Just before the Labor Day weekend, Sue spotted an incredible last minute deal on Southwest, booked it for us, and on Friday morning 08/30/13 Sue and I flew down to Baltimore to visit my brother Alan and his wife Abbie who live in Towson, MD.

It was a bumpy ride and Sue wasn't feeling the best. And it didn't help that we had to fight through holiday traffic from Baltimore to Towson for about an hour (a little over double normal travel time). After dropping our bags and letting Sue rest, Alan and I went out to fill in the missing items from the 2 recipes that we had brought down to fix.

Though it was humid, the weather could have been a lot worse for this time of year, When we got back, we joined Abbie and Sue out on the screened in porch that wraps around the back of the house for another long anticipated lesson from Alan in The Fine Art of Southern Porch Sitting, as he puts it. Very nice.

For Friday night's dinner, we fixed Linguine with Shrimp And Lemony Kale Pesto while listening to the Jim Brickman's Greatest Hits CD that we had brought with us. Sue and I were both beat, so after watching an episode of Blue Bloods with Tom Selleck, we just headed off to bed.

When we got up Saturday morning, we were glad to see that the expected rain for the day didn't appear as though it would happen. Alan had suggested that if it didn't rain that Sue would really enjoy seeing the nearby Ladew Gardens, known as one of the country's most spectacular topiary gardens.

As both Alan and Abbie had been there a couple of times and involved a lot of walking across this vast estate, he just dropped us off. I don't know how many miles we did walk, but it was a lot. We were again fortunate that it wasn't too hot because we really enjoyed following the Visitor's Guide and strolling through all of the different garden areas for a couple of hours.

After having a sandwich at a cafe there at the gardens, Alan picked us up, and we drove back to the house. While Alan and I chatted out on the porch, Sue took it upon herself to clean out some grass and weeds from the flower beds along the side of the house. We finally had to threaten her with no wine to get her up on the porch and done for the day.

We had such a good time, that I was about a half hour late in getting started with the dinner prep work. I fixed Moroccan Chicken with Apricot and Olive Relish that came out just great. After cleaning up, we all went out and watched the 2007 Australian indi movie Unfinished Sky, which we all really enjoyed, though the accents were tough to get through and some of the scene changes were abrupt, particularly the ending that Alan had to explain to us what happened. But a really nice movie to end off the day with.

Not knowing how the traffic would be Sunday on a Labor Day weekend, Alan took us to the airport early. Amazingly, there was not only little traffic, but the airport was hardly busy at all. The flight back was smooth, arriving right on time at 2:05pm. It was such a nice day that we decided to get off of Rt. 101 and take 156 north instead of the more busy 125.

After unpacking, we headed out onto the deck to sip some wine and play backgammon until it started to sprinkle. We just had a frozen pizza for dinner and watched the 2008 film Taking Chance, which, though high drama and sad, was good.

Monday we slept in a little, did some laundry, and just knocked around a little before heading out to grab a few things for the week at Viels Farm Stand in Rollinsford and then the local food store. It had rained hard through Sunday night, and that continued through the day and most of Monday night. We missed getting soaked by minutes coming out of the store.

By the time we got the food packed away and finished the laundry, it was time to have a glass of wine and relax with some backgammon in the living room - we couldn't go out on the deck because it was raining pretty hard.

For dinner, I just stir fried some zucchini, scallions, green beans, garlic, fresh farm tomatoes, and some herbs. Sue heated up some of the fresh corn we had just bought and toasted up a couple of slices of garlic bread, and we were all set. We finished off the night with the wonderful 1989 movie Driving Miss Daisy.