Of Gardens and Guns

Garden & Gun is my new favorite magazine.  Why?

Well, it might be because I do enjoy a good garden.  A beautiful garden is enough to stop me in my tracks and make my heart do a little dance.  Of course, I enjoy many beautifully-crafted things in this way.

It may also be because, though I am not enough of a gun enthusiast to actually subscribe to a guns publication, nor even devote a single thought to munitions in any sense in a given day, I have enjoyed a trip to the shooting range on occasion.  I was actually a pretty decent shot at one time, but it's been a while.

It may even be because, since having moved back to the semi-North for a couple years and then coming back, I have a whole new loving appreciation for the South, and I now consider myself an adopted Southerner.   I never, ever want to leave ever, ever again.

These consequential reasons aside, the absolute reason this is my new favorite magazine is that they had the perfect good sense and good taste to exhibit Wine Guy's and Chef Girl's noteworthy and beautifully handcrafted Old-Fashioned on the cover.  Can a cocktail be art?  Obviously, it can.

Of all the accolades they've received -- and The Gin Joint has received a few -- this is one of the coolest.

They also placed first in the Woodford Reserve Manhattan Experience for South Carolina with their Tobacco Project Manhattan.

But now I'm just bragging.