{ sights & sounds }

Sunday strolling during my favorite time of year ... around one of my favorite towns, Exeter, New Hampshire.

local color

Quietly tucked away on a back road in Exeter, NH is a nursery that I've been dying to stop at ever since we moved here. It's a place where I could spend hours, and totally lose track of time.

Last summer, it was full of geraniums, hydrangeas, and stars and stripes bunting. In the fall, it overflowed with pumpkins, scarecrows, and Indian corn. At Christmas time, it gloriously displayed fresh wreaths, bright poinsettias and twinkly lights. And now that it's spring time, I was simply unable to resist it's charms anymore.

Churchill's Gardens is currently bursting with color. And on a sunny day, it's completely intoxicating.

{ candy land }

You know those Lindor chocolate truffles by Lindt that sit in bins at the desk at Barnes & Noble and such? The tiny little chocolate globes wrapped in colored foil and filled with soft, whipped chocolate?

Well, as luck (?) would have it, there's a Lindt outlet store about 7 miles from my house. I'm still not sure whether it's a curse or a blessing, but there it sits, on a little corner in Exeter, New Hampshire.

One of their number one customers, despite the fact that she lives in a different time zone, is my sweet mother. And on her most recent visit, when she requested that we "stop in" to the Lindt shop, I was rightfully concerned.

The woman bought out the store.

In all fairness to any red-blooded, living, breathing homosapien (my mother, in particular), it's mighty hard to resist -- the store is a chocolate-lover's dream. Aisle upon aisle and bin upon bin of those pretty little foil treats, priced obscenely low, are begging to be purchased and enjoyed; however, leaving with so many that one is unable to take even 1/4 of them home on the plane is a bit excessive, even for my Costco-junkie, bulk-minded mother.

But she did.

And my house is now full of chocolate.

exeter

Exeter, New Hampshire on a cloudy fall day.