Margaret and I decided to start September off right so planned a day trip to Summerland.  The weather was perfect and the traffic was light, even though it was the Labour Day weekend.

We started at the adorable Summerland Sweets store where I bought too much stuff, as usual.  Besides their usual jams and syrups they sell other products made locally.  I bought one of their jams and a raspberry wine, as well as fancy mustard and chocolate-covered dried fruit.

We continued on the road and stopped at the Dirty Laundry Winery, which is one of my favourite winery settings.  The Kettle Valley steam train’s tracks run right by it, and on our way out we were lucky to see it pass right by us on the road.  We want to take the train ride on our next Summerland visit.

I bought some cheese at the winery, and we both lamented the empty restaurant, given how cute it would be to sit there.  However we had other plans, and decided next summer we’d return to have a nice lunch on their beautiful patio.

After a brief stop at the Grasslands Nursery, we went to the Summerland Research Station’s Ornamental Gardens.  What a gorgeous place that is, and also has beautiful vistas and benches set around so you could have a nice picnic lunch there.  Again, we planned to do that on another visit.

Our final stop was Zia’s Stonehouse Restaurant where we had lunch, and were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food and the very reasonable prices.  We had a helpful waiter and the whole experience was a positive one.

Then last week my pal Sharon asked if I wanted to join her at the Kelowna Art Gallery as they have a special show on right now of someone’s private collection.  It includes Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet and many others.  Image owning that collection!

So I said sure, and then our friend Carol said she also wanted to join us so the three of us met there and spent an hour at the gallery.  This was followed by lunch at the Cactus Club which is a mighty nice place to sit on a sunny day, especially lakeside, as we were.

Tomorrow it’s Happy Hour at the Eldorado with Petra and Sharon, and that’s another nice establishment where one can be seated right at the lake.  I don’t want anyone to try and tell me there’s nothing to do in the Okanagan.

I had my second singing lesson, and we worked on the themes from Gilligan Island and the Monkees.  Charissa’s around 30, and had heard the Gilligan Island theme, but never the other, so it was fun to do together.  By the end of the year she’ll be a 1960’s TV theme song maven.

Thrift shopping continues.  Since the children have assured me all of my stuff’s going straight into the dumpster when I die, I didn’t feel bad about buying a bronze statue of two horses with one of the tails missing, as it’s all going to be thrown out anyway.  And besides, I don’t mind as I have it positioned perfectly so no one will even notice.