JPA Fall Meeting Is Tomorrow

Let's not forget the Joe's Pond Association meeting tomorrow at 10 a.m. at the pavilion.  This is the last meeting of this season - hasn't the summer just flown by? - so we hope you'll make an extra effort to be there.  I'm bringing some albums with pictures that have been given to the Association, some very old, some not so old, and some very recent, and I hope you'll enjoy seeing some faces from years past that will inspire fond memories.  There are also some deeds and maps from before JPA was founded.  And other memorabilia collected over the years.  So come a  little early and take a look.

Steve Allen found a website for a new restaurant opening soon in Cabot:  "Downstreet Eats" . 
They plan to open in mid-September in the same building where several other restaurants have opened in the past 10 years or so.  "Butters" was the last to be there, and they moved to the back of the hardware store, serving breakfast and lunch and evening takeouts.  They don't have much room, but seem to be doing quite well, and the food is consistently good.  Downstreet Eats appears to be starting out serving dinner only on Friday and Saturday and brunch on Sunday, no breakfast or lunch menu, leaving that to Butters.  We wish them all well.

The rain storms last night ushered in some fresh, cool air that made our day much more comfortable than we've had this past week.  We didn't get a lot of rain - I measured .11 in. in my rain gauge.  We are expecting a nice string of weather for the next few days - and that's both good and not so good for the folks who will be packing up to leave to get back to work or school this next week.  It's harder to leave here when the weather is behaving perfectly.  For those of us who get to stay here year around or well into the fall, this kind of weather is a bonus.

I've been watching the maple leaves turning.  There are beautiful colors showing up already on some of our nearby maples - the ones that usually are the first to turn; deep, deep reds on a tree by Jamie and Marie's, and lots of yellow and orange splashes of color beginning to show on the hillsides.  The crab apples on our tree are turning bright red, and the choke cherries are a lovely deep maroon.  I have watched the tall grass and ferns at the upper edge of our lawn turn from green to a rich bronze, and I have purple phlox among the rapidly turning leaves of our big burning bush.  One of my favorite fall flowers are these tall purple asters - I think they are an old fashioned variety because they were a favorite of my father's, too.  This closeup of a bee is on my desktop right now.  When the nights are chilly like now, the bees kind of hunker down on these blossoms and the petals sort of curl around them.  They become very lethargic, and I've made the mistake of cutting the flowers early in the day.  They blend in with the yellow of the flower so I sometimes don't notice them, but after they've been in the warm house for a while they wake up and begin to fly around.  Then we have to capture them in a tumbler and release them outside.  It's nice to have these, about the last flowers of the year, around to remind us of what a beautiful summer it's been.