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“Do something beautiful, be careful about it, and keep your sunglasses on.”  

~ Leon Redbone

 

Peach-gold washes over white porch spindles on early June mornings, a hymn to emerald cathedrals spreading lush overhead. Sunshine-yellow finches come in for treats, splashes of color with pink petunias on the porch. 

Sometimes, I still catch a glimpse of my reflection in a mirror, window, or pond and feel surprised shock…oh mercy—it’s my mother! My grandmother! But how could I be THAT old? Yet, it’s not a bad thing, knowing they’re right there: all the mothers before, on and on, echoing far back. 

Beside my keyboard, there’s a faded Kodacolor print my dad took of me and my younger brother kneeling on the ground, intently planting a little garden. Me, in a red sweater, Steven in little blue overalls and striped shirt— we couldn’t have been much more than four or five. 

A pair of young gardeners at work, smiling, enthralled. That love of the earth never left either of us. We’ve become our parents. To this day, I compost, dig, patch things up, find myself going to grocery stores for the sale items, just like Dad did after he retired. We kids picked on him for his Yankee thriftiness, but our Southern-born mother was just as thrifty, especially with three ravenous kids underfoot. I have become my parents. 

Back then, I never knew how much I’d long once again for a piece of just-baked bread and strawberry jam, to hear the shiny silver percolator gurgling its morning song, or the brass Army whistle calling us in for dinner. To sit on the freezing ice cream churn on hot summer days as the handle got harder to crank or hike a two-lane road by Twelve Mile Creek, peering over the bridge at the trickling brown water rippling along rocks. Swimming in Grandma’s pond, soft mud squishing underfoot, cattails waving along the banks, those June days reflected in the mirror, too. 

 

• On June 10 from 5:30-7 p.m., Saluda Community Table at Saluda Center, 64 Greenville Street, will celebrate Saluda Sister City’s connection to Carunchio, Italy, with an Italian meal and presentation about the connection and support of both cities’ children. Saluda’s 2025 SSC Student Ambassadors, Zetta Anderson and Ariana Wood, will be on hand. 
• Saluda’s Top of the Grade Concert series opens with the Lillie Syracuse trio on June 13 at 7 p.m. on the Ella Grace Mintz Stage at McCreery Park. In case of rain, the concert will move to the park pavilion; bring a lawn chair or cushion for the new amphitheater seating. These free concerts are made possible through a grant from the Saluda Community Fund at the Polk County Community Foundation.
• On Track Saluda is offering a new program: Movement Mondays! From now through August 25, an array of exercise options from Zumba to stretch class, yoga, barre, and organized walks will be offered at the pavilion at McCreery Park at 9 each Monday morning throughout the summer. 
• Catherine Fairbanks is Saluda Library’s artist of the month. Stop by to enjoy her mandala art. She also designed the walkable labyrinth at the First Congregational Church UCC in Hendersonville. 
• Saluda tailgate market is each Friday near the tennis courts at Saluda School from 4-6 p.m. 

 

Happy June Birthday to Nancy Barnett, Bubba Dawson, Peggy Ellwood, Anna Jackson, Charlie Jackson, Amy Violet Ford, Terry Arrington, Julie Arrington, Susie Welsh Hearn, Jeremy Edwards, Eleanor Morgan, Mary Lu Price, Edna McKee, Lucinda Pittman, Lisa Duck, Kasey Watkins, Elena Robson, Karen McGee, Jane Mann, and Chambli Dawn Stuber.   

Feel free to contact me at bbardos@gmail.com, (828) 817-6765, P.O. Box 331, Saluda, NC 28773, Facebook, or visit bonniebardos.com