Thursday April 29
Today's outing was to the garden centre to buy a new silver-leaf dogwood. I was a little... exuberant a couple of years ago when I pruned it back to the ground and I don't think it will recover, at least not in my lifetime. Also, there's another shrub somehow mixed in with the dogwood so the whole mess is coming out. I was under the impression that garden centres were allowed to be open under the stay at home order. Well, this one was curbside or drive-thru only. How do you pick a shrub without looking at it first? This place either seriously under-stocked or had already sold most of their stuff because as we (I dragged HB with me) drove past the yard, it was half empty. I'm betting they've sold most of their stuff. So no dogwood for me today.
So I came home and made cake.
ScienceGirl found this Lemon Drizzle Cake somewhere on the internet and for some reason thought it would be the best thing ever. Apparently, it's the Queen's favourite cake. I had some sour cream to use up so I didn't mind making it. It's not bad, a bit dense but ok. There are two glazes on it - one syrupy one that you have to cook that's supposed to soak into the cake and one that's not cooked. I moved it around too much when it was hot which is why the top is all cracked.
Two years ago today, we had another day out in New York. This one was more our pace, less noisy and frenetic. We decided to drive up one side of the Hudson River and down the other, stopping as we saw fit along the way.
Our first stop was a little town called Sleepy Hollow, which is supposed the be the setting for the headless horseman story. Turns out it's actually not. The people of this town voted some years ago to change the name to Sleepy Hollow from whatever it was called before. Now you would think they would capitalize on this - make it a mecca for fans of the book (there must be some), have little touristy shops and oldey worldey tea rooms. But no. There was not even a downtown of any kind. They mustn't get any visitors because some guy pulled his truck over to ask if we were lost and needed help. I said, Yeah we're looking for some shops and a downtown. No, he said, we don't have anything like that. We wandered around the streets he directed us to and saw the only nod to the town's name - this window in the town hall.
It was time for something to eat (diabetes blows) so we drove on to the next little town to find exactly what we were looking for. Replenished with a nice coffee and some baked goods, we strolled up and down the pleasant main street of this town. This place also mustn't get many visitors either because a lady in one shop asked where we were from and what brought us there. She gave us a tourist's brochure and suggested some things to see.
It amused me to see this poster for upcoming concerts.
God only knows why Gordon Lightfoot would be performing here but he was. I would have gone to see him if we were around. That would have really amused me.
It was a lovely drive and beautiful scenery. We stopped at a look-out point somewhere along the river. This is looking down river.
Directly across from this picture is some old fort built to repel the British in the War of 1812 maybe. There were a load of plaques explaining the significance and history of this fort whose name I cannot remember. They, the Americans, were planning to put big heavy chains in the river to disable the British ships coming up the river. But by the time they had manufactured these chains, the Brits came around by land and captured the fort. I think I laughed out loud at that.
We made our way back to The Doctor's, had lunch in a nice little diner in her downtown, had time for a nap and then took them all out for supper. The evening was spent drinking wine and chatting. All in all, a lovely day.
Until tomorrow. Stay sane.
No comments:
Post a Comment