Recreation

It was 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning, the air sharp with an end-of-summer chill, when I meet Jeb Breece to set up the Kent Flower Market. The parking lot of Kent Barns in front of RT Facts Design & Antiques was a high-priced ghost town apart from our cars, but just give it a few hours. If you grow it, they will come.

I had put off writing about my number one issue these days — the drought — hoping that between writing and publishing it would rain. And rain it has; a most beautiful two days of showers.

Carroll Shelby:  Legendary automotive icon, Le Mans winner,  engineer, driver and definitely outspoken Texan,  decided that he wanted to build cars.

The venerable, stone Richardsonian-style Hotchkiss Library of Sharon, Conn., is being renovated and modernized — so the functional parts of the library (books, staff) have moved to temporary quarters at the Herbert Klebes American Legion building, around the corner from the firehouse.

Corvettes and other vintage race cars were not the only highlights of the Historic Festival at Lime Rock Park in Salisbury, Conn., over Labor Day Weekend. There was also the dedication of a section of track to one of Lime Rock’s favorite and most famous drivers, the actor Paul Newman.

Several people have commented to me that it isn’t just humans, dogs and gardens that are suffering from the drought. The birds are, too.

I asked the experts at Audubon in Sharon, Conn., for their tips on how to offer water to backyard birds.

If, as is said, one can’t see the forest for the trees, might it also sometimes be true that one can’t see the trees for the forest?

Two days ago I put my apron on again, after a month of ignoring it. It’s not that I hadn’t cooked; it’s more that I’d done it in a somnolent state, not really paying close enough attention to realize I needed protective gear.