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Page 12A THE NORTHSIDE SUN, JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI Thursday, May 7, 2009 Heigh Ho Silver displeased with Rebel Holler’s shape IF YOU’RE JUST halfway polite, I’ll give you my last bite of food in a heartbeat - even if it’s grits, which I love. And it isn’t important if you’re from above or below the Mason- Dixon line. But if you’re rude, no matter if my bucket’s overflowing with milk and honey, I wouldn’t let you lick the spoon. That’s not a nice character trait to own up to, but it’s a fact, and I think it’s true of most Southerners. So, when the Heigh Ho Silver Management Company in Steamboat Springs, Colo., who handles our duplex Rebel Holler, sent husband Willard, brother Alvin, and me an email informing us that our house was not up to their Gold Star Rating Standards, our ears flapped back. Was this some kind of joke, we asked each other? By the hardest, we had managed to hold on to the place through good times and bad, and we were proud and protective of Rebel Holler. It became very apparent however, that this management outfit meant business. They wanted us to remodel; indeed, old Heigh Ho was in a rush for us to redo our (by their definition) sub-standard corral, or they were putting us out to pasture. Back here in Mississippi, even if we disagreed with the company’s assessment, we realized that we were facing a major remodeling job. It wouldn’t involve new barn doors, cleaning out stalls, or adding extra wooden seats and a new Sears catalogue to an outhouse. SO I SPAT the plug-ugly wad of snuff from my cheeks and gums, and wiped the tobaccer juice from the cracks in my chins with my good flour sack apron while the men thoughtfully waxed the tips of their mustaches, undid their string ties and hitched up their galluses. Now bear in mind that this same company had, in only two years of managing our property, made more than just a little money off of us country folk. One of the estimates Heigh Ho sent us, just on repainting the inside of the Colorado property was more than it cost us to enclose the back part of our house here in Jackson some years back. We had the gut feeling that old Heigh Ho wanted to be a major player in our redo at Rebel Holler. Sometimes the fast talking people in resort towns can be about half a step above the law. Their motto seems to be, “Let us prey.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to spot a buffalo in a herd of horses, and one of the three of us should have thought of that at the outset. This became a serious situation for us; the stock market traveling by Lottie Boggan going off its feed had affected everybody. We decided that it would be necessary to make an emergency trip out West on the cheapest airline we could find. We’d rent an economy car in Denver, drive to the ‘Boat’ and see what was going on. BROTHER ALVIN, unfortunately, had another commitment. Willard and I didn’t want to put our pet, June Cleaver in doggie detention; here in Jackson she likes to be fed at 4:30 p.m. Central Standard Time. Colorado’s on Mountain Time. At home in the backyard, she is free to ferociously challenge motorcycles on the street from behind the safety of our brick fence. She can sniff out suspicious aromas and alert the neighborhood to potential terrorists (mostly of the feline variety). Inside our house, June Cleaver feels like she’s roughing it unless she has a kingsized bed to sleep in and the thermostat set to her liking. So, nice guy that he is, Willard volunteered to stay home and make sure June Cleaver didn’t have to alter her high standard of living. It was for all of these reasons that I became the Chosen One. Luckily, I was able to entice a friend, fellow Northsider Billie Jean Rice, to go with me. B’ Jean and I left the bosom of our families and flew to Denver. There we picked up a rental car and drove through the mountains to Steamboat, arriving just before dark. We came in to broken doors, dirty dishes, cracked mirrors, torn blinds, and a cattywampus chandelier in the dining room that was missing two globes. The TV didn’t work; there was no dial tone on the phone. We had no sheets, towels, or washrags; good ole Heigh Ho had taken all of theirs and some of ours to boot. I went to unlock our owner’s closet to get out some extra bedding, but someone else had tried to open it too and the lock was broken. All of this had taken place under the ‘watch’ of our high end rental company. Good old “Heigh Ho Silver.” After a long flight from Mississippi, and the four hour trip through the mountains we bathed with no soap, towels, or washrags. Right before I fell asleep I heard a faint noise from the kitchen that sounded like golf cleats clicking on the tile floor. Rats. I thought. “Heigh Ho the Merry-o,” I said to myself. “I wanna go home.” I pulled the spread over my head and slid as far down in the bed as I could. There was no toilet paper in the house; just empty, frayed, and frumped cardboard rollers and I was sitting on a pitty pot. happenings Basketball camp Millsaps College will host an NBC Basketball Camp for boys and girls, ages nine - 18, June 15 - 18 on the campus. Cost is $350. For more information call 800-406-3926. 25% off all etnia frames 661 Duling Ave.• Jackson • 601.362.6675 • Trish Hammons,ABOC (American Board of Certified Opticians) ThankYou for your business. Calistoga Wine SEAN SUMMERS, &OWNER Spirits THE TOWNSHIP •1109 HIGHLAND COLONY PARKWAY • RIDGELAND • 601.853.8978 • WWW.CALISTOGAWINE.NET
THE NORTHSIDE SUN, JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI Thursday, May 7, 2009 Privet can make a beautiful blooming hedge plant YOUR GARDEN can give you delightful surprises, especially if you aren’t too diligently neat, and have enough room to leave some wild spaces. Early the other morning, I happened to look out the big window over the kitchen sink, and was amazed to see midsized slender trees, their crowns a froth of white blooms, arching over the pathway to the lake. Where did that come from? You can work and plan, spend money and effort, wait years for a visual effect such as this. But to have it just appear one morning - mindboggling! Coffee cup in hand, I went immediately to investigate. It was nothing more, or less, than privet, a basic native weed tree, in sudden full bloom - a poor man’s version of the Laburnum Walk at Bodnant Garden in Wales which people travel hundreds of miles to see. Because I had been busy doing other things in the garden ever since the 2001 tornado that took out half a dozen major oaks in that area, and also because the deer like to nibble on privet, they’ve had a chance to grow and form blooms. (I always hope the deer will satisfy their appetites before they begin on the azaleas.) And such a reward! Probably not very long-lasting, maybe only 10 days, but certainly this week’s wonder in our garden. Nothing much in the bright sunshine of midday, but at dawn or at twilight, pure magic. All because I did nothing. THE NEXT dish-washing episode, I noticed, deep in the woods, a very large treeshaped privet, also fully in bloom. This sprang up after 2001, and I’d meant to grub it out long ago. Now I shall mark it, and the others with blue flagging tape, and when I get around to it, take the loppers to the baseline sprouts and make them into truly attractive trees. And, I was reminded, there was a set of long steps leading down to that largest privet tree, so gardening glimpses MAKE EASTOVER HOME 2320 Twin Lakes Circle Don Potts 601.291.0869 2368 Twin Lakes Circle Susan Mims 601-624-9210 by Mrs. Herman McKenzie maybe I’ll be inspired to clear that out. My history with privet is long and diverse. In a favorite childhood book of mine, Elizabeth Enright’s “The Four Story Mistake,” the Melendy children rejoice at the billowing foliage of a hedgerow of privet, once it is freed from the strangling of the ivy that had also covered their nowrestored house. But that privet didn’t bloom. My senior year at Belhaven College, I became much too well acquainted with the privet’s somewhat classier relative, the ligustrum, a stocky shrub with larger, glossier leaves, which was a prime favorite of landscapers in those post World War II years. I was violently allergic to its fragrance, so in bloom season, my poor roommates sweltered behind closed windows in that non-air-conditioned May. I’ve outgrown my allergies, and someone has long since hacked out those ligustrum (no easy job for anything less than a backhoe), but I still warn everyone against planting it. Thalassa Cruso, one of my very favorite garden writers, tells of creating a sheltered garden at her summer place on the coast of Maine. She chose privet, the same one that’s in my garden now, as her hedge plant, because of its resistance to the winds from the sea. She approved its fast growth, but made sure it was kept in hand by stern pruning and a metal barrier between its roots and her rows of vegetables and perennials. WHEN WE BOUGHT our four acres in Madison County, nearly 25 years ago, I remember spending hours every week, grubbing around at ground level, getting out privet saplings so that the plants I liked, such as the wild huckleberry and the black-haw viburnum, would have a chance. Now, in these post-tornado, post-Katrina years, I have become more tolerant, especially of the bank of privet that sprang up around the stump of a large oak, giving us a privacy barrier to the east. And of course it’s a feast for the deer - as many as 13 stampede along that east fence at a time. Gift plants from real gardeners are a perennial treasure. If they’re giving them away, you can count on them being longlasting. One of my most welcome gifts came from the Tishomingo County garden of Weytha Nunley, who sent me a fertilizer sack full of amaryllis bulbs (she was into recycling before recycling was cool). Not of course our Christmas houseplants, but the true garden amaryllis. Brilliant crimson, a delight in any late spring garden, every year without fail, they come up in a border too shady for many of the other things I planted there, and with no feeding and no supplemental watering, they bloom and delight visitors (who of course all come to the back door) for weeks at a time. And sometimes we can even give ourselves a gift through procrastination. It’s so good when doing the wrong thing brings about delightful results. I somehow overlooked a big sack, probably a dozen fat double-nosed bulbs, of the daffodil ‘Fragrant Rose,’ with white petals and a pinkrimmed cup. Discovering them about Groundhog Day, I stuck them in the moist fresh soil around a couple of those blooming shrubs I was setting in the woodland garden. And now, to my delight, I’ve had fresh daffodils in the garden, and cut blooms in vases on top of the television set, on May l. I think maybe I’ll plan to procrastinate this way next year. 2528 Honeysuckle Becky Tann 601-624-7918 1955 Douglas Don Potts 601.291.0869 Meeting Your Real Estate Needs, Earning Your Trust Since 1977. 601.982.7918 w w w . n i x t a n n . c o m St. Joe sub debs Sub Deb representatives from St. Joseph Catholic School are (from left, back) Ashley Crandall, Gracie Boland, Candace Taylor, Alyssa Nuzzo, Catherine Scott, Catherine Guest luncheon Hostesses for the recent Meh Lady Guest Day Luncheon were Phylisee Overby, Regina Boyles and Murriel Scott. Enjoying the event Book signing Lemuria Books will host a book signing for Robert Olmstead’s new book, “Far Bright Star,” May 20. happenings Cheer tryouts Mississippi Elite will hold tryouts May 9, 12 - 2 p.m. Call Kurt at 601-991-2266 for more details. section B Hamilton, Allison Henle, Katie Gwin, Sadie McCafferty; (front) Mary Stafford Hill, Megan West, Elisabeth Riley and Katie Piazza. are (from left) Edrie Royals, Overby, Emma Nell Lundy, Boyles, Cora Jean Miller, and Scott. Mystery readers The Madison County Mystery Readers will meet May 12, 10:30 a.m., at the Ridgeland Library. Please call 601-853-8392 for more information.
Page 1 and 2: $20 For A Year. Call 957-1122 north
Page 3 and 4: Owen receives foundation’s highes
Page 5 and 6: Jackson Crime The Jackson Police De
Page 7 and 8: Plan (Continued from Page One) crea
Page 9 and 10: Classifieds Get Results! Reach 11,1
Page 11: Dr. Sam Jones, the Rev. Shannon Rog
Page 15 and 16: Katherine Barbour Virginia Parsons
Page 17 and 18: Tri-Delta alumni host party Luke Ab
Page 19 and 20: Barbie’s birthday Tant d’Amis L
Page 21 and 22: Claudia Clark Berry Services were h
Page 23 and 24: Thursday, May 7, 2009 THE NORTHSIDE
Page 25 and 26: THE NORTHSIDE SUN, JACKSON, MISSISS
Page 27 and 28: Scout trip Members of Troop 860 tha
Page 29 and 30: Essay contest Jackson Prep junior R
Page 31 and 32: Powerlifters During the ‘09 seaso

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