Emily Paine Carter

Recent columns

• Readers write of run-ins with political bigwigs
• Recording holds clues from 6 decades ago
• Rubbed shoulders with any big names?
• Column archive

It's not often that one hopes to see a really, really big hornets' nest.

But Harold Bowman assured me that the pesky, stinging critters were long gone from their papery condo. (A previous column about his returning a lost billfold indicated he's an honorable man.)

So I set out for his Glenvar Heights yard. Your faithful-but-wimpy correspondent was grateful that no full-body beekeeper's outfit -- as my editor had playfully suggested -- would be necessary on a scorching September afternoon.

Is it the world's largest hornets' nest, as Bowman's call to this newspaper suggested? So far, he doesn't know; his daughter, Anne Sampson of Southeast Roanoke, found no such category in the authoritative Guinness World Records. He added that someone is interested in buying it.

Well, folks, it is indeed a big creation: 40 inches in circumference, by Bowman's measuring. He had found it in his back yard, and carefully cut the branch on which it hung via its "cooling tower."

And what a yard! He said his two acres -- on which he has witnessed 12 deer "in a pack" and a bear -- are the wildlife sanctuary he had wanted since his Southeast Roanoke childhood.

"I loved playing in the woods on my grandfather's farm in Floyd," he recalled. So Bowman, 80, has enjoyed cultivating trees for most of the 50 years he has lived here. Brother Fred Bowman (now of Florida) had built the house -- with Harold's help -- for Harold and his late wife, Jacqueline.

Bowman's place is a tree zoo: mighty, old-growth specimens mixed with ones being nurtured, surrounded by chicken wire. Former Christmas tree pines line the front boundary. Other pines: huge-coned loblollies. Black walnut, chestnut, almond ("I fight the squirrels for those nuts"), green gage plum, hickory. The birch family's American hornbeam trees, whose branches resemble a bodybuilder flexing his muscles ("I sold one in a pot on the old WRIS radio's 'Swap Shop' " -- just because a listener's son had served on the [Coast Guard] ship "Hornbeam").

And paw-paws! At last I have a mental picture to go with the song from elementary school days: "Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch." "As a kid I used to pick them by the Roanoke River, below Vinton," he said. "They're also called 'Temperate Zone bananas.' My wife kept some frozen pulp so she could make bread anytime -- tasted like banana bread."

And there are very old azaleas, and very tart gooseberry bushes.

And from Salemite Dr. Esther Brown an osage, or "mock orange," tree -- famous for wood tough enough for parts of ships, Indian bows and hedgerows out West.

He's my kind of gardener: We might not recall the Latin botanical names, but we remember the people who shared each plant. Like the woman who simply refers to her "Harold trees": whatever ones he's given her.

He reminisced about his "wouldn't-trade-them" wealth of experiences: delivering ice; repairing electronics; returning to Jefferson High School after an Army Signal Corps stint (1946-48); Naval service during the Korean War; and retirement from a long GE career ("Thomas Edison was my childhood hero!").

I could easily have listened to more, but he casually mentioned resident snakes. So, as charmingly as possible, I gasped, "My, my! Look at the time! Thanks so very much!" and, uh, made a beeline for my car.