Getting Into the Autumn Spirit

It's been over a month since my last post. My apologies, to any of my regular readers. After a full year of unemployment, I started a full-time, 3-month assignment which hopefully will become permanent at year's end.

So now that I'm "back to the grind," my weekends are even more precious than usual. With the nice weather we had for the past few days, I was in the mood to do something "seasonal" yet local. (My commute makes local activities much more desirable.)

So a friend and I dropped in at Hollandia Nursery in Bethel to admire both the Halloween (30% off a week before Halloween!) and Christmas decorations.

From there we moved on to Shakespeare Gardens in Brookfield (the former Burr Farm). The gardener there has a flair for re-purposing old items for use as planters, be they old wash basins or bicycles. Here are a few of their many planters favoring succulents.

And another...

They also have an assortment of stone plaques with bits of gardening-related poetry inscribed on them. They're meant to be propped up in the garden, something that's done very nicely at the Garden of Ideas in Ridgefield.

We really dallied in the lovely gift shop; there were so many things I admired there, and I did end up buying a creamy orange pumpkin covered with warts (the best kind!) along with a ceramic pot that looks like an artichoke, and 3 paperwhite bulbs to fill it.

By this time, it was well past lunch hour, so we headed back toward home for lunch at The Inn at Newtown. We got a coveted seat in front of the large window overlooking historic Main Street. We were able to watch the passers-by as we enjoyed our meal. I had the lobster corn chowder and my friend had the turkey/wild rice soup. We both ordered the grilled vegetables (zucchini, yellow squash and portabello mushroom) with goat cheese and balsamic vinegar.  Mmmm.

Then we headed over to the library where I was able to catch up on the latest issue of the Newtown Bee, a subscription I let lapse when I was unemployed. Perturbed at having missed the Lutheran Church Harvest Festival on Saturday, I decided I should renew my subscription. I love the local church fairs, craft fairs and even the senior center sales with their hand-knitted and crocheted items and home-baked goods.

It was a nice afternoon.