Thanks for that subversive plot. I read an article on growing tomatoes in the southern USA ( I’m wild like that) and it said that there are months in the summer when you can’t grow most crops, it’s too hot. Coming from England when we can’t grow most crops for at least half the year because it’s too cold, I found that amazing.re the bands, my best friend won a trip to the southern states back when we were in our twenties and broke (🤢). Unaccountably, she took her sister not me as her plus one, and they met Michael Stipe in a bar, I forget the town, it could have been Athens. She also talked her way into a top stud farm in Kentucky. It took me a while to recover from my jealousy on that one .
Miss Mp:
There are certainly things our climate prevents me from growing, or at least requires that I change how they are grown. For example rhubarb does not do well here, though some people try growing it as an annual, started from seed indoors in August, or try growing heat tolerant varieties in the shade! I grow peas, but I planted mine in December to January to have peas now, in April. Other crops, like tomatoes or peppers, grow just fine, but still may require more water or shade than they would up north.
Regarding your friend's southern trip, and Michael Stipe, when I started school here (1986), my fellow graduate students and I noted that virtually anyone in Athens trying to come off as cool, or 'in the know' musically, claimed to be friends with Michael Stipe, or know him or members of REM personally. Which probably meant they saw him once at a distance of 100 yards! I joked with friends, threatening to have a T-shirt made proclaiming 'only person in Athens who's not a personal friend of Michael Stipe'. REM was famous for showing up at local clubs and playing under a pseudonym, to mostly people that really did know the band, or that were let in on the secret.
If you are still in touch with your friend, ask if the town was Athens? The Uptown Lounge, and the 40-Watt Club, were popular music bars back then. Absolute dives, but the place to hear good (and sometimes bad) live music. The 40-Watt Club was painted black inside and, at it's original location, allegedly lit only by a single 40-watt light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Both clubs have opened and closed several times, and moved around as well.