Vermont wrap-up and summer nemesis

I took the header photo one of the evenings of our recent Vermont excursion. I took it from the window of our hotel, the Hilton, which overlooks Lake Champlain.

The sunset was beautiful that evening, but I need to say a word or two about the Hilton. WAY OVERPRICED. Their usual room rate is $299 per night. We were able to take advantage (reluctantly, I must admit) of the conference rate of $199/night. I'd never stayed at a Hilton before, I don't think, and I wasn't happy to pay $199/night, but I thought we'd at least get a luxurious room and maybe even (dare I say it?) a breakfast buffet. Wrong. The room was small and basic, much like a room at a Holiday Inn or Comfort Inn, and breakfast was strictly on our own. And the hotel couldn't justify the rate by saying we were paying for a Lake Champlain view, since the ladies across the hall from us had a parking lot view and also paid $199/night. I suspect the conference planners took some heat for selecting the Hilton as our location. After all, we're an organization of teachers and retired teachers, and the last time I checked, teachers don't tend to be millionaires.

So, unless I come into a huge inheritance, which I don't foresee, I'll never again stay at the Burlington Hilton Hotel.

Now, on to yarn and Ben and Jerry's.

My friend Lynn and I knew we must, if at all possible, go to the Kaleidoscope Yarn Shop in nearby Essex Junction while at the Burlington conference. Our husbands were off on a full-day excursion of the islands in Lake Champlain, so if we were going to get to the yarn shop, it would have to be on our own. We pondered, looked at the busy conference schedule, and decided we might be able to squeeze in a quick trip to the yarn shop, by bus, after the sales tables closed (We had our chapter's sales table to oversee) and before the final banquet.

We mentioned this to two sorority sisters from another Maine chapter, and they quickly said, "Let US work at your sales table for you. We'll be happy to do that."

That's all we needed to hear. We dashed up the street to the bus station, bought our tickets, and headed to Essex Junction. Lynn had never seen this particular yarn shop before, and she loved it. She bought yarn for two baby car seat blankets; I bought yarn for an afghan for my living room sofa. We have a new Oriental rug, so I want the afghan to pick up the key colors of the rug. The sales clerk worked with me for a good half hour or more, selecting the colors from the digital photo of the rug, which I showed her on my camera.

We left the yarn shop pleased with our purchases and wishing we could have stayed there longer.

But it was time to head back to Burlington and, besides, it was now 3:30 p.m. and we hadn't had lunch.

We decided an ice cream cone at Ben and Jerry's would qualify as "lunch," so we sought out the shop on Burlington's Church Street. While looking at the list of ice cream flavors, my eye caught sight of something called the "Waffle Cone Special, $4.20." That sounded perfect. It looked like a large waffle cone filled with two scoops of ice cream.

Wrong. The Waffle Cone Special is a large waffle cone with two generous scoops of ice cream plus a topping choice chocolate, strawberry, or caramel sauce plus a large dollop of whipped cream plus a choice of sprinkles, M&M's or heaven knows what else. I chose the chocolate sauce and M&M's and I was one happy customer as I strolled out of the shop. As we walked back to the hotel, madly gulping down our ice cream, the sun was hot and a spirited breeze blew off Lake Champlain. Not a good combo when one is trying to consume a huge, melting ice cream. But I worked away at it and chatted with Lynn the entire distance.

I guess Lynn hadn't turned around to look at me behind her since we'd left Ben & Jerry's, because once she did, she burst out laughing and grabbed my camera. You might need to double-click on the top photo to get the full effect. I had to sneak through the hotel's front door and dash up to my 6th-floor room before anyone other than Lynn saw what a mess I was.

We left for home last Saturday morning, giving strict instructions to our chauffeur, Ken, that we wanted to stop at the King Arthur Flour Baker's Store and Café in Norwich, VT, on the New Hampshire border.
We grabbed shopping carts and had a great time browsing the shop for various baking ingredients and supplies. Lynn and I each bought some scone mixes, and I've already made the Blueberry/Sour Cream scones. To. Die. For.

We also had lunch at the Baker's Café, wonderful sandwiches on freshly-baked bread.

So that was our trip to Vermont. It was now time to return home and...check out my garden. I'd been away for almost four full days, and all manner of disasters can occur in a vegetable garden when one is away even one day, or even when one is home for the day.

I'd been thinking about the dreaded, dastardly tomato hornworm while in Vermont, but I consoled myself by saying it doesn't appear before mid-August. I'd forgotten that everything in the world of plant-growing and harvesting has been early in Maine this year. I went out to my two vegetable gardens and soon found tell-tale signs that the hornworms had blown into town: huge poop on the tomato plants' leaves and several branches stripped of their leaves. Although hornworms are huge (see photo of one I'm holding), finding them on a tomato plant is no easy task. They're perfectly color coordinated and simply don't stand out. As I scrutinized one plant with the unmistakeable tell-tale signs, I suddenly realized that a hornworm was sitting on a branch right at the end of my nose. My eyes crossed when I focused on the darned thing. The "horn," by the way, is on the tail-end of the beast. It's rather hard to tell, looking at the thing, which end is which.

My method-of-choice for getting hornworms out of my garden is the water-and-ammonia-in-a-jar technique. I simply pull the creatures (which are actually quite pretty when you study them objectively) from the tomato plant stems and drop them into the jar. Their little feet have suction cups, apparently, so getting them loose from the stems can be a bit of a tug-of-war.

I bagged three ginormous hornworms and one smaller hornworm and feel my hornworm hunting season was successful. My tomato plants are producing ripe tomatoes each day now, and I'll soon be happily canning several pints and quarts of tomatoes for next winter's soups, barring any future tomato plant disasters.

And while you may feel that dropping an innocent hornworm into a jar of water/ammonia is cruel, a friend sent me a link to a video of a gardener ridding his plants of hornworms...with scissors. He simply snips the creatures in half as they rest on the tomato stems. I don't think I could bring myself to do that.

So I've run the gamut here, from hotel rates to yarn shops to ice cream dribbled down my shirt, ...to hornworms. The End.