We complain about the heat in the Natural State, but after looking through this month’s issue, I realize we live a charmed life.
I love this issue, because we start with whetting your appetite for good catfish starting on page 30. We scoured the state for the best catfish for our Catfish Bucket List and found there are plenty of good eats in the state for deep fried goodness. Wanna cook some at home? Let food blogger Kat Robinson help you. She has the recipes as she has been to a few of these on the list.

Savvy Baker with Charlie
The heat might keep you indoors but if you have a garden, don’t neglect it. The mother of gardening, Janet Carson, shows us to tend to our perennials and annuals on page 26. If you haven’t been to a festival yet this summer, we have a great list for you. It’s time to do that with your family. And dog ear this month’s murder mystery by writer Janie Jones. There were some crazy shenanigans going on in northeast Arkansas almost a century ago with pistol-packing preachers. The story would have made a good reality TV show.

Hunter Baker with Charlie
The Bakers are wrapping up summer with a splash in our brand new pool and getting ready for Friday night lights with our older child’s final season as an offensive lineman. Hunter will graduate high school in May; time does fly, doesn’t it? Savvy, our younger child, had a great summer baking and cooking, and she did some of that on our trip to the beach. It’s always good to have a Baker/baker around, don’t you think?
We thank you for your continued loyalty to the state’s largest lifestyle publication. We are proud of the staff we have at Vowell, Inc., publisher of AY About You, Arkansas Money & Politics and many other publications. Get a subscription, give a subscription or just share the magazine. As you know, they get picked up quickly at newstands across the state. I’ll be reading my August issue by my new pool and dreaming of Christmas. My two favorite holidays are pool season and Christmas. More on that in months to come.