[Hello, lovely visitors from An Apple a Day! I was touched to see Amy’s post when I got back from a long weekend in NH, and I hope you like what you see and stay a while.]

When last we met, I’d told you all about Ben’s birthday dinner. The next day was my birthday, and he had planned a secret excursion. All I knew was that I needed my swimsuit and that we were packing a picnic. We used up the leftover meat from the night before in tempting steak sandwiches, hopped in the car, and headed north.

First stop: Ben had found a promising-looking farm online, and we stopped in to buy treats for our picnic. I picked out a handful of jewel-like little red plums, as well as a bigger yellow-blush one and a couple donut peaches. Ben got blueberries.

We arrived at a little state park in NH, where the lake edge was dotted with picnic tables and shallow sandy entrances into the water.

We ate (Ben snuck a box of cupcakes into the car!) and swam and swam and ate and I discovered the world’s smallest fruiting wild blueberry bush:

When we eventually rolled away from the lake, we drove to a nearby town to go to a jazz concert on the green. On the way there we spotted this big tortoise, sitting still in the middle of the road, and stopped to urge it back into the woods:

Fables aside, that guy could move. He didn’t like the look of me, I guess!

The concert was amazing. The most ridiculously wholesome Americana you can imagine, with good music to boot! You can pretty much get the gist of it from the guys’ outfits:

There were also tons of things to see in the audience. I loved this distinguished sea captain type (note the fishing flies hooked to the band of his cap and old fishing vest, both of which suggest his captaining was actually in streams, not on the sea):

And I imagined the bigger girl here saying to the little one, “I told you, STAY over THERE.” She ran off within seconds of my taking this:

We wrapped up the day with margaritas and fish & chips at a restaurant on Newfound Lake. A sleepy drive home and the end to a perfect birthday!

(Sorry there wasn’t much food here, but there’s plenty of that to come. For now I have to go tend to tonight’s experimental dinner; I’m making up a recipe as I go along and should probably get focused. Poor Ben.)