T Stands for Spontineity

 Hi everyone. Hope all you ladies who join us for T have had a nice week. And of course that applies to everyone else too who visits. If you celebrated the long Labor (or Labour) Day weekend, hope you enjoyed that also. 

My long weekend was busy with my daughter around. Not that I am required to do things with her, but it is nice to spend time with her when she is here.

Today for T I have an outing for you. This took place last Thursday, when my area was supposed to have rain from the remnants of Hurricane Ida.

We did get the rain, but it came through early and over night.  By mid-morning it was starting to clear out. I was suppose to walk that day with my friend, but we thought that it might be too wet to walk. Not from rain falling on us, but the ground would be saturated from the several inches of rain that had fallen. There could be water dripping off any over hanging trees also. For a long time we texted back and forth, and finally came to the decision to to visit the Crane Estate in Ipswich, Massachusetts.

We didn't even meet until noon, but Ipswich, Massachusetts is on the north shore and not far from New Hampshire.

This is the back view of the house, which is based on an English estate. The part of the house in the front of my photo is called the casino, not because of gambling, but because (we were told) casino means little house in Italian. This is where any unmarried gentlemen would have to stay because it wouldn't be proper to keep them in the main building where unmarried young women would be staying. 

The main building was first lived in in 1929, and owned by the Crane family. They were from Chicago and made their fortune in bathroom fixtures like sinks,  tubs, toilets, etc. 

The views from the property (called Castle Hill long before the Cranes owned it) are pretty amazing.

The beach you see in this top photo is called Crane's Beach. I had been to the beach before but never to the house.

The gardens contained many of these mossy and decaying statues. I rather like their look. It must coast a lot just to maintain the main home, and so most of the  statues have been left to the environment and time.

A few have been obviously replaced. 

I thought this  1920's light was fantastic.

The green space in the center of this above photo used to be a saltwater pool for people to enjoy without having to take the trek down to the beach.

And look. They even had a Henry for Iris.

There were also a couple of gardens on the grounds.  For the sake of keeping this post from getting too long, I'll share those next week if people are interested.

Of course I must move onto T and my drink related part of my post.

Since neither my friend or I had had time for lunch, when we wrapped up our manor visit we were hungry. On the way to and from the Crane Estate, we passed an interesting business. It was an orchard/farm that was also a winery. More importantly, they sold ice cream, which seemed like the perfect afternoon snack since it was too late for lunch.

I wish they had been doing some wine tastings, because they had an interesting selection of fruit wines.

 

And they had won quite a few awards  for their fruit wines also.

They had a couple that sounded like they might be good, but at $22 a bottle and no tasting, I wasn't willing to try them.

They also had their own home baked cider donuts. A donut and a small scoop of coffee ice cream hit the spot. I enjoyed the ice cream, but sadly, the donut was only OK.

Don't forget to stop by  Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog  for T this week where we share our drink related photos or stories. 

Hope you enjoyed my post. Have a great week. And thanks so much for visiting. It is always appreciated!