Debbie and Jane's Big Adventure

The May-June UGJ safely up on the presses, calendar editor Debbie Eckerson and I decided to venture out for a little much-needed R&R last Thursday. Since I published this blog post in February, the two of us had become increasingly obsessed with the idea of visiting jeweler Karen Dettinger in Clarence, and also we needed to celebrate Debbie's birthday (it was in February), so off we went.

Karen's shop, DKD Studio, turned out to be just as wonderful as we had imagined, and how often does that happen? She makes beautiful silver charms based on old jewelry, buttons, coins, etc. You can buy her jewelry off the rack, but it was a lot more fun to sift through the thousands of choices she had at the ready and let her make something custom. We both wanted one of everything.

 

Here are just a few. 

I had gone in not sure I would buy anything for myself (yeah right!) but wanting a gift for my mom (she reads this blog, so I won't way what, if anything, happened with that). But if I were to buy something for myself, I knew I wanted a charm with my initial. Anyway, this is what I ended up with. 

I love it. Debbie's is very similar, but her initial is, logically, a "D," and her other little charm is a little teeny tiny bee. And her little stone is ... something else, clear. Anyway we're both besotted and look like total dorks when together now, because we match.

While we were there, Karen was putting together an order for Craft Co. No. 6. Check it out when in Rochester.

We were practially giddy as we left, and hungry, so we went up to Noveltea Bistro, based on a couple of Internet reviews and Karen's recommendation. It had not occurred to me that one would need a reservation to have lunch in a tea room in what appeared to be a not very heavily populated area, but I thought the hostess would sever both of our heads when we asked to be seated—gasp!—without one. She did find a table for us though, and that was a good thing, because lunch was wonderful. But the scones we had for dessert, now those were beyond wonderful.

Here is my white chocolate cranberry scone, with cherry jam and clotted cream. Wowza.

And here is the sign outside Noveltea, which I did not believe going in, but did believe going out.

 

In case you cannot read it, I will tell you that is says "The Best Scones in the World. No, Really... The World," which I think is a very cute and clever little tag line. Attached to the restaurant is a high-end kitchen supply store where you can also buy scones, quiche, etc., to go.

Isn't this a gardening blog? OK, well our final stop was at Akron Tree Farms, which was purchased a few years ago by my good pal Ed Dore. He and his crew are doing a great job there, and the place looked wonderful. Ed is growing some harder-to-find things like stewartia and American beech.

We got the full tour, and learned all kinds of things about chicken poop, Marxism, marathon running, raw foodism, and of course, trees. Here are Ed and Deb.