Community Garden Clean Up 5/12/18

Today was clean up day at the COMMUNITY GARDEN.   Several of us met up at ten a.m. and finished cleaning up the beds.  I took several pictures.

I noticed that there is now a LITTLE LIBRARY on Hawley Street, just outside the garden.  Pastor Craig hopes to find a teacher who will read stories to children at the garden this summer.

Pam invited me over to her place for lunch.  She had prepared a hamburger soup in her crockpot and she made biscuits from scratch.  After lunch, I suggested we go out for ice cream.  We headed out to Sub Delicious on 31, and stopped at a garage sale on the way.  At Sub D, we each had a scoop of coconut crunch.  

VINECROFT Adventure!

Tuesday at Life Group, Dee asked me if I would like to go to  a luncheon at Vinecroft Retirement Community in Clarence.  I really did not understand what the event was all about, but she said they would provide a very nice luncheon but asked that each participant bring an item of baby clothing.  I agreed to go.  On Wednesday I picked up two "onesies" to contribute.

Pam was also going and she had directions to Dee's house, so I picked her up and we picked up Dee and Jim at her place.  When we arrived, we handed in our baby items and signed up and were given name tags.   Their was a brief program and welcome after tables were filled with guests.  The collected items were to go to the The Baby & Children's Ministry of Harvest House in Buffalo.   

A facebook page for Harvest House shows this picture at the top, so I think perhaps Harvest Huse is in this building. 

They provided a nice buffet in a gorgeous dining room.  Everything was very elegant.  Two residents (Doreen and Joe) joined us at our table.

Desert (cheesecake) was served to us at our table and the LADIES FIRST QUARTET performed

They were excellent.  I particularly liked their rendition of THE CLIMB.  

Italian Buffet in Cambria

Elaine and I went to the Cambria Congregational Church for their Italian Buffet. (it was supposed to be three of us, but Nancy cancelled at the last minute).   It was great.............spaghetti, lasagna (two kinds),  stuffed shells, meatballs and Italian sausage, Italian bread and butter, salad and desert.  I had strawberry rhubarb pie.  We visited with Elaine's cousin Laurie for a bit before we left.

Out and About Lewiston SOLO

Peg, David and I tentatively planned to go to the Kinzua Bridge today but Peg felt she needed a relaxing day more than she needed a day trip.

I decided to go see Carrie in Lewiston.  I also decided to check out a couple of places I read about on Facebook:  Mrs. Thank You and the Stella Niagara Preserve.    I found both of them.  The Preserve is right along the Niagara River, but there does not seem to be a sign, and the only parking available is at the Senior Center down the road.   I did not have my camera with me, but I saw this sign, and found the picture online.   It is along the road at the location:

I located Mrs. Thank You's convenience store, it seems to be adjacent to the Indian reservation.

  It is spacious and clean, offer lots of prepared foods and has a nice area with tables for people to eat in.  I purchased a slice of pizza and a fresh tomato.

I decided to take a different way home and found myself on Route 31.  As I passed St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church I noticed a full parking lot and a sign saying BASKET RAFFLE, so I stopped and parked/  Admission was $7 which included one sheet of tickets for the raffle.  Since I was not interested in the raffle, I asked if I could go in and look at the deserts (which I could see from the ticket sales table) and I was let in.  

I purchased $7.00 worth of deserts.  

which are pictured here along with the tomato from Mrs. Thank You's store!!!

Chiavetta's and More at Faith Tab!!!!

I pre-purchased a ticket for take out Chiavetta's BBQ at Faith Tab, which was a fundraiser for the teens mission trip to Mexico.  Pre-purchasing  allowed me to go to the youths rummage sale early so I did. Everything was set up for the sale of the dinners and cars were lining up when I arrived, but I decided to go to the rummage sale first.

At first, it looked disappointing, but I kept looking and actually went up to pay three times!  I got  a yellow chenille bedspread, three Vaseline glass desert cups, some candy cane tree ornaments, some red and white table napkins, a book by Corrie ten Boom, a Martha Stewart craft kit to make an autumn wreath and a few other items.

Peggy had arranged for her and David and I to take our dinners to the "Upper Room" so we could gt together with Jim and Kathy Christie and Jim's mother.   Jim had been previously married to my stepsister Lori years ago before he met his second wife and they became missionaries.  It was good to see them and meet his mother.  The Chiavetta's dinner was very good!

After dinner and on the way home, I treated myself to a blueberry/vanilla custard at RJ's,

May 2, 2018: KNOX FARM

Mary Ann called me kind of late last night and said she was thinking about the possibility of going to KNOX FARM and asked me to check the weather.  I did so, and found out that today was supposed to be nice and warm, with no precipitation  so I agreed to go and set a time to pick her up.

We arrived around ten thirty and parked and looked for the Visitors Center.  There was a sign with an arrow but following the arrow did not seem to lead us to a Visitors Center.  We asked people we saw but nobody seemed to know anything.  I had a geocache programmed in, so I suggested we head towards it.

I found the geocache KNOX BLOX.  Mary Ann waited while I went into the woods.  Then we looked for a trail she remembered from a previous visit many years ago.  We never did find it.   Here are a few pictures I took.

I took this from the trail near where I found the geocache. 

 I guess these are the main buildings of the farm.

When we located the rest rooms on the way out, we found that they were in the unmanned Visitors Center where maps of he trails were available.  

We drove to Main Street, East Aurora and found Tony Rome's Globe Hotel.  Elaine had told me about Tony Rome's after she and Nancy went there last fall.  We had lunch here and it was great.  

 They have $5.99 lunch specials.  This is half of my chicken salad pita, which came with homemade potato chips, a pickle and a fountain drink.  I added on a cup of beef, vegetable barley soup for a little over a dollar.

It was a nice meal and if Tony Rome's was closer to Lockport I would definitely go again.  On the way back to the car I went in MR POT PIE, McDuffies Bakery.  I tried a couple of samples but did not buy anything.  

It was a great day!!!!

REINSTEIN WOODS (and more) Adventure on May 1, 2018

It was a gorgeous spring day and Mary Ann and I headed to Depew this morning to go to Reinstein Woods Nature Preserve.   It was my first time while Mary Ann had been there once before years ago.  It was easy to find.  Our first

stop was at the Environmental Education Center, which was very nice.  We picked up a map of the preserve and headed out.  We started out on the Lily Pond Loop, which led to another trail and so on.  I particularly liked the State Symbols trail which had interpretive signs for various symbols of New York State.  Here are a few pictures I took as we walked the trails:

The trails were all very flat and easy, very well maintained.

As we approached the stone cabin:

I thought I saw smoke just beyond it.  Indeed I did.  A tree had fallen and taken down some electrical wires.  You can see them in this picture.  As Mary Ann and I were hurrying past the wires, we met up with staff who had come to investigate.  

I think we were the last people to be allowed to walk past the wires and the fire.  If we had not been allowed past we would have had to walk the long way back that we had just come.  

Fire trucks and rescue vehicles were arriving:

We continued along the trail to get back to the Environmental Education Center.  By this time, the beginning of the trail had been closed

We went into the EE Center to use the rest room.  When we left we decided to walk a little way out on the boardwalk, but we ended up walking all the way to the end.  We were able to watch the fire trucks and we saw the NYSEG truck arrive.  At the end of the boardwalk I found a Sweet Buffalo Rock

I left two rocks that I had brought with me along the trail we took between the outdoor rest rooms and where we parked the car.  

We headed to Depew to go to Schwebl's for lunch.  We both had the Beef on Weck, which was very good.    The beef was hand carved.

Then we found a geocache.  This involved a lot of driving around to get to the right spot.  Before leaving West Seneca, we stopped for ice cream at this place.  

It was close to five p.m. when we got back to Lockport.   It was a great day.