Right now I can barely believe that less than a month ago I was still in Cuba. All those hot colors, the tropical sun, the friendly people. It was an experience I’ll never forget. Now it’s also hard to believe that I’ve been home for almost a month.
Catching up at home means there has been very little time for putting down my thoughts. It’s a beautiful spring in Connecticut. Friends told me that for a full month before I got home it was cold and dreary. I guess I returned at exactly the right moment.
On one of my first outings with friends they told me was the first warm day of the spring. The outing was a day trip to the Cloisters Museum in New York, part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for those of you who are not familiar with it. It houses an impressive array of medieval art and is composed of architectural pieces of various medieval cloisters from all over Europe. Some of my oldest friends, and almost all of my ‘sheep group’ treated me to this amazing day in honor of my 60th birthday back in January. They arranged for a docent to take us through the museum, followed by lunch at New Leaf in the park.
Judy and Julie put some of their photos together to make this video, which can be seen here on facebook. Since I cannot figure out how to post it here, I’ll just put a few photos from the day. The following photos are from Jody, Judy and Julie, my “J” friends!
A stunning spring day at the entrance to the Cloisters.
The main reason for our trip!– A chance for me to see the “Hunt for the Unicorn” series again after moving away four years ago. I used to visit the Cloisters numerous times a year since I lived only about 1/2 hour from the museum–now it’s been 4 years since I’ve had the opportunity to just pop by and see what’s in bloom and visit the tapestries I love so much.
No visit to the Cloisters is complete without enjoying the wonderful cloistered gardens. Because of the protection from the elements of a cold New York winter, these gardens bloom earlier and stay in bloom later than the surrounding area. This garden, the kitchen and dye garden, has been heavily rearranged since I was last here.
After our tour we walked through the gardens of Fort Tryon Park to the New Leaf restaurant. It’s a gem, with a slate terrace for dining outside amongst the azaleas and dogwoods on an early May afternoon. For my special day there were beautiful flower arrangements on the table and a 3-course lunch. I felt like royalty….where was my tiara??
Everyone arriving at the restaurant and taking a seat. Look at those flowers!
A gathering of such dear friends, including two of my new weaving friends from Connecticut who joined me.
And lunch was amazing! Jody photographed my lunch salad. There were two choices for each course, but now I only remember what I chose….which, of course, was amazing! Now you know I’ve totally lost it when I post photos of food, but really, a meal here is such an experience!
Dessert was a mango panna cotta.
I am still on such a high. I’ll never forget it, and I won’t ever get over the thrill of it!
While I was enjoying one of the best events of my life Bob was sailing home through some very challenging weather off the Eastern Seaboard. One of the rewards for enduring those spring gales was a day of complete calm after the storm, with visits from both dolphins and a humpback whale. I know you’ll want to see the video that Dave (one of Bob’s crew members for the trip home) got of the dolphins and the humpback whale they encountered during the trip!
The following weekend was the annual lace retreat for the New England Lace Guild, and I attended for the second year. I managed to spend the whole weekend working on my project from last year’s Idrija lace class, until I finally gave up on it and started a new and simpler project in that lace. I did not take any photos while there….I was too busy working! Everyone helped me, but especially Linda and Mary. Thank you. Here is a look at my simpler project. It looks a bit like a sea creature. I hope to find something useful to do with it…
Just after Bob returned home, we took a trip down to Baltimore to visit our older son and his wife. They surprised us two-fold: first by flying our younger son out from San Francisco to join us, and then announcing the wonderful news that our first grandchild will arrive in December. So much happiness and such a wonderful few days together. They announced the news by giving me this for Mother’s Day:
When being home includes such wonderful time with family and friends, it’s very hard to ever think of going away again.
Returning home does involve a lot of house chores to get things up and running again, and a good bit of gardening too, Bob and I have managed to take some time for sightseeing in our lovely part of the world.
We took a little river cruise on Pandora one evening in the middle of this week, to a spot I just love, where we can watch the Chester Ferry crossing to Hadlyme. From this vantage point the sun sets behind us as we watch the last rays hit Gillette Castle. It is a magical place, hard to tell what century we’re in as long as we don’t look at the cars on the ferry!
This is Memorial Day weekend, and yesterday we took a drive to visit Cato Corner Dairy Farm and Priam Winery on the eastern side of the river from where we live.
Look at the charming shop on the farm property!
And inside we were greeted by an even more charming sight–a farm girl ready to serve us tastings and sell us cheese!
We took our cheese selections with us to Priam Vineyards and tasted a few white wines before choosing the one we had with lunch!
Once at home I baked a batch of sour dough bread…. what a great welcome home!
Now it’s time to stop with all this wonderful nonsense and get to work on a loom! Hopefully I’ll be talking about that in my next post!
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