Farewell Tour

We drove back to Connecticut today to finish up the emptying out process of the house and barns prior to their sale on July 1st.  I must say it was not a particularly happy experience.  Obviously, we are sad to be leaving after 21 very happy years there -- so many memories.  But I have to say I felt as crushed as those peonies up there in the top right hand corner of this collage when we discovered that after we came back to Boston last weekend, the house and barns had been picked over by certain individuals without our permission.  Things had been rifled through and lots of stuff had vanished.  To add insult to injury, these people also thought nothing of leaving discarded litter lying around in the gardens -- and even dumped the contents of one of my (ex) large cast iron urns upside down in the middle of one of my flower beds before waltzing off with their prize.  Also there was not ONE lamp left in the entire house, which left us in an even darker frame of mind than before. 

Thank heavens for kind friends.  One caught me in the midst of a crying jag when she telephoned me in the evening, and the next thing I knew, dear Dawn and Monsie showed up bearing a lamp for us to borrow for the night, along with a box of Bridgewater Chocolates to cheer us up.  Somehow they had managed to convince the proprietors of the village store to open after closing time so they could buy the chocolates -- they stressed that it was an emergency!