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A trip to North Carolina would not be complete without the obligate stop to gawk at Kudzu ( Puereria sp.), that nearly mythical pea relative that is reputed to have swallowed several Southern States, presumably burping loudly...

We were fortunate to have as a guide last weekend Bobby Ward, Secretary of the North American Rock Garden Society (and past president of the same august group). One could not have had a more knowledgeable cicerone. Bobby is a world traveler who is a retired ecologist native to North Carolina: he knew everything, and shared it in just the right doses.

If you look carefully, you can see the trees in the distance (many sixty or more feet tall) are completely covered with this inexorable vine. Despite a thorough search, we couldn't find a single blossom to test to see if indeed it smelled exactly like grape soda. On the flight home I saw an article that claimed a plataspid beetle introduced to George is now devouring kudzu, limiting its growth by a third. Suddenly kudzu champions have emerged from the woodwork, concerned at the potential loss of this southern scourge!

During business trips, one never knows what lies in store. After a delicious dinner at the home of Bobby Wilder (my host and friend of many years), we were treated to a spontaneous and totally unplanned reading by Roy Dicks from Rhapsody in Green , published in 2009 Timber Press title which he conceived of and edited. Roy is a theatre and music critic for the Raleigh News and Observer, and life partner of Bobby Ward pictured above (it's a small world there in Raleigh, and much of it seems to be named "Bobby"!)...

Here is the book cover. You can read more about it on the Timber Press website, or better yet, you can order the book on Amazon for a very modest sum. I doubt if there is a gardener alive who wouldn't be beguiled by Beverley Nichols' opinionated and yet somehow charming observations on the magic of gardening. During the course of Nichols' long life he wrote dozens of books on a wide range of subjects, although his gardening books have been consistently his most popular: most are still in print thanks largely to the efforts of Roy, who launched them one by one through Timber press. I shall end with a sample which resonated with me: “ Pay a visit to the nurseries. Every conifer has a definite personality of its own and which proclaims itself from its earliest youth, and to buy a tree, even a baby, from a catalogue is as foolish as to adopt a child by parcel post.” So there , Forest Farm and all you other purveyor of mail order babies!

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KUDZU!!! Yeegads!

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