Old Fashioned Outing

Our Saturday was spent in what we dubbed "a ladylike day abroad". Like the heroines in old stories such as Portrait of a Lady or Little Women, we packed a basket with bread and cheese and glass bottles of sparkling juice, armed ourselves with pens and paper and brushes and set forth to find a quiet, scenic spot in which to work our wondrous art. We had dicovered a hidden jewel of a place the day before; the New Glasgow Gardens. They were rather a hidden treasure to my mind as I had often before stopped nearby and never seen them. But we followed a small path next to a favoreite restaurant and found ourselves in a maze of shaded garden paths that wound through a vast hillside of flowers and orchard trees and cultivated loveliness. There were late roses and just turned-trees of autumn gold, orchards where apples lay strewn and long beds of late summer flowers. There was a little hut of a butterfly house where we found a dozen sorts of exotic beauties fluttering around. After strolling over an old foot bridge that spanned a sweet fountain, we settled on a particular spot that overlooked the glimmering blue of the lake and was ringed round by the deep green of the hills and gold of the harvest fields.

With quilt tucked snugly against the sunlit, though quite chill wind, we sketched and wrote and thought as though we were the lovely ladies of leisure who had a lifetime of such work to occupty their hands. We were scolded quite fervently by an entire family of chipmunks, but we retaliated by sketching them. We ended our outing with a dainty tea at the PEI Cannery and Preserves Co. They serve a raspberry pie that is worth the effort of an outing. But they also serve tea in little one-woman sets of old-fashioinned patterns. Seated by a window that overlooked the countryside, we felt as happy as any ladies at the White Sands Hotel must have felt in the days of Anne of Green Gables. Ah, the olden days!