Inaugural Picnic

It's not summer at the Hampton residence without picnics (on the deck). Well, no deck here, but picnics are still possible. We had our first tonight with Karen's group home gals and caregiver. Standard picnic fare: burgers and brats, chips, baked beans, pasta salad, and brownies. All enthusiastically received. Ordinary food somehow tastes better if it is at someone else's house! The gals ate at the dining room table and at a table in the adjacent three-season room. What impressed the girls the most about the house was my print of Vermeer's "Milkmaid" hanging over the "new" breakfront in the dining room. It fostered much interesting conversation--about the Amish, about Dutch dancing costumes and the Tulip Festival, about how my own pitcher and bowl (made in Wooster by Moorefield Pottery folk) resemble the pitcher and bowl in the picture, and, most significantly, how some girls who wear those things on their head can get hurt. We think that this gal was vaguely remembering the fuss about Muslim headscarves in France, though how she would have is mysterious because I don't think she watches the news as some of the other do. What very special first picnic guests!! (One of the gals is not in the pic because she works late on Wednesdays.)