From a couple of weeks ago…1) one last photo of Bernie and Liz and the ducklings from Jerry. 2) In front of the Tipsy Toad Gallery at Cape Fear Winery, photo by Jerry. 3) Another photo by Jerry. I had to include this one because I was making a face in the first one. I cropped out my sister because she would not have liked this photo of her. 4) Peacock ain’t skeered, at Cape Fear Vineyards.
A couple of days before Easter weekend, we encouraged our friends Susan and Jerry to come down while the weather was still gorgeous. We enjoyed this outing with my sister to Cape Fear Winery for lunch and cocktails with Cape Fear Distillery liquors. I’m always fascinated with the art on the walls here…celebrity artists, photos, memorabilia, and master artists…everywhere. The owner owned a restaurant in Hollywood and had many celebrity friends. As a Joni Mitchell fan, I took this pic of a fairly recent addition to his collection.
But my real joy was seeing two paintings, with NO identification, by Donald Roller Wilson hanging in the gift shop. Not for sale, but on display. I fell in love with Donald Roller Wilson and his surreal Southern gothic stories and paintings in the 80s back in my bookselling days, when an artist book of his came through the store. I’ve seen his work in person one other time, in a Santa Fe gallery.
I bought some of Cape Fear’s really fine liquors, even though I’m not much of a liquor drinker. They are very good. Everybody was fond of a coconut cream rum mix called Beach Blast. The other night Sandy mixed it with almond milk and I thought it was tasty.
Whiteville, North Carolina, surprises me constantly. For most people it is maybe a stop on the way to the beach, and the county has some terrible politics. (I mean, they RE-ELECTED this guy.) But downtown Whiteville has some very good restaurants. My sister took me out for lunch at The Chef and The Frog, a French Asian fusion restaurant, on Tuesday, and then on Friday morning we went to Penn’s Grill for a great breakfast. We liked it so much that we went again for lunch on Saturday when our friends Robin and Don were there. Of course we went to Dale’s Seafood in Lake Waccamaw for lunch one day.
On the weekend the weather was rainy and cold and the mayflies were pretty awful. We are all game players so we played Ransom Notes and Quirkle Cubes for hours. The weather cleared on Sunday and a mayfly hitched a ride back with us to Greensboro. I named him Henry. Here’s a haiku about Henry.
slowly she turned 