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Readers like Thelma make it all worthwhile
National Newspaper Week was Oct. 2-9. It’s a yearly occasion that gives publications like ours the opportunity to remind readers of the importance of an independent press.
We were apparently too caught up in chronicling the week’s news to remember to write an editorial listing all the ways The Herald strives to serve the community.
But when we get a call like the one that came in last Friday, we know exactly why we show up every week to gather the thousands of words it takes to report Jackson County’s news: It’s because sometimes we get to talk to people like Frankie and Thelma.
“If you’ve got a photographer that’s going out toward East Fork, you ought take a picture of my sister’s dahlias,” said Frankie Purvis of Whittier.
I passed the information on to Nick, and he promised to take a look when he was in the general neighborhood (U.S. 441 south of Dillsboro) shooting his “Then and Now” photo for this week.
When I got to work Monday morning, it was the dahlias he showed me first.
“Here, look at this,” he said, pointing to a riot of color that surrounded the smiling lady on his computer screen.
And there was Thelma, standing proud in the midst of her pink, purple, yellow, orange, gold and magenta dahlias (see page 1A).
“I think dahlias are just heavenly,” she told me later over the telephone. “Just look at the flowers – nobody could do that but the Lord.”
Thelma, 76, has lived on East Fork since she got married in 1952. She said she’s always loved flowers and liked to work outside.
“I’ve grown flowers all my life,” she said. “I love them all.”
Before she married the late Ray Buchanan, she lived with her parents at Wilmot. According to Thelma, her mother, Margaret Bradley, was the one who provided her horticultural inspiration.
“Mother had a green thumb,” Thelma said. “She could cut off a piece of rosebush, stick it in the bank, and the first thing you know that thing would be rooted. Anything she wanted to root, she could.”
Sister Frankie, the one who alerted us to the dahlias’ splendor, favors house plants and pots of flowers, according to Thelma.
“She doesn’t get out and plant them like I do,” Thelma said.
One reason Thelma enjoys the dahlias is so she can share them, she said.
“I fixed some yesterday for my neighbor who’s sick,” she said. “It helps me to help somebody else.”
Thelma’s blossoms often end up on the altar at her church, East Fork Baptist.
“When no one else signs up, I fix the flowers once the dahlias come in,” she said.
One thing Thelma looks forward to is January, when the nurseries start getting in dahlia bulbs for the following season.
“There’s a lot of the ‘dinner-plate’ dahlias I don’t have,” she said. “I have a yellow one, and I want some pink and white ones.”
Thelma augments her dahlia collection with new varieties each year, she said.
One thing she doesn’t do is dig the plants’ bulbs – often called ’taters due to their resemblance to little potatoes – every year as people have traditionally done.
“I cut the plants off at the ground and mulch them with pine straw or bark,” she said. “That’s the easy way.”
Thelma has a wire across her dahlia bed, and she ties the blossoms up with string to support them.
“Next year I’ll start planting on the other side of the wire, too,” she said.
That’s something to look forward to, if we can remember. I hope Thelma – or Frankie – reminds us to come take a look.
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