Many of you already know that Camilla Dente (Pres. Tom's wife) is having back surgery tomorrow. Here's a message from Tom, received this morning:

Hi Jane,
Camilla will have surgery tomorrow morning and will likely stay in the hospital 1-2 days. We finally received OKs from primary care and heart doctor yesterday after a few blood lettings and some tests. Son Tom and his family were up to take to lunch on Monday, of course he had to stop in New Haven and run a 20k race there first. But it was fun seeing them all. The weather has been nice here not too hot and not too cool, however, rain coming in today and tomorrow, a little coastal storm so you will likely not get it. I'll let you know how Camilla is after surgery. Tom

If you want to send Camilla a card, you can send it to their home address: 77 Bielefield Rd., Middletown CT 06457, or send Tom an e-mail at: tcdente@earthlink.net

We're wishing Camilla all the best. She has suffered with a very painful back all summer, and it will be a huge relief for her to be pain free, I'm sure.

We may not get the rain Tom is expecting, but it looks as if we may have spotty frost again tonight. It's usually the lower regions that get the frost this time of year, and perhaps at our elevation we may not be hit; however, that's a chance we may not want to take with tender plants and vegetables, so we'll probably cover things up tonight. We'll do that for a few weeks, and then I'll just figure it's time to concentrate on other things, pick everything edible, pull all the house plants inside, and tuck in for the winter. As usual, we have lots of green tomatoes, but this year we also have had quite a few ripe ones. Therefore, I'll cover them for as long as I can - until the frosts are long and hard.

We're still waiting for Mr. Calkins to come with some fill for that old septic tank that opened up last week. The water has drained completely now and after it's filled, we'll replace the sod. It will be nice to get our lawn back in shape. It'll be covered with snow soon, so any tell-tale scars won't matter.