The Grand Hotel Marriott Resort, Golf Club and Spa in Point Clear Alabama, has a chef’s garden where the ingredients are picked fresh daily. The strawberries, onions, carrots and herbs are harvested within hours, if not minutes of their use in the award winning restaurant.
And don’t forget the fresh mint, still warm from the sun, crushed in your mint julep – served to you on the back porch overlooking Mobile Bay.
Just beyond the garden, a curious crowd gathers beneath the shade tree at 4pm every day. Within minutes, the sound of drums approach, and from the distance, an honor guard comes marching around the corner.
After pledging the flag, and a brief, but thorough lesson on the history of the Civil War Battle of Mobile Bay, everyone is warned to stand back.
The shot is heard up and down the Bay, rattling windows up to Fairhope. While holding their summer novel with one hand, the locals calmly reach up with the other and straighten the vase on the shelf. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”
After the boom has resonated off the last bay house, cookies and tea are served inside the historic main lobby. The sweets shown above, were shared by four of us. Not just me. Cross my heart.
Damn the torpedoes . . . Admiral David Farragut in the Battle of Mobile Bay.
Photo of cannon firing – by my youngest son.