Meander Inn - Modern Plantation Desination
Recently, I had the pleasure of staying at the Inn at Meander Plantation. Back in the day — that would be the early 1700s — the plantation consisted of around 3000 acres. Today the beautiful buildings are intact on 80 of the original acres. Horses graze the pastures. Tall trees provide shade. Boxwoods, reaching second story heights, line weathered cobblestone paths. Once you’re on this property, time travels backwards rapidly, and you wonder why you didn’t pack a hoop skirt and bonnet.
Mint Julips - The Perfect Southern Afternoon Cocktail
The Inn exceeded all of my expectations. I booked a room with two beds to share with my mom. When we arrived, our room became an enormous suite with access onto the upstairs veranda where we sat and sipped plantation-appropriate mint julips from sweating silver goblets in the late afternoon. (I’m going to try to get their recipe; it was beyond perfection!) The bedroom itself was filled with gorgeous antique furniture including two very comfortable queen sized four poster beds, a set of wing back chairs (mom’s favorite) and a few dressers, antique clocks (that didn’t tick) and desks. Nope, it didn’t feel crowded. Actually, I think that room alone was larger than my entire Seattle dining room and living room put together! Mom laughed that the suite was larger than her entire house, and I think she’s right!
Eye-Catching Okra Flowers & Pods
In the evening we sat down to a five course prix fixe dinner, much of which was harvested from local, sustainable farms — from heirloom tomatoes to sweet corn soup to quail and rack of lamb. And, yes, like the three course breakfast the next morning, dinner was enough to feed me for a week. Plus, the service left me feeling like I owned the place. Everyone from the innkeepers to the housekeeper waited on us hand and foot — it was almost too much, but I think that’s the point.
In the morning, after gorging on a week’s worth of breakfast at one sitting, I wandered the grounds a bit. At dinner, one of the courses included okra from the plantation gardens. I don’t particularly like to eat okra, but I do find the plants simply stunning so I sought out the veggie gardens only to find okra plants towering over head. The innkeepers had told me it was a bumper crop okra year, and she wasn’t kidding. Spying all those ripe pods left me wishing I liked to eat them. Instead, I enjoyed snapping photos of the beautiful plants, planning to attempt growing them in my Seattle garden in 2011. (I’ll get to enjoy the eye-candy; if it actually produces pods in our cooler climate, the food bank can have the harvest!)
Guinea Hen on the Run
Then, as I was enjoying the veggie garden, from the field and nearby barn came fowl noises. It wasn’t quite a chicken noise, nor a duck, goose or turkey. A flash of red with black and white caught my eye from the weedy field behind me.
“Mom, is that a turkey?”
Mom, laughing: “Nope. Its a guinea.”
For years Mom has sung the praises of guinea fowl. I’m kind of surprised we didn’t raise them on the farm. We did have chickens that started from a pair my sister and I caught after their cage fell and broke off a truck near our farm. But no other domestic fowl lived on our farm. Mom’s love of guineas has grown over the years, especially after she contracted Lyme Disease and later found that guineas are one of the best fowl for cleaning up ticks (as well as Japanese Beetles and other insect pests in the garden.) If Mom didn’t live in a forest, she would keep guineas now to keep her garden clean. Alas, the hawks, eagles and other predators of her woods would eat the guineas right up. So, we packed ourselves back into the car and drove away — relaxed, sated, guinea and okra-free, but chatting away about how we can’t wait for another chance to meander in to the Inn at Meander Plantation again in the future.
