Random Sunday

Listening to the US presidential debates has reminded me that four years ago we were in Vermont in a staunchly Bernie Sanders supporting house.

The sheer abundance of autumnal leaves, pumpkins and rosy apples cast a glow of reds and oranges against the bluest sky that kept me in a state of permanent rapture!

It was a week of steep hikes and apple festivals, eating Ben & Jerry’s, actually watching a bear cross the road in front of us, and sitting on a swing seat on a wooden verandah sipping drinks and pretending I was Olivia Walton or Marilla Cuthbert.

We spent a lot of time discussing exterior house colours and trying to choose our favourites. This gorgeous purple house had paintwork picked out in green and sat next door to a house painted in bright sunshine yellow.

Our host had moved his Georgian house from the nearby town into the forest and painted it in classic colonial Barn Red and Prussian Blue, building up a small farm, with about thirty Dorset breed sheep.

We breakfasted on sausages and homemade sage cornbread that we ate still hot, straight from the pan. A jug of maple syrup was always on the table, made in the barn every winter when there was too much snow to move.

Larry was a wonderful host and a skilled craftsman and had made this rocking chair, with the seat woven to match the colours of the house. It sits happily by the fire in the kitchen and is just, I think, a perfect reading spot.

As soon as we got home I had to relive it through Diane Keaton in Baby Boom and I think I’m going to have to go and watch it again (and yes, slightly embarassingly I did go and see the actual house!)