ketchup.

Well, folks, I missed this week's "Word Wednesday"... but if I had posted, the word would have been "aspire"...

I could make a long long list of the things I aspire to, but maybe that's for another post.  

{lunchtime reading}

Currently, I'm reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.  I can relate to the quote she mentions from Yeats: "Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth.  We are happy when we are growing."  This ties in to the idea of "arrival fallacy", described by Tal Ben-Shahar as "the belief that when you arrive at a certain destination, you'll be happy".  I've heard the "journey, not the destination" idea so much, you'd think I get it... but it's one more thing I aspire to.  I don't know how many moments I have left, and I want to relish each one, keep the right spirit in each one... and grow along the way.

For your viewing (hopefully) pleasure, here are pictures from my adventures since Labor Day:

{lovely village cafe a la Amelie}

{whole food at whole foods}

{burnt sugar ice cream, chocolate chai ice cream beneath}

Note: Mt. Tom's in Easthampton is my favorite ice cream store ever.  I went there three days in a row.  Good thing I don't live closer as an intervention would then need to be staged...

{summer love}

{cat-in-law nose}

{rappelling}

{vermont at 57 mph}

{friday night supper at stone soup with jill and kate}

{last week's friday flowers!}

{of the intervale community farm}

  

{procrastinated wedding project}

Note: I did finish... 8 minutes before we left for the wedding.

{fancy kate in front of the ethan allen III}

Third level: our wedding party.

Second level: another wedding party.

Deck: pirates.  Not kidding.

  

{wedding fun}

Today is the last day of summer.  My original intention for this blog was to research an herb or spice each season, draw it, grow it (if possible), cook and/or bake with it - generally make friends with it.

Cilantro was my summer herb of choice.  We are not friends.  This is due to a total lack of effort on my part.  Cilantro grew away in my garden, (in the metaphorical sense - cilantro was on the stoop, leeeeeannnnin' on the doorbell), but I turned a deaf ear.  As was the case with spring's tarragon, here I am, on the last day of the season, ruefully writing that I didn't fill the place I aspired to as herb researcher extraordinaire.  

Right now, the fall doesn't look half as busy as the summer was.  That can change quickly.  But, for now, I'm looking forward to growth. (: