Today, the Northern Neck celebrates the birthday of the “King of Peppers.” I speak of Ted Munns, for many years a resident of Reedville, where he and his wife, Denise, developed a magnificent botanical garden, which they left behind when they moved to Irvington six years ago.
Ted is an alumnus of Virginia Tech, after which he spent his career in federal service prior to coming to the Northern Neck. While in the Washington area, Ted went back to school and earned a second degree in horticulture. He is a living encyclopedia on all things horticultural, and he is the research tool to whom many gardeners turn with any of their questions about growing plants.
His particular fascination in the realm of biology is with peppers. He is on a first-name basis with hundreds of species of peppers and he thoroughly enjoys explaining their varieties and vagueries. The Munns’ household is also replete with artistic depictions of numerous forms of peppers, both as plants and as fruit. Ted’s knowledge is of wide-ranging depth, but clearly his first love is for the pepper plant, in all of its forms.
Since coming to the Northern Neck, Ted has served as a mainstay of the Master Gardener program, which he has balanced with his work as a Master Naturalist. He is at home with all aspects of nature, ever resourceful and always eager to learn more, all of which he expresses uniquely. At their Reedville home, Denise and Ted built a front porch with the palings of the railing in the form of menhaden.
Some years ago, our family first met Ted when we took the annual beekeeping course at the library in Heathsville, offered by Mike Church. We were part of a large, enthusiastic class, but sadly many of us found to our great dismay that the nationwide collapse of beehives affected our area as well, and our hopes for on-site pollination died with the hives.
Ted’s horticultural interest extends to houseplants as well. He introduced me to the night-blooming cereus six years ago, alerting me of the need for patience in tending to the plant, but assuring me that my efforts would bring a wonderful return when the blooms came once a year for one night, as the name implies.
I kept the cuttings in water until roots emerged, then potted them in large flowerpots. For four years, they were “getting comfortable” in our surroundings and then one of them finally bloomed. We had to enjoy it exhaustively for that one night, knowing that a year would pass before the opportunity arose again.
As Ted celebrates today, Denise, a retired veteran, is likely working on one of her quilting projects, some of which her bee presents to other veterans, while Ted is perusing the latest garden catalogs, either on paper or online, with his eyes on spring. They have been constant contributors to the quality of life we enjoy in the Northern Neck. Thanks to you both, and Happy Birthday, Ted. “Ad multos annos!
*****
Errata
In the last item, I spoke of Gladys and Quack, two members of our “extended” family, extended, that is, to the barnyard. Somewhere in cyberspace their breed names were reduced from being proper names to common nouns.
Correctly, Gladys is a Cotton Patch goose, a recognized Heritage Breed, and Quack is a Khaki Campbell drake, a breed developed in Gloucestershire, England by Mrs. Adele Campbell during the Boer War. She thought the color of the feathers resembled that of the uniforms of the British army, thus she gave her ducks the proper name, Khaki Campbell, and thus they have been for the past century and a quarter.
