We met on July 4th, 2019 in the Smoky Mountains of Idaho over a casual but spirited conversation about local plants. It is still not clear who correctly identified the fescue but the botany of desire was real. We caught fish and drank Sazeracs. Mike brought Lucy a wildflower from his hike and Lucy returned the gesture with an invitation to a family ranch in Alberta. We lived on opposite coasts at the time but that didn't last long. We were destined for a houseboat in Sausalito where we lived by the tides, calling out to seabirds by day and rowboating by night. We adopted a perfect dog named Bird and we all weathered the pandemic together, first on the boat, then in Maine, and finally in Wyoming. We got engaged on Teton Pass on March 26th !

Birdlands is located in the hill country of north Mississippi. Lucy’s great grandparents, Evelyn and Snowden Boyle, bought the house and the half section of land that went with it in 1937. The small plots of arable land surrounded by thickets of cover made the area a mecca for quail. They had litters of English Pointers, setters and labradors. They bred and started Tennessee Walking Horses to support the hunting. They raised Hereford cattle, Hampshire hogs and Hampshire sheep. There was a smokehouse, a pump house and a coal house.  In the summer months, Jitterbug and June, the mules who pulled the buckboards in winter, grazed the bermuda alongside Dapple, a Shetland pony and the other riding horses. With the long hot days, Granny’s gardens came to life. There were peony, zinnia and asparagus beds and a greenhouse to start boxwood cuttings. From the vegetable garden we picked Better Boy tomatoes, Silver Queen corn, lady peas, okra, and yellow squash. On the back stoop the children churned peach ice cream, picked muscadines, and caught lightening bugs in the evenings. At black night, through the open window, the citrus smell of magnolia blooms and the song of the whippoorwill was the last thing you remembered until the lambs began bleating for their mamas at daylight.  As Grampa said, “It’s a going concern.”  Harriet McFadden