It is easy to assume that the month of January is slow for real estate. The theory goes that everyone is recovering from the holidays and focused on staying bundled up for the winter and hibernating through at least the Super Bowl.
In an area like Chapel Hill, where the tourism industry isn’t as obvious as it is in, say, Orlando or Las Vegas, Aspen or Nashville, many wonder what our local tourism actually looks like around campus and throughout Orange County. That’s a reasonable question.
With Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools’ recent decision to delay the return of in-person instruction, a number of local parents have turned their frustration into a Facebook group.
Part of Eastgate (the Blue Hill area) has been sold again, to a developer based in Indiana, and rumor has it the owner plans more market-rate apartments! Just what Chapel Hill does not need!
Along Elliott Road in Chapel Hill sits a modern rental apartment building called the Berkshire Chapel Hill. Though nondescript, several years ago this “luxury” apartment complex rocked Chapel Hill’s political landscape.
By the time you read this on Monday, Feb. 1, Walter “Bucky” Horton might be out fishing, playing golf or pumping iron in the gym. That would be fitting since it’s his day. Literally, Monday, Feb. 1, is officially Police Chief Walter Horton Day…
Usually, winter’s confinement gives me time to ponder my coming garden. I flip through the arriving seed catalogs, marking pages while revising my shopping list at a leisurely pace.
Last year the Chapel Hill Council began exploring and investing in a development plan for approximately 55 acres spanning two contiguous parcels located on the north side of Weaver Dairy Road along I-40.
It’s not news, of course, that our long and divisive election cycle happened to take place amid a devastating pandemic, compounding our difficulties and intensifying our tragedies.
If you know birders, you may have heard that this 2020-21 winter season marks an “irruption” year — a period when large numbers of different bird species migrate to places where they’re usually not seen.
The Chapel Hill I knew as a young college student has been put on pause. Back then, you could explore places without fear of something unseen lurking around the corner.
Sometimes I think that daphnes take all the fun out of gardening. There can hardly be a gardener alive who hasn’t lusted in his or her heart for a Daphne odora in the middle of winter. The luscious blooms coupled with a delicious scent manage to enchant us during the month of January.
When LeRoy Walker Jr. started talking about flying, a change came over the 78-year-old retired IBM executive from Durham. His voice dropped, his eyes glazed slightly and a contented smile wreathed his handsome face, as he described the sight of the…
Hey, Chapel Hill geezer, need a COVID shot? Here’s what to do! Just check some boxes first.
Last week, three North Carolina municipalities — Hillsborough, Carrboro and Chapel Hill — passed ordinances protecting members of their LGBTQ communities from discrimination.
No one told me how many volts they were going to zap me with, and I didn’t want to ask. Finally, after six months, I decided to look it up on Wikipedia.
Martha Flowers came to her Chapel Hill front door prepared for her photo shoot, looking every bit like a diva: dressed for a concert, pearl necklace and a smile that could — and did — light up Broadway.
Generally, from a gardening standpoint, I enjoy the month of January. Typically, I peruse the garden catalogues that arrive this time of year, daydreaming about the possibilities my garden might produce. However, reading the garden catalogues recently has not given me a great deal of enjoyment for the simple reason that my garden, like me, is maturing.
Not that Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States from Plains, Georgia. We’re talking about the other Jimmy Carter, the metalsmith and jewelry shop owner in Carr Mill Mall. He is who we’re appreciating today. That being said, Jimmy Carter is a big fan of Jimmy Carter.
During COVID lockdown, our three chickens have become a major source of entertainment. We call it “Chicken TV.”
Nearly every recap and review of last year will begin with some variation of this sentence: 2020 was an unusual year. In place of “unusual,” it may say “unprecedented” or “difficult” or some other pejorative, but without a doubt, 2020 will be remembered.
If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s how to hunker. We’ve been hunkered down since mid-March and have learned by necessity hunkering techniques. Out of curiosity, I looked up the word: “Hunker: to crouch, cower, to get on all fours.”
It’s a new year, 2021, and it’s time to plan for the garden. Spring is almost here! I have written about this topic before but it bears repeating as I see gardeners twisting themselves in knots, trying to follow the rules of good landscaping: A garden needs to reflect the personality of its owner.
Many people who love watching birds focus their attention on nest boxes in the spring and summer in the hope of seeing avian parents bringing food…
It’s a new day in the Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough communities. Get out and try something new.
As any old-school photographer would attest, being able to develop your own film and print your own photographs in a darkroom is what separates the dilettantes from the hard-core serious photographers.
Before we write off 2020 as a year to forget, I’d like to point out that it was a pretty good year for North Carolina gardeners.
The Carolina Inn, a colonial-revival-style structure on the western rim of the UNC campus in the heart of Chapel Hill, is the sort of place people go to celebrate the important milestones, the moments we tend to measure the rest of our lives by.
Browsing through a card shop years ago in the Baltic seaport town of Turku, Finland, I chanced upon this card, depicting two decidedly jolly old ladies with all the humble comforts of hearth and home…
Chapel Hill Community: As 2020 comes to a close, I want to take a moment to wish everyone Season’s Greetings and Happy New Year! During this difficult year, the compassion and care that our community has shown to one another has given me great hope.
When I relocated to North Carolina fifteen years ago, I was excited about many things, but food topped the list.
The first Christmas after E.B. Hyder’s wife died, the 88-year-old Rutherford County nurseryman found himself at a loss for how to cope with the holiday. So, he went out and got himself a little Christmas…
We have a tradition in our house. My husband asks what I want for Christmas. I reply, “a load of well-rotted manure for my garden beds.” He rolls his eyes. Gardeners know it’s all about the soil. Sure, the plants are pretty, the rock walls sublime…
The North Carolina Mountains-to-Sea Trail (MST) is 1,175 miles long (that’s the distance from Portland, Maine to Atlanta).
I love to eat breakfast in a restaurant. Especially cozy ones, where it is warm in both temperature and people when you walk in. Where the smell of the bacon and sausage wafts over you as you open the door.
Among birders, people who are extremely focused on identifying as many species of birds as possible in their lives — and who will travel great distances to do so — sometimes are known as twitchers. The term is used more often in Europe than in the USA, but the behavior is known here, too. Twitching has a bit of a bad reputation…
Before the Grinch, there was Scrooge. And if ever a man could play Charles Dickens’ Christmas curmudgeon to the hilt, it was the late great Earl Wynn, a distinguished professor credited with…
Kudzu strikes terror in every good Southerner’s heart. Few of us doubt the myth that it can grow half a mile per day.
A food blogger, an historian, a hippie, and an activist walk into a bar – a joke which, in these Covid days, has not aged well. But if such a thing could happen it very well might happen in Chapel Hill. Because these are the folks making news here.
The morning temperatures this past week have indicated that winter really is arriving, and we’re saying goodbye to autumn. It’s been a very beautiful season with vibrant yellow, orange and red hues.