By Ray Baird
An “old-fashioned” Christmas is closer than you think. Just find a general store or a country store. John Brown’s Store on Highway 66 north of King, for example, has a lot of traditional items that are hard to find in “big box” stores.
Our favorites include several on Main Street in Mount Airy, where there are hardware stores, candy stores, specialty shops and plenty of good eating places!
Further up Highway 52, across the state line at Cana, is Virginia Produce, an old country store where you can buy fruits and vegetables by the pound or box. Old-fashioned candies are displayed in wooden barrels and you can bag your own or buy it already packaged. (There is just something especially old-fashioned about picking them out from a barrel and dropping them into a brown paper bag!)
March 28, 2021
Bumble bees are welcome additions in early spring. The containers of pansies are colorful as we reach toward the end of March. The bumblebees visit the pansies every afternoon. Very few flowers are in bloom in late March and the bumblebees are attracted to the bright colors of the pansies. The pansies have been in bloom for most of the winter and are now a haven for the early bumblebees of spring. The pansies will have flowers until the end of April. It will be hard to pull them up to replace with the annuals of spring and summer. We will miss the pansies and their pretty faces but the bumblebees will be around to enjoy the summer annuals.