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Left: Catherine Nguyen takes a photo of the Rose family inside their renovated historic home (pg. 64). Right: Photographer Keith Isaacs and Sara Mingote capture Sepi Saidi and Jim Lumsden inside their Frank Harmon-designed home (pg. 54).
S
omething about this issue keeps conjuring the word alchemy. Part science, part magic. Part logic, part luck. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that our annual Home & Garden Issue falls in the same month as Halloween. Over the past few months, many of us have seen how our rooms contract, expand and mutate: living rooms and bedrooms converted into offices and schoolrooms, outdoor spaces into our own restaurants and bars. Just as we transform ourselves with a costume, our homes change to suit our needs. It’s not just good bones, or smart rearranging. It requires both magic and logic, a creative mind and can-do attitude. It was interior designer Kay Jordan, who helped Sepi Saidi pull together her home (pg. 54), who suggested the concept when she said to me: “We just had this magic group of people that worked well together—there was an alchemy that lent to the great success of the project.” In my interviews with Jordan and Saidi, as well as architect Frank Harmon and Saidi’s husband Jim Lumsden, each mentioned how wonderful everyone else was, that there was something special about this
project. Talent, chemistry… or magic? And how else to explain that the secret ingredients to Cafe Carolina’s mouthwatering sweet potato biscuits (pg. 35) are all right on the grocery store shelf? Experimentation, luck or… something else? Or that special brew of personality and topic that’s led to the 35-year success of the Weekend Gardener (pg. 52)? The Holy Rose knows magic—at least, it offers wares to those who do (pg. 44). And anyone who lives on London Drive and Eton Road knows that magic is all around, because gnomes keep popping up in their yards (pg. 98). We hope that as you head through fall and on into winter, this issue encourages you to recognize these forces in your own life, at home and with friends and family—and to appreciate the special blend of luck, hard work and magic that makes our community so special.
Ayn-Monique Klahre Editor
