February/March 2022

Garden & Gun

Soul of the South

Garden & Gun2 min read
Garden & Gun
David DiBenedetto Senior Vice President & Editor in Chief Creative Director Marshall McKinney / Photography and Visuals Director Maggie Brett Kennedy Executive Editor Amanda Heckert / Deputy Editor David Mezz / Style Director Haskell Harris Art Direc
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An Oyster Tradition
I come from a family of four boys with no shortage of opinions on a lifetime of topics. The right and wrong way to train a gundog. Bourbon versus Scotch. The best trolling spread for yellowfin tuna. Getting up with the sun or sleeping in. But we all
Garden & Gun1 min read
Let the Games Begin
While I’ve yet to win the coveted Cornhole Cup at the family oyster roast, I do enjoy tossing the bags. And this year I’ll be bringing a new set of boards from Tupelo Goods. The Texas company, which specializes in products for the outdoors, takes the
Garden & Gun3 min read
Contributors
No one can pinpoint exactly why so many great literary works spring from Oxford, Mississippi. “Faulkner couldn’t answer it, Larry Brown couldn’t answer it,” says Michael Farris Smith, himself an Oxford novelist. “The city just has that reputation, so
Garden & Gun1 min read
“I Start At The Back, For Some Unknown Reason, And Read Every Issue From Cover To Cover”
Rick Bragg can certainly take his place among the writers he extols in “Eating My Words” (December 2021/January 2022). I can’t count the quotable passages that ring true. Betty Lamb Birmingham, Alabama The piece by Rick Bragg left me hungry for more.
Garden & Gun1 min readAddiction
WE ASKED... What Was The Name Of Your First Dog?
Sandy. I wanted to name her Worcestershire, which was my favorite word at the time, but thankfully, my parents intervened. Judy R. When a stray showed up at our house, starving, with a chopped tail and a cut ear, I had to name her something to help h
Garden & Gun4 min read
Triple Threat
Patrick Wilson, one of the busiest forces in Hollywood, is also a proud native of the South who still uses a cast-iron skillet to make cornbread from scratch. This year he will star in two blockbusters: the Aquamansequel, reprising his role as King O
Garden & Gun3 min read
Arts and Sciences
A hundred yards behind Brandon Ballengée’s art studio, in a former cane field near Lafayette, Louisiana, his dog lollops right over a snake. “Oooh, look at that! A black-masked racer!” says Ballengée—a biologist by training—in a thrilled whisper. “He
Garden & Gun3 min readRegional & Ethnic
Secret Ingredients
Southern cooking, like midwifing and needlecraft, has generally been considered one of the home arts. We’ve tended to picture its originators and chief practitioners as women—Black, white, or Native—in rural kitchens, simmering and stirring what woul
Garden & Gun1 min readRegional & Ethnic
More Praise for Chefs
“Fun is the most important thing,” writes Mason Hereford in the introduction to Turkey and the Wolf (Ten Speed), named after his buzzy New Orleans sandwich shop. The chef ’s sense of play comes out in rollicking anecdotes, cheeky photos, and recipes
Garden & Gun3 min read
Three Chords And The Kernal
One night in November, the Kernal, a.k.a. Joe Garner, was teaching his fourteen-year-old niece some basic guitar chords over FaceTime. She was a quick learner, memorizing the correct finger positions. But Garner encouraged her to run her fingers up t
Garden & Gun1 min read
St. Paul Returns
Over the course of three albums, Birmingham, Alabama’s St. Paul & the Broken Bones, led by powerhouse singer Paul Janeway, have shed the blue-eyed soul tag, evolving with each record into something more ambitious and profound. On the band’s exception
Garden & Gun3 min read
Small-Bore Toms
Tas Gardner is a believer. It defies logic, says the Paris, Tennessee, attorney, but the proof is as solid as the weight of a wild turkey across his shoulders: Small-bore shotguns for wild turkeys—and yes, we’re talking about the diminutive .410—have
Garden & Gun3 min read
Steal Magnolias
We plant a street-side flank of the yard for show, but, come the crocuses and tulips, thieves descend. How do we deter them? Crazy, no? Most folks would find it abhorrent to stroll through a park, grubbing at the beauty. But somehow bounty in a (perc
Garden & Gun1 min read
New York, New York
After judges eliminated the dog he was assigned to photograph at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York City, Landon Nordeman used his press pass to wander Madison Square Garden, capturing, he says, “the non-moments, those in-between times
Garden & Gun4 min read
Tale of Two Artists
In Asheville, artistry can be found everywhere: in the vibrant crafts community, of course, but also in its evolving culinary scene, surrounding scenic beauty, walkable districts, and welcoming neighbors. The city has a magnetic pull, attracting scor
Garden & Gun1 min readDiet & Nutrition
An Artist’s View of Asheville
“I always rave about the Vault,” Gaines says of Rankin Vault Cocktail Lounge. Gormley likes Contrada, opened by chef Brian Canipelli: “It feels like you’re in Italy for a second. It’s sweet, fast, and always consistent.” “I’m a diehard for Nine Mile,
Garden & Gun3 min read
Home Rum
A few years ago, Hatton Smith II made a discovery: He wasn’t temperamentally suited to work for others. So at twenty-two he quit his job as a coffee trader in New York and bought a one-way ticket to Panama. He eventually set up a primitive operation
Garden & Gun3 min readDiet & Nutrition
Souped Up
Chefs are who they are, which means they usually can’t resist fancying up even the simplest dish. The results can be delicious, but the recipes often don’t translate easily for the home cook. A welcome exception: the potato soup dreamed up by Joey Ed
Garden & Gun1 min read
Meet The Chef: Joey Edwards
Raleigh, North Carolina “I wanted to be in a band. I was gonna be a rock star.” “You have to slow down to speed up.” “I think it’s the most romantic thing to cook in a copper pot.” ■
Garden & Gun2 min read
Whiskey Trailblazer
Getting into the spirit: “I was a big wine drinker, so I already had a developed palate. With bourbon, it was easy for me to dive down the rabbit hole of learning about it and being fascinated with it.” Why bourbon? “I was so intrigued by how bourbon
Garden & Gun2 min readRegional & Ethnic
True Blues
A few years back, Kelsey Barnard Clark added raised garden beds to her backyard in Dothan, Alabama. The executive chef and owner of KBC restaurant, she grew up eating collards, but growing them herself solidified her love of the leafy greens. “It’s t
Garden & Gun4 min read
Seafood Salute
Do oysters on the half shell taste even better at nine in the morning? In a restaurant that also does right by olive oil muffins with passion fruit curd, should you go marine or sweet? Eat breakfast at the front bar at Seabird, which opened last spri
Garden & Gun1 min read
Deep Dive
A working-class holdout in Carolina Beach just south of Wilmington, the Fat Pelicanbar revolves around a sandy backyard decorated with beach flotsam. You enter through a narrow galley and choose your own beer by walking a gangplank into an old reefer
Garden & Gun3 min read
Escape To The Smokies
Nestled amid the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, Sevierville is the kind of Southern town that immediately seems like home. With a quaint, close-knit feel and a defining mountain spirit, the city welcomes visitors as old friends, eager to re
Garden & Gun2 min read
Indoor Oasis
“I don’t want to offer something you can get everywhere,” says Ayelet Faerman of the cypress-mounted staghorn ferns and Curly Slim air plants she ships nationwide for Verdant Lyfe, the Coral Springs, Florida, company she founded with her mother, Ofra
Garden & Gun3 min read
Heir To The Thrown
When Joseph Jostes drops a bit of liquid onto a clay cup and a seaweed shape fans out, blooming black across the light orange surface, he’s not only decorating a vessel, he’s also keeping alive an almost-extinct tradition of patterned pottery called
Garden & Gun2 min read
Home Theater
Inside a wonderland of an atelier on the outskirts of West Palm Beach, an eighteenth-century sofa has found new life amid the showstopping home decor vignettes that have become Casa Gusto’s calling card. Rumored to be connected to Jane Austen, the Ge
Garden & Gun5 min read
Matters Of The Heart
I am bent over the sink washing my face when a tiny siren wails from my chest. Sonder has been watching me from the bathroom doorway, and at this he throws his coon-hound head back and runs baying toward the window in search of the source. Well, shit
Garden & Gun5 min read
Wisdom Of The Ancients
When I was ten, my parents started searching for their first home, taking me and my younger brother, Nicholas, with them. At a two-story yellow house with blue shutters, I clambered out of the van and ran toward the biggest tree in the yard. “Mommy,
Garden & Gun5 min read
Welcome to Howardville
As many of you know, I grew up on a farm, loathed living on a farm, left the farm, and in my midtwenties moved back to the same farm. I’ll spare all of us the “how I got here” details. I’ve documented them to an arguably unrivaled degree on TV and in
Garden & Gun4 min readArchitecture
Bahamas Hideaway
WHEN THE SUN RISES ON ELEUTHERA, A HUNDRED-MILE SWEEP of rock and sand in the Bahamian archipelago, a primeval world awakens: Bahama mockingbirds warble from somewhere in the pines, pink rain lilies stretch open their petals, and in their 650-square-
Garden & Gun4 min read
Louisiana Fish Camp
FRED HEEBE HAS BEEN KNOWN TO KEEP A WINDOW OPEN ON his computer in New Orleans monitoring the weather and water conditions to the east. And if everything lines up right, he might just skip out of the office after a morning meeting, make the short dri
Garden & Gun3 min read
Palm Beach Pastoral
COMPETING IN HORSE SHOWS MEANS A NOMADIC LIFE—ONE split between New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Kentucky, and Florida, among other domestic and international locales—and one that often moves at a frenetic pace. Becky Gochman, who along with her two
Garden & Gun10 min read
SMOKE, TIME,and the (NEARLY) LOST ART of SACK SAUSAGE
THEY USED TO CALL IT CARNY, ” Troy Smiley says, standing at the door of his smokehouse. “That whang you get after a sack of sausage hangs.” He wears jeans and a flannel jacket. His eyes glint with mischief. “We used to try to get rid of that whang,”
Garden & Gun8 min read
Dogged Pursuit
has come when I arrive at Mike Hester’s Foxwood Plantation and County Line Kennel in Mebane, North Carolina. With it came the bite of late fall’s damp and the promise of a night’s first freeze. Tree limbs rattle, still shimmering with leaves announci
Garden & Gun9 min read
Discovering A Writer’s Place
In August of 2017,I was invited to join a panel at the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson that honored the life and work of the Oxford writer Larry Brown. I quickly realized I’d be the only one on the panel who hadn’t known Larry, as he had passed
Garden & Gun1 min read
The Larry Brown Reader
This is not his first story collection, but it is the collection that introduced me to Larry Brown. I wandered into Square Books in Oxford one night, years and years ago, and picked up Big Bad Love from a table marked Mississippi Writers. I devoured
Garden & Gun4 min read
Grand Seclusion
Aye yai yai,” William “Buddy” Johnson groans. “So shallow. So spooky in this water. They can hear you coming. Move slow, slow, slow.” We’re stalking bonefish on an aquamarine flat inside the coral reef ringing Belize’s Turneffe Atoll, the country’s l
Garden & Gun1 min read
Belize’s Green Wave
A gleaming ninety-room hotel on more than one hundred acres of private island sits on Turneffe Atoll north of the Turneffe Island Resort. Lush, plush, and serious about diving adventures, the resort hosts courses for beginning and advanced divers and
Garden & Gun4 min read
Outer Banks Refuge
We entered Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge without quite realizing it. Perhaps we’d missed a sign posted alongside North Carolina Highway 12, the lone two-lane linking the Outer Banks from top to bottom. Grass-covered dunes rose to the left until
Garden & Gun10 min read
Going For A Song
At the Antiques & Garden Show of Nashville (February 11–13), a stroll through the labyrinth of booths in Music City Center might bring treasure hunters face-to-face with early twentieth-century rococo-style mirrors from Kenny Ball Antiques out of Cha
Garden & Gun3 min read
Older than Old
When our president visited the pope a while back, a tough topic reportedly arose. Age. The president quoted Satchel Paige: “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?” The pope I guess chuckled. But the pope, who is eighty-five, knows.

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