It’s gotten chilly here in Connecticut. The mornings are crisp and the nights are downright cold, at least from the standpoint of someone who moved to Florida a couple of decades ago. It’s time for pumpkin everything now – coffee, bread, muffins, pie, the whole works. And that’s great. But I always get a little sad when summer ends, even when it was a rainy one like this last one. I guess it’s time to move on, though. I’ll have to get out the muffin tins. Maybe light a fire in the fireplace. And hope for an Indian Summer.

When I was growing up, my best friend and I used to walk to a cemetery down the street from where we lived in Connecticut and search for gravestones that had “lockets” on them. “Locket” was our name for a photo of the deceased, set into a headstone and protected with glass and a brass cover you would lift up. The ones I remember were oval, the clothing and hairstyles Victorian looking, and the expressions serious.

I still like walking through cemeteries with old headstones. Some of the carvings are lovely, as are the inscriptions. It makes me wonder who the people were, what they were like, what kind of family they had, what kind of life they led.

These photos are from a cemetery in Easton, Connecticut. The graves there are very old and the headstones are beautiful. Some of the people buried there lived three hundred years ago. Many are buried next to their spouse or with several other family members. The gravestone on the right, for Gershom Bradley, tells us he died on January 15, 1795

I’ve always lived in a place that’s close to the water – no more than a drive of a few minutes or so – and I don’t think I could ever live somewhere that wasn’t. The ocean in Palm Beach is within walking distance from our home and it’s beautiful, but there’s something about the Connecticut shoreline and Long Island Sound that I love even more. I grew up here and spent most of my life here and you just can’t discount history and nostalgia. But beyond that, the harbors in the towns that dot the coast are so picturesque. I took this photo on a recent drive to the shore in Westport. The day was steaming hot, but I sat on a bench under a tree, inhaled the salt air as if it were an elixir, and enjoyed a lovely breeze. There’s a famous poem by John Masefield that starts, “I must go down to the seas again ….” I get it, John. I know just what you meant.

I don’t have a green thumb. Let’s get that out of the way right off the top. Although we have a lot of orchid plants at our home in Florida and they bloom very nicely, it’s not because of anything I do. I just hang them outside under our trees where they can enjoy filtered sunlight and I water them when we don’t get enough rain. Other than that, I let nature do her thing and when the orchids bloom I bring them into the house. Among the other tropical shrubs in our garden, we also have four gardenia bushes. The smell of gardenias might be one of my favorite things in the world. Lately they’ve begun to bloom and I’ve been bringing a few of the blossoms into the house each day. Even two flowers will fill our kitchen with a fragrance that’s deliriously sweet. The flowers only last a day or so before they wilt, but for that short time their beauty and exotic scent are magical.