A Little Local News

One of the things I love most about Summertime is I'm outdoors all the time and sudden discoveries are all around me.
Today, I just want to show you some recent discoveries I found right "under my nose".

My brother came from Pennsylvania for a visit last week and he wanted to see the newest edition of Wegman's (our local grocery store). The company built a brand new store within the city limits, replacing one that was outdated, outmoded, passe' - all that. This company is renowned for "state of the art" stores. They are the Anthropology of grocery stores. Though this new branch is quite small compared to their other branches, it has enough interesting things to draw me back again and again.

All of the Wegman's stores have what they call a "Cafe'". In this space, shoppers may sit down and relax with their computers, newspapers, tablets, etc. along with a meal that they have purchased from the food court section of the store. This section has "ready to eat" Oriental, Indian, Spanish, Italian, Southwest, Kosher, etc. - hot and ready to eat. They have coffee and other tempting drinks, they have a French Pastisserie, salads, fruit and yogurt cups - and on and on.

What I love about the new store is that their Cafe' also went on and on. There were tables along a long windowed edge of the building. Therefore every table was a window seat. They had a room that looked like a family room in a home with a large TV on the wall over a roaring fireplace. Guess what was on TV? The Food Network !!

They had a long narrow hallway type of room lined with tables and walls lined with huge blowups of vintage photos of historic Rochester. I am in love with this.

Here's the corner of Winton Road and East Avenue 150 years ago

And here is what it looks like today. This is the very spot this new branch is located.

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Some things that are happening in my back yard - flowers growing, deer sunbathing

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A sheep farm that is not far from my house. The sheep all skittered away from the fence when I approached. I didn't know they were shy - didn't want their picture taken - they had no sunglasses to hide behind so they gave their behinds to the camera.

Garden Tour

There are several garden tours in my area every summer. I got hooked on them when I was designing a garden for our home. I wanted to have a pond so I paid particular attention to garden ponds and asked loads and loads of questions of the garden owners – do you leave the fish in there all year long? Yes, but you must keep the bubbler going so the fish can get oxygen. The fish go dormant as do the plants. As the water warms up in the spring, both fish and plants begin to awake and begin the cycle again.

The hospitable gardeners who open their garden for visitors to trample through each summer are some of the most generous people on earth. They’ll pull up a bit of a perennial plant and give it to you to thrive in your garden. There are many plants in my garden that were started this way.

I went to two this summer. In my area these garden tours are annual events and are usually fund raisers for the organizations who sponsor them. The ones I attended this season were sponsored by the Historical Society and the other was sponsored by the Science Museum – both vital local organizations.

I happened to miss the one that is my favorite, because of a conflicting commitment. That one is called the Notable Garden Tour – notable, because there are musicians in every garden. This show is sponsored by the Greece Performing Arts Society. This organization believes that gardening is a performing art – and rightly so. Therefore, live music in every garden as well as an artist who is doing some plein aire water color or sketching with charcoals or some other type of easel art. They also provide snacks in each garden at this show. Snacks provided by our local mega grocery. You can see why this one is my favorite.