina Basketball Museum. See all that light blue? That’s Carolina blue! One of our fight songs goes, “I’m Tar Heel born and I’m Tar Heel bred and when I die, I’ll be Tar Heel dead” and my nephews are being “bred” to carry on the tradition, just like my brother and I were.

Our star player was recently named National Player of the Year by Sports Illustrated. Some folks are concerned about an alleged SI cover jinx, but not me. I’m superstitious about other things but not that, and I’m happy for Tyler (aka Psycho T, what a cool nickname!).

I get asked that question all the time. Well, North Carolina is “The Tar Heel State” so everyone who lives here is a Tar Heel. And it’s also the nickname for the sports teams of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

There are several different legends about the origin of the name, and I usually go with the one that dates back to the Revolutionary War. In colonial times, one of North Carolina’s major products was tar from all the pine forests across the state. Some people think that originally "Tar Heels" was an insult, something along the lines of "redneck" or "white trash."

Then the war began and supposedly the troops from North Carolina were very brave (or foolhardy) and refused to retreat or back down, and some famous general said, “Those boys from North Carolina must have tar on their heels” to compliment their bravery. And after that, being called a "Tar Heel" was positive rather than insulting.

UNC-Chapel Hill (founded in 1789) is the oldest public university in the U.S. and “Tar Heels” became the nickname for all the sports teams at that school. So while every resident of NC is a Tar Heel, not every resident is a Tar Heel fan (there are other universities in the state and some people chose to pull for those other teams, though I don't understand why).

But here’s what really confuses people. Our mascot is a ram named Ramses. But we are NOT the UNC Rams, we’re the UNC Tar Heels. Even I don’t completely understand that. Maybe it was just too hard to make a furry suit that looks like a foot?

Our rivals like to point out that a Tar Heel is, in reality, nothing but a dirty foot, and they are right. But I love the name…there are lots of teams called lions or tigers or bears, but ours is unique.

The rivals also like to note that Carolina Blue is a wimpy color more suited to baby nurseries than to athletics, but that’s just sour grapes on their part. ;)

Well, my Tar Heels are still alive and have made it to the Final Four! Twelve days ago, there were 64 teams in the tournament and now there are only four (North Carolina, Kansas, Memphis, and UCLA).

To win the National Championship, you have to win six games in a row. Four down, two to go for the Heels, but the competition gets tougher with every game. And this year, for the first time in history, the Final Four teams are the four Number One seeds which means that the teams left are the best in the country (no Cinderellas this year).

We play Kansas on Saturday night which means a whole week for the excitement and anticipation to build. I’ll be bouncing off the walls by then. Go Heels!

Just to show that indeed, everything is connected...hoops in Venice! In December, I found this basketball court at the base of the campanile of the church of San Francesco della Vigna.

Well, my Tar Heels got hit by a runaway freight train called the Kansas Jayhawks last night. It was pretty ugly, to say the least. We were down by 28 points in the first half and looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights. We couldn’t do anything to stop them. A valiant rally in the second half and we cut their lead to 4 points and then ran out of steam. Sigh. Lots of seriously bummed-out UNC fans are now trying to figure out what in the heck happened. I feel bad for our players because they looked so sad on the TV news but overall, to me, it’s just the way college basketball goes - it was Kansas’ night and not ours. And we had an amazing season – won 36 games and only lost 3, who can complain about that?

I’m more sad about the fact that it will be 7 months until the next game. Now we enter the part of the year where we wait to see which, if any, of our players will leave college early and head for the NBA. I think all of our guys will be back but I’m an optimist and really, who can blame them for moving on to become instant millionaires instead of playing for free?

In happier news from North Carolina, it’s been raining here for about a week. For the past year, we’ve been in an emergency drought situation that’s been pretty scary – at one point, we had less than a month of water left – and it’s so good to get all this rain and see the lake levels rise. Keep it coming.

Here’s some stuff I bought from our local market a few Saturdays ago. Clockwise from the eggs, there is lettuce, asparagus, radishes, scallions, baby turnips (both white and red), and cabbage. The brown square to the left is suet for the bird feeder and above that is some locally produced goat cheese.

In the bottom right corner, you can see LuLu looking longingly at the scallions. She loves long skinny vegetables - she always tries to steal one so she can bat it onto the floor and chase it around. Maybe she’s pretending that it’s a snake? She like green beans a lot too.

I’ve read both of Michael Pollan’s books (The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food) which thoroughly explain all the many good and green reasons to buy locally grown food. But beyond all that, the food just tastes better plus it’s so much fun to shop at an outdoor market. Ours has only been in existence for a few years and people are so excited that it really has a festival atmosphere. And this year, it’s open on Wednesday afternoons in addition to Saturday morning, and it’s so convenient to be able to stop by on Wednesday after work.

But another thing I like is that you can find things you don’t see in a regular old grocery store, like these baby turnips. I’d never had them before (and I’m not a huge fan of “adult” turnips), and they are delicious.

You eat the whole thing – roots, stalks and leaves – and I cooked them like Italian spinach, in olive oil with garlic and red pepper flakes. Then I added a little bit of broth and let them simmer for about 10 minutes until the roots were tender. So good!

Our Farmer’s Market sends out a weekly email newsletter that gives a little preview of the Saturday market. The one I got today said that three of the market's farmers were completely wiped out by that hail storm I wrote about earlier this week, and they are going to have to replant all their summer crops. It’s a rough business – that’s another reason I like to shop there and support these people.

In cat and kitten news, I think we are making some progress. I was in the saferoom with Maria this morning, and LuLu pushed the door open and came in. She didn’t hiss at Maria, she meowed! Then she sniffed the room and left. I haven’t let them get too close to each other yet. And all I can say about Maria is that she is wild and rambunctious and hilarious! I’m really looking forward to this holiday weekend so I can spend more time with them. Hope everyone has a great weekend!