Two Chairs for Friendship by the Red Elm

"I had three chairs in my house: one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society."  - Henry David Thoreau

We had errands in town that included getting groceries, as we backpackers arrived home starving from our trip. So when my husband went into town to shop on Saturday morning, I went along and he dropped me off at the Arboretum while he did just that. The Penn State game was away, so traffic should not be a major consideration.

It's always warmer in town, with lots more happening, and this day was no exception. There were people at the Arboretum - not a lot, but a consistent flow - and the students were having some kind of track and field event that involved running around the field below the red elm and back up the road, as a cheering squad shouted encouragement.

I found the gardens to be quite lovely, with monarchs enjoying the bright pinky-purple blazing star liatris blooms. In fact, almost every monarch I SAW was on liatris, so that's something to consider. It may be a good choice for your garden or yard, providing a little nectar for our late-season pollinators.

I followed a small group into the Arboretum, and ended up running into them over and over: a woman accompanied by two little girls about the age of 10 or 12, one black and one white. The girls held hands and sat close together and I remembered, suddenly, what it was like being that young and having a "bestie." (By the way, my "bestie" now is my husband, and for sure, I'm a lucky girl to think so. We are hardly ever far from one another, and that's by choice.)

When I visit the gardens, I am always drawn to the red elm, which stands behind the Arboretum. And these folks, they know what they're doing. They put small groupings of chairs in the overlook pavilion above the tree, and of course, these two chairs just were just aching to be photographed, and so I did that: two chairs for friendship, as Thoreau said.

My soundtrack song is this one: Pete Townshend, with A Friend Is a Friend.