Dinner bell

Four casual-dining notes:
1. The shrimp and spinach salad at Giordano's is really tasty. I had dinner there Friday with a guy I've known for -- oh, let's just say more than 50 years. We both had the salad and then split one of their really tasty pizzas.
2. At Landhope, you now have to order your ice cream using the touch-screen computer. Thanks to the kind employee who helped out my mother and me!
3. Hood's has changed its hours so that they have time to get started on their restaurant renovations. They're now open from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
4. I had every intention of stopping by the Grand Opening at the Market at Liberty Place at State and Center Streets on Friday, but the place was jammed and it was pouring, so I ended up driving by. I hear that anyone who was anyone, le tout Kennett, was there! I hope to stop in this week.

Hovering

Six things I've seen hovering this week:
1. Kestrels hover-hunting over a pond near Doe Run
2. Hummingbirds at the feeder on my back deck
3. A sailplane pilot lazily circling in the clouds in search of thermals
4. Dragonflies laying eggs on the surface of the lake at Anson Nixon Park, attracting great interest from the hungry bass below
5. A fellow experimenting with his GoPro camera mounted on a very cool radio-controlled drone with four rotors, also at Anxon Nixon Park
6. A pal of mine who is doing an excellent imitation of a helicopter mom with her new horse

Pot of gold

After one of the storms last week, the sun came out and a spectacular double rainbow appeared to the east. I picked up the camera and headed outside, ducked under a bunch of wet trees, took a couple of shots and uploaded the best one. Too bad about five neighbors had already beaten me to it, and with better photos!

Trail runs

For my trail-running readers: here are three upcoming competitions in our area.

1. Saturday, July 20: The Chasin' for Chalfin 15K trail run through the "fair hunting country" of the beautiful Runnymede estate outside of Springdell includes "hills, vistas, and creek crossings." There's also a 5K trail run for fun and a 3K on-road fun run/walk. Sponsored by Trail Creek Outfitters in the Glen Eagle Shopping Center. Onsite registration is from 7:30 to 8:15 a.m. on the day of the race. Race time is 8:30 a.m. 
2. Saturday, September 14: The Fair Hill 5K trail run will be at Fair Hill State Park off Appleton Rd. in Elkton, MD. Benefits the Wounded Warrior Project. Check-in and packet pick-up will begin at 7:45; race begins at 8:45 a.m. (The reason I included this one is that I'm seeing more and more vehicles with Maryland tags around here. Not sure why!)   

3. Saturday, Sept.  21: The Garage Youth Center 5k trail run will be at Goddard Park in West Grove. "The route will be a 1.55-mile loop that will weave through woods and prairies on dirt, gravel, grass, and paved trails." Registration opens at 7:30 a.m.; 9 a.m. is the 5K trail run and 9:30 a.m. is the 5K trail walk. 

Water gardens

The Brandywine Valley Water Garden Tour, scheduled for July 27 and 28, will feature what looks like a lovely variety of "waterscapes" at houses around the area. Tickets for the self-guided tour are $25, or $50 for a bus tour. For more information and tickets you can visit their website, www.brandywinepondtour.com. There's no information on the website about where the sites are, but I've seen signs promoting the tour all the way from Longwood to Unionville to Coatesville! Proceeds help support the Chester County Food Bank.

Models

When we were kids my brother and I used to make plastic airplanes and cars and monsters from the kits that manufacturers like Revell would put out. We'd snap off the parts from the plastic frame in which they had been molded, identify the fuselage or tailpipes or claws, glue them together with plastic cement, paint them with Testor paint and finally affix the little decals. The finished product might or might not end up looking like the picture on the box.
What sparked this memory was the navy blue with which My at Polished Salon in Kennett did my toenails yesterday. I really think it's the exact color that we painted a World War II bomber.
Or possibly Day-Glo Godzilla's eyes.

Nothing new under the sun

I have a lot of inquisitive friends; some might even go so far as to call them "curious," in both senses of the word. At lunch today at Hood's one of them spotted a man with his head swathed in a large white bandage and asked without hesitation, "What did you do to your head?" The man replied, civilly enough, that he had just had a skin cancer removed from his forehead.
Well! Talk about a perfect ice-breaker in an outdoors-y community like ours! A general and animated discussion ensued, with everyone sharing their experiences with skin cancer and Mohs surgery.

Starting over

The owners of Two Stones Pub are hard at work converting the former Kings Island Chinese restaurant, 843 E. Baltimore Pike, into a gastropub. They've hit the ground running and have been posting photos on Facebook of their progress gutting the interior. You'll hardly recognize the place when it opens this autumn -- I peered inside yesterday and they seem to be making good progress on removing all the scarlet-and-gold Asian trim.

Rock the Lot

The Bayard Taylor Library is holding its first-ever "Rock the Lot" music festival from 2 to 6 p.m. Saturday, July 20, in the parking lot behind the library. Performers will be Boog, Ratburn, New Shields, Three for Five, and Lower the Standard. "Support the library's efforts to give young adults a place to be, and let's set a high standard for awesome teen events in Chester County!" writes Ivy, the enthusiastic organizer.

The inside scoop

A pal who lives within extremely easy walking distance of the forthcoming ice-cream parlor in the middle of Unionville approached me the other day, wanting to know when the shop was going to open. He is normally a calm fellow, but on this occasion he was speaking quickly and was more worked up than I've ever seen him about anything (including Republican politicians). If they don't speed things up, he pointed out anxiously, they'll miss the whole season! He seemed to think I have some pull with the powers-that-be and could speed things up, but alas I don't.

Downpour

Earlier this afternoon I was working on a proofreading project at the Bayard Taylor Library in Kennett when we got socked by one of those quick, hard-hitting thunderstorms. Even though I was listening to music and concentrating on my work, I couldn't help but notice the sudden darkening of the sky and the way the tree branches were whipping around out back. Then the storm hit and library patrons started coming in with soaking-wet shirts and umbrellas. Others decided they'd wait for the storm to break and settled in with the newspaper.

Brandywine Boy

I just finished reading "Brandywine Boy," Dr. Adrian Morrison's enchanting memoir about growing up on a dairy farm in Chadds Ford in the 1940s and 1950s. Among a large variety of boyhood anecdotes packed into this short book, he recounts stories of farm chores (he hated weeding), taking care of the animals, going to the then-segregated Chadds Ford School (with Mr. Haldeman as principal), sneaking onto the merry-go-round at Lenape Park, listening to "The Lone Ranger" and "Captain Midnight" on the radio, jumping into hay piles, building a log cabin in the woods with his pals, skinny-dipping in the creek (though his mother was worried about his contracting polio), playing in a dance band, spending summers working at the Haskells' Hill Girt Farm and riding his beloved horse Rocky.
Given the compassion and affinity he displayed for animals at an early age, it's no surprise he went on to become an eminent veterinarian at the University of Pennsylvania.
"Thanks to Rocky I became a veterinarian. One winter morning I saw him limping a bit as he came across the pasture in back of our barn. I think he must have tangled with those Western horses and slipped. In any event, I told my mother that I wasn't going to school that day so I could nurse Rocky."
The author often reflects on the vast differences between then and now, some good and some not-so-good. He recalls that to build the log cabin, he and his friends cut down catalpa trees. "I was detailed to ask my father if we could cut them down. He said we could as long as we stuck to catalpas. In these days of injury lawsuits, can you imagine that he didn't blink an eye when I asked?"
Dr. Morrison, a grandfather of eight who now lives at Kendal, writes in a vivid, conversational and easy-to-read style, and I'll bet he is a great storyteller in person. This delightful book is available on Amazon.com. I will treasure the copy that he sent me.

This bird has flown

A few weeks ago I was watering my hanging geranium basket and thought, what on earth are all these pine needles doing here? Then I realized it was a nest, with four little brown eggs inside.
I kept my distance from the nest but realized the babies had hatched when the parents -- Carolina wrens -- started bringing in frequent food deliveries, first perching cautiously on the deck railing, then on the roof, then on the basket hanger, and finally jumping down into the thick of the plant.
I peeked and saw the tiny babies, probably just hours after they were born. They grew at an astonishing rate and just a few days later were peeping loudly for food. One morning I noticed the parents weren't making their food deliveries anymore, so I checked the nest -- and it was empty. It was high time they departed, anyway, because the little guys were quickly outgrowing the nest.

TBI

Remember Simon Pearce, the glass-blowing place and restaurant on the Brandywine that closed in early 2011? Perhaps you'll also recall that Simon Pearce's son, former pro snowboarder Kevin, suffered a serious head injury while training for the Vancouver Olympics in 2009. Film-maker Lucy Walker has made a documentary about his injury and the slow process of recovering from a traumatic brain injury; "The Crash Reel" airs on HBO at 9 p.m. Monday, July 15. "If you can watch it without tearing up, you're a harder man than I," writes reviewer Marc Peruzzi in the July issue of Outside magazine.