Loose Leaf Notes

When Joe and I were down the mountain in Roanoke babysitting Bryce this week, we had lunch at Local Roots Café, a farm-to-table gourmet good restaurant on Grandin Road. Bryce was napping when we carried him in. He sweetly woke to find himself in a new environment where he promptly set about to wield a table knife into a sword and turn his nose up after tasting a lemon, which you can see HERE.

It was the best crab cake I ever tasted and the café owner, Diane Elliot (who it turned out I knew from the past), was warm and kid-friendly. After Bryce sampled a little of everything for lunch and then dumped out all the raw sugar packets to file them back in their proper place, his 20 minute sitting limit expired. I spotted him while he wandered around, which is when I learned that the café customers were kid-friendly too.

Joe soon joined us for an exploration of the grounds. We discovered the Grandin Gardens, an urban eco-village adjacent to Local Roots, when my eye caught a labyrinth and my interest was piqued by an empty lemonade stand. I learned later that The Gardens was the gathering place of Roanoke's recent 350 International Day of Climate Action, where 350 apples were made into apple butter and the ground's fountain was powered by a bicycle ride.

Bryce was interested in the bicycle lending hut and, in particular, a certain red bike helmet. The only thing more interesting to him than that lady bug helmet, exploring the café compost heap, and throwing rocks in the water fountain, were the raspberries he discovered growing in the gardens. Like a wild animal that had come across a pickin' patch, he grazed for his dessert, smacking and smiling.

Our tour ended when we realized it was time for Bryce's big sister to arrive home off the school bus. We headed back to Bryce's house, but not before running into our friend Tenely Weaver from "Good Food for Good People," who was setting up a fresh produce stand in front of Local Roots. She greeted Bryce with a smile, bent down and said to him, "Have all the apples you want. If you don't eat them, I'll have to feed them to my horses."