From the Ground Up

20 Farmville the Magazine From the Ground Up

The Joys of aSimple Garden

Story by Dr. Cynthia Wood

Farmville is blessed with many talented gardeners. Explore the various neighborhoods, and you’ll find English kitchen gardens with tidy paths, carefully clipped borders, and thriving herbs. There are joyful cottage gardens with riotous combinations of colors and textures. There are older gardens that still show the influence of Charles Gillette’s distinctive designs that came to be known as the Virginia style. Think hedges, vine-covered lattices, boxwood, and the creation of garden “rooms.” There is even a community garden that’s thriving.

Nestled around a stately old Victorian is one of the most perfect gardens I’ve ever seen. Why? It’s not showy and doesn’t incorporate famous designers’ concepts, but it meets all of the most important reasons for having a garden. It welcomes visitors and encourages them to explore. In fact, without wandering around, visitors will miss some of the garden’s hidden treasures. This garden offers a calm atmosphere that encourages visitors to slow down and relax; it’s a refuge. Every garden should provide space for quiet contemplation.

Libby Etheridge enjoys showing her garden, and especially her azaleas, to visitors.

Above, Libby Etheridge’s classic Victorian is framed by azaleas, rhododendrons, ancient oaks and dogwoods. At left, this small garden is all about layers of textures, colors and privacy

22 Farmville the Magazine And finally, this garden is easy to maintain; years ago, the owner took into consideration the impact of aging on her ability to maintain the garden. It doesn’t require extensive work and certainly doesn’t need for the grass along the borders to be trimmed with manicure scissors. (Yes, that’s a thing in some gardens in England.)

If you’re lucky enough to be invited for a light southern supper on the veranda at Elizabeth Etheridge’s house, you’ll understand what I mean. The veranda is shaded by wisteria vines that provide privacy and late spring blooms. The front garden is simple but inviting with traditional dogwoods and azaleas. Some of those traditional flower beds, however, contain bloodroot, a lovely, low-growing spring ephemeral with interesting foliage and large white flowers that pops up just when most of us are desperate for signs of spring. And about the time that early summer heat and humidity descend on our area, the bloodroot disappears until the following year. Yes, Libby was planting native plants long before they became popular.

While the front garden is orderly and quiet, it’s the back garden, the one you can see from the veranda while eating your devilled eggs, Brunswick stew and strawberry shortcake, that’s simple perfection. Both sides are lined with tall-growing shrubs that provide privacy from neighbors. The back of the property abuts woods and is planted with a variety of spring blooming azaleas, bulbs, dogwoods and other shrubs. There is a small central plot of grass and a semicircular path through the shrubs. It all looks very natural, as if it just happened.

While there aren’t any exotic plants here, there are some old-fashioned ones that lend themselves to benign neglect. My favorite is Kerria japonica or Japanese rose, which forms a hedge along one side of the garden. It’s a deciduous shrub that works well here and provides interest throughout the year. In winter, the gracefully arching stems are green. In spring, the shrub is covered with a bounty of bright yellow, pom-pom-shaped flowers. In fall, the foliage turns bright yellow before dropping. Kerria japonica’s only bad habit is spreading by suckers. In this garden, that’s not a problem, and suckers can always be controlled, if desired. The bright yellow of the Kerria japonica is echoed by the orange blooms on the tall deciduous azaleas on the other side of the garden.

Yes, this garden is simple, but it’s that very simplicity that makes it enchanting. It’s doesn’t radiate the need for serious and potentially stressful maintenance; it just invites visitors to relax and enjoy it. Perfect.

Native bloodroot is the surprise spring-blooming plant in the borders along the front of the house.

Kerria japonica forms a hedge along one side of the garden and provides interest all year long.

Recipes

Late summer chicken salad

Story and photos by Alexa Massey

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a southern woman sitting on her porch on a late summer afternoon must be in want of a chicken salad sandwich.

It’s also a general rule of thumb that foods deemed “healthy” don’t usually taste all that great. Likewise, foods that taste great typically can’t be deemed “healthy.”

This recipe for my “late summer chicken salad” breaks the mold for this southern staple by creating a crunchy, colorful and truly healthy chicken salad that features some of the best produce late summer and early fall have to offer. Red seedless grapes, crispy green apples and sliced almonds add a fresh, good-and-good-foryou bite to the dish, and our superstar ingredient (non-fat greek yogurt) saves us hundreds of calories worth of mayonnaise without compromising on flavor.

Every time I holler to the family that this chicken salad is ready, it quickly disappears, leaving nothing but an empty bowl behind. This stuff will fill you up without weighing you down, and at just 300 calories a serving, you’ll be stuffing this mixture into sandwiches or scooping it up with a cracker all year long.

Here’s the recipe: Prep time: 20 minutes Cook time: 20 minutes Total time: Approximately 40 minutes Servings: 4

Ingredients For the oven-baked chicken: 2 large chicken breasts (approx. 1.25 lbs.) 1 tbs. ranch seasoning 1 tsp. extra virgin olive oil salt, pepper and paprika, to taste

For the mix-ins: 1 cup red seedless grapes, halved 1 green apple, diced 3 green onions, chopped 1 cup nonfat Greek yogurt 1/4 cup mayonnaise 1/3 cup sliced almonds 2 tbs. Ranch seasoning 1 tbs. Lemon juice Salt, pepper and parsley, to taste

Recipe:

Everybody knows that the best chicken salad is made with leftover meat pulled from the bones of last night’s rotisserie chicken dinner. Sometimes, though, you crave chicken salad without having any leftover poultry sitting around in the fridge.

For this simple chicken salad recipe, you’ll need approximately two chicken breasts-worth (or 1.25 lbs.) of diced chicken. If you don’t have leftovers ready for repurposing, you can easily oven-bake your chicken. To do this, add two chicken breasts, one teaspoon of olive oil and one tablespoon of ranch seasoning (I like Hidden Valley Ranch) into a bowl with however much salt, pepper and paprika makes your taste buds happy. Coat the chicken in this mixture before placing the meat on a sheet pan and baking at 450° for 15-20 minutes. You’ll know your chicken is done when it registers 165°.

As a helpful tip, make sure to make your chicken far enough ahead that it has time to cool in the refrigerator. Warm chicken will make the salad mixture loose. It’s also important to allow your chicken (and any food, really) to cool on the counter before placing it in the fridge. Sealing a container of hot or warm food and placing it in the fridge is a great way to give yourself food poisoning!)

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! The hardest part of the recipe is done.

To make your chicken salad mixture, use a sharp knife to carefully slice your grapes in half, leaving a few of the smaller ones whole to allow some variance in texture. Dice up your green apple and slice up your green onions.

The rest is easy! Simply combine all of your remaining ingredients into a large mixing bowl, including the chicken you were storing in the fridge. We’re adding some superfoods into this mixture by substituting 80% of the mayo typically found in chicken salad for some proteinpacked nonfat Greek yogurt and adding crunchy, fiber-filled almonds which are bursting with antioxidants and can even help control blood sugar. Juicy grapes, tart apples and lemon juice help keep this traditionally-heavy dish light and refreshing while helping to fill you up.

There’s a number of ways to serve this late summer chicken salad. Keep things light by scooping the mouthwatering mixture on top of lettuce, or fold it into a wrap. Or, splurge a little and serve it on a warm, buttered croissant. And if there’s any left after dinner, do as I do and stand in front of the open fridge at midnight eating chicken salad out of a tupperware bowl. Yum!

Hedwig Thomas: Autobiography details immigration from Germany

Story by Ireland Seagle

“She has a knack for describing the opportunities and stresses that she has experienced in life with refreshing directness.”

This praise from Leonard Schulze is for Hedwig “Heddy” Thomas’ recently released autobiography, Hedwig: A Story Told–A Life Lived. Published in December 2021, Thomas’ book details the beginnings of her life and childhood in Hanau-Grossauheim, Germany to her immigration and assimilation in Southside Virginia.

Originally, Heddy had not considered writing down and publishing her life experiences; however, her husband, Herman Thomas, knew she would eventually compose her autobiography.

“I’d tell my husband and kids different stories along the way…Herman would write the headlines of the stories on a legal pad and hide the paper from me,” Heddy explains.

After a few years, Herman and her children urged her to write a book. Once she sat down to write, Herman revealed his secret scribbles to Heddy.

“Here he comes with this legal pad, and he says, ‘This might help you,’” she details. She is grateful for her husband’s secret writings and for her family encouraging her to compose her autobiography. “I’m glad I did it when I did because I don’t know if I would remember it all now,” she admits.

For the next decade, Heddy progressed through the writing and publishing processes. She decided to write her autobiography in two parts, but she almost did not write the second piece, which was the more painful of the two. However, her family, including her son Robert “Bob” Flippen, pushed Heddy to include these unpleasant experiences in her book. She recalls her son saying, “Those people are gone, and you are still standing,” encouraging her to record her stories. Thus, Heddy pursued her goal with her family’s aid. As she typed her autobiography, Herman often sat beside her with a Webster’s Dictionary, helping her find synonyms and phrases to accurately and vividly explain her experiences. As Heddy progressed with her book, she and her family read through the manuscript several times and edited any mistakes and grammatical errors. Then, Bob, who owns the Southside Virginia Historical Press Publica-

Heddy on a three-day cross country bicycle tour in 1953.

tion Company, published his mother’s book. In her book, Heddy recounts her childhood in Hanau-Grossauheim, Germany that was filled with both unpleasant and enjoyable times. Following World War II, she remembers working on the black market selling stolen goods, including soap, to support her family. “We could barely eat, and we were so poor as children,” Heddy recalls. Despite the financial obstacles, she has fond memories of her childhood, including swimming in the Main River with her siblings and climbing onto the cargo barges that frequently traveled the river. She also remembers playing house, jump rope, and hopscotch with other children in her neighborhood.

One of Heddy’s most memorable experiences in childhood came when she was around twelve years old, when a traveling gypsy read her palm. The gypsy told Heddy she would live a long life and move far from home, along with marrying three times and having two children. “For a good Catholic girl to marry three times was simply out of the question, so we (Heddy’s mom and Heddy) laughed it off,” Heddy explains. Although they dismissed the seemingly meaningless reading, this prophecy did come true. “I still remember that moment as if it were today, seventy odd years later,” she states.

After growing up in Germany, Heddy immigrated to the United States in April 1960 with her first husband, an American soldier named Robert Flippen Jr. They settled in South Hill, where she slowly made new friends and worked at local businesses to help support her family.

While she grew accustomed to American living, Heddy missed her family and her life in Germany, especially Gemütlichkeit. This expression involves the joviality and comfort of being together in a group, especially in a restaurant or beer hall setting. For Heddy, Gemütlichkeit was often

Heddy with her family as a young girl.

Heddy and her book at her home in Farmville.

Heddy at her sewing desk. Sewing is one of her favorite hobbies.

associated with her family. “We’d have afternoon coffee. It’s just the family sitting together for 30 minutes and enjoying each other’s company,” she explains.

As she settled into her new life in America, Heddy experienced uncharitable people. “I met those who made you feel like an outsider and made you still feel like the enemy,” she details. However, she encountered kindness more often than unfriendliness, including from her managers and neighbors. During her time working at a garment factory in La Crosse, the plant manager ensured Heddy maintained her job despite the company’s layoffs. “People gave us clothes for my son, Robert, and invited us over for meals,” Heddy remembers. She is grateful for these small yet meaningful acts of kindness by local individuals.

After spending almost six years in Mecklenburg County, Heddy and her family moved to Farmville in 1966, just a few years following the controversial school closings. As an immigrant to the area, she struggled to understand segregation. “I just looked at black people as people and not as lower-class citizens,” Heddy explains. Despite the town’s history and her painful experiences here, she emphasizes that the Farmville and Prince Edward communities are special to her. “Through all the obstacles in my past, Farmville has become home. I love it here,” she says.

After living in Virginia for over a decade, Heddy worked to become a U.S. citizen. She recalls her anxiety about the citizenship process, especially completing the amount of required paperwork and being questioned by a citizenship agent. Unsure of what the interview would entail, Heddy studied every aspect of the U.S. government and history she could. Luckily, the agent only asked her a few general questions and told her she’d be notified at a later date of her naturalization ceremony. “To this day, I wonder how did I undergo less scrutiny, my good looks perhaps,” she jokes. Regardless of the reason, she is proud of her American citizenship.

Today, Heddy maintains a quiet yet active lifestyle. She enjoys sewing and gardening, which she describes as her “outlets.” She is also involved in the United Methodist Church in Farmville and has served in different leadership capacities within the church. She also loves visiting friends and spending time with her family, including her two children who live nearby. Most of all, Heddy and her husband, Herman, enjoy sitting on their porch in the sunshine as they live out their senior years together.

Despite the numerous hardships she details in her book, Heddy ultimately wants her readers to draw a message of hope and happiness from her story. “I don’t want to muddle too much in the sadness; I want my readers to see how you rise above the obstacles and live a happy life,” she explains. She also wants readers to use her autobiography as inspiration to write down their own memories for their children and descendants.

If you wish to get a copy of Heddy’s book, Hedwig: A Story Told–A Life Lived, stop by Discount Fabrics in Downtown Farmville or Lib’s Place in Rice. You can also obtain a copy from Heddy herself by calling (434) 392-9497.