from the PUBLISHER

Local artists, restorers, easy appetizers, and shade-loving ferns are the focus of our summer issue. July and August are the slower months to savor summer’s living in the moment, a sensory experience we share in our Features and Favorites. Herein, you will discover and applaud the efforts of Jeannette and Jay Nauta during their four-year restoration of an 1893 farmhouse along Highway 98 in Amite County, Mississippi. Their inspiring story is a delightful read.

Rediscovering the many local artists who show their works at ARTSNATCHEZ also will intrigue your interest, surely giving you ideas about adding to your own collections. The gallery in downtown Natchez, Mississippi, offers over 500 original pieces of art. Enjoying the ambience of this gallery of eclectic selections is educational as well as entertaining. Moreover, our Southern summer months provide the perfect time and temps to peruse the talents of these local artists in the cool and inviting gallery experience of ARTSNATCHEZ.

For our palettes this season, we have collected some easy-peasy recipes for appetizers using fresh and locally grown ingredients for summer treats. Our collaborative efforts for this month’s Something Scrumptious yielded delicious results from a local cook and taste team—Blair Smith with Cate and Lillie Drane. These college students spent an evening preparing and staging for the magazine the Antipasto Skewers and the Sausage Cream Cheese Crescent Rolls. This was a fun project to engage the youthful energy, enthusiasm, and talents of these rising connoisseurs of cuisine.

In her Southern Sampler, Alma Womack, forever a favorite columnist, shares her summertime search for berries, the changing and challenging conditions of this search, and one particular saga of her efforts to ferret out these juicy treasures. I remember in my own childhood scrambling up the hill in the wooded parts of my neighborhood, discovering the berries, picking and putting them in a bucket, and bringing them home as my praise-worthy feat in finding something delicious and free. The harvest of local bounty is better than store-bought any day.

In this issue, you’ll also savor your read of Dr. Eddie Smith’s In the Garden article, “Adding Beauty with Ferns.” Summertime in the South always and forever is about embracing all the area’s lush greenery and surrounding your spaces with all things cool and green with, of course, colorful accents.

We trust that this issue of Bluffs & Bayous will be an enticing part of your experience as you enjoy the lingering, slow-paced lifestyle of summer along and beyond the Mississippi