A few images from our morning walk into Essex to have coffee at our favorite spot.
Today really feels like autumn, and I wore long pants for the first time this season. All the gardens along our way are bursting with everything they’ve got in the last weeks before frost. It is a breathtaking time of year!
Sunflowers in a long border of sunflowers, zinnias, and roses.
One of my favorite houses where the Kousa dogwood berries are framing a view of the front door.
And right next door is my friend Jane’s house. She has beautiful gardens, and at this time of year the focus is purple Russian sage and bright yellow sunflowers along her picket fence.
Right near Jane’s house is a house where the older residents grow a very large vegetable garden. To me it verges on being a farm. They have pole beans, various types of squash, corn, tomatoes, and in late summer the pumkin vines grow almost out to the street.
Clever Mr. Farmer has trained the longest vine onto his big apple tree.
While having coffee we met a man who just returned from Portugal, where he and his family have a house in Nazare. His wife was born there, so they visit each year, and he had lots of good advice for us. I will get busy honing the details for our trip…
And on this first crisp day I will warp my new copper loom for the upcoming Joan Baxter workshop. I am leaving tomorrow for a whole week at an inn in Rockport, Massachusetts, where 12 of us will spend time with Joan developing our individual cartoons for tapestries about the sea and the shoreline. More on that when my idea gains some clarity.
Also, today, I am making the second batch of baguettes from the recipe in the current issue of “Cooks Illustrated.” (If you want the recipe you have to buy this issue!) The first batch was the best baguette I have ever made myself (thank you CI!!). I reached my goal of making a baguette that could rival Balthazar’s Bakery in NY….a goal I’ve been heading toward for decades!
And while I wait for next round of dough to rise, I’m having a fresh tomato sandwich with mozzarella and basil on day old, lightly toasted, leftover baguette. Hard to imagine anything better!
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