Have you ever looked at the same thing day after day, then suddenly one day it looks different? This was the case with the rooftops below and it wasn’t just the snow. Suddenly they looked like a painting, an illustration for a children’s book … something different.
And I am grateful for fresh eyes!
The weather is still crisp and perfect for making the most of enjoying the Fall colors and seasonal fare. A friend and I decided to take a short journey to Oldwick, a town in the eastern part of our county.
Our first stop was breakfast at the Oldwick General Store.
Unassuming from the outside and simply furnished within, this converted house offers a variety of delicious home-style foods. You order your meal off the blackboard behind the counter where staff takes your order, gather your utensils, fetch your beverage, and find a table. They’ll give you a shout when your food is ready.
The selection of hot food is always delicious and cooked right there in plain view. Adjacent to this is a deli counter with standard delicatessen fare and a host of delicious made-on-premises salads. And right next to that, a bakery case of rich homemade treats that is hard to resist. (But I did.) Tasty food, hot coffee, pleasant surroundings and a good friend start the day off right.
Our next stop was right down the road at Melick’s Town Farm, a family owned farm that has been growing fine produce for several generations. Their apple cider can be found almost anywhere in the county, and their main farm stand, where we stopped, carries a great variety of their own fruits, vegetables, plants and flowers, home-baked breads and sweets, and more.
Melick’s has many varieties of apples, and if you don’t want to buy by the bushel or pound, you can buy in 1/2 peck bags.
Only when we were on the way home, did I remember that I’d wanted to buy one of their breads!
What I didn’t photograph at Melick’s Farm, but did succumb to, were a couple of their delicious apple cider doughnuts and one fabulous coffee cake muffin, above. It’s hard to resist homemade.
Once we’d gotten home, we still felt like doing something else, so decided upon a walk. The sky had become a bit overcast, so the autumn hues were not as incandescent as they had been earlier in the sunshine.
Even so, the feel of Fall was in the air.
Along our walk, we passed all kinds of weeds … tiny magenta thistles, miniature daisies of some kind, vines. However, this pod, one of many to be found along the path, was fascinating. Closed, they are soft green, hard-shelled pods, but when open, they push out something akin to cotton. At one point along the way, there was a stand of them, looking to my eye not unlike a landing spot for so many aliens.
They may just be weeds, but even in their texture, they have an interest all their own. Sugar maples are on fire around the next corner.
Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. ~Rachel Carson
Driving backroads out my way, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this blog, is a visual feast, but more than that, it is something else. For me, it is nourishment for the soul.
The views I find along my travels feed a part of me that treasures the beauty and peacefulness, and the best part about it is that wherever I go, there they are. The changing of the seasons only adds to the richness of it all.
I wonder, to a fresh set of eyes, do these views appear boring? In our electronic age, where everything moves at the pace of a nanosecond, do they seem stilted or irrelevant? While I commit some of the images to my camera, I am snapping far many more and recording them in my memory. These simple views offset the pace and insistence of the many electronic communications and devices that make up the day.
The wildness of nature or the orderliness of a farmer’s fields … it doesn’t matter … either conspires to awaken in me the knowing that whatever might be happening in life, there is still beauty in my surroundings. It’s in all our surroundings; we only need to stop and look, and take in the view.
It has been a lovely Fall so far … crisp, sunny days with a light chill at night, not quite cold enough to turn on the heat, but chilly enough to warrant a warm blanket or quilt.
On morning walks the leaves seem to whisper that no matter how green they are now, they soon will be slipping into golds, crimsons and pale, dusky rose.
Pumpkins and mums announce the onset of Fall, and the river glides lazily towards the sea, resplendent surrounded by her last-of-summer greens.
The smile that flickers on baby’s lips when he sleeps — does anyone know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumor that a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning. ~ Rabindranath Tagore
The air was too crisp and the sunshine too bright to not go for a morning walk. And it was worth it … the Delaware was celebrating the day as well.
This humble bridge connecting Pennsylvania and New Jersey was originally constructed in 1842.
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