06/17/2025
I just made veggie lasagna🥦🧅🍅🧄. Shopped at Wellesley's Whole Foods, so I missed out on some ingredients, as I'm pretty unfamiliar with the store's layout. I usually grocery shop at Price Rite in Worcester for their super low prices or at a Stop and Shop in MetroWest for their sales. So I missed the WF lasagna section, and the ricotta cheese was too pricey for my purse. Back at home, I ended up using the mismatched pasta (spag and ziti) in my cupboard and substituted cottage cheese for ricotta cheese. The end product is definitely not as tasty without my beloved ricotta!
I'm visiting the tony grocery shoppe this week because my jalopy died and towing it to mechanic. And I've discovered the Whole Foods 365 brand is pretty reasonably priced. I've tacked my almost daily visit to Whole Foods at the end of my pups and my daily stroll thru the Wellesley Business District, which is quite beautiful. Tree canopy after tree canopy, flowers galore, pedestrians popping in and out of shoppes and several Wellesley parks workers planting flowers and tending to the town's myriad pocket parks... Then there are the 50 or 60 unique shoppes and boutiques, each with its attractive window display. This is after our jaunt - and Birdy's free run - in the park area by town hall, adjacent to this biz district. Whole Foods is a 10-minute walk from my apartment. It all feels so wonderfully old fashioned: walking to the grocery store to pick up a few things for supper, my shopping tote bag tucked under my arm, Birdy and Lilac tugging on their leashes in the other. Meeting and greeting folks. Smiling back at your neighbors ...
Our Wellesley walks thru this biz district (there are several here in town - all robust) also bring me back to my Green Island girlhood when I used to shop with my mom and kid sisters on our Millbury Street and Water Street - our neighborhood's business district. Like Wellesley, there were around 50 mom and pop shops offering us folks what we needed: the Commercial Fruit Store, Messier's Diner with their baby blue oyster shell shaped booths in their "Shell Room" bar area... a hair salon, a kielbasa and sausage market with the sausages smoked and made on the premises... the Mechanics Bank branch, Vernon Drugstore, Supreme Market grocery store, White's Five and Ten, Lisbon's Shoe Store, Maurice the Pants Market, a fish market, three bakeries...My old neighborhood was as diverse and interesting and bustling as what we have in this part of Wellesley - only my childhood Millbury and Water streets were primarily set up to serve immigrant families and the working poor. But that same great "I'm walking and shopping in my neighborhood!" feeling washes over me every time we make the rounds in Wellesley...to the Wellesley library for mags, to my bank for that free cup of Green Mountain coffee, to the hair salon for a haircut for me, to the senior center for some information, to the Wellesley Book Store to browse and have the ladies behind the cash register talk sweet to my dogs and give them a couple of Milk Bones. Dog bowls filled with dog biscuits are stationed right outside the main entrances of several shoppes, along with bowls of water. I've never seen anything like it! Lovely! Lilac will drag me right into the Wellesley book store for her daily mooch, and the store clerks always oblige, welcoming her with lots of pats and a few SIT! (for the treat) commands. After a few seconds of squiggling and snuggling Lilac calms down and finally sits for her doggy treat. Birdy hangs back and watches his ditzy big sis! Then he'll demurely put his snout into the hand of the store clerk's hand and take his treat ever so gently. Bird's elegant! And I feel like I'm ... home. Like I'm in a place that's safe and welcoming and beautiful. A place where I chat with folks, exchange smiles with passersby, let my dogs be patted by the old and young ...the simple pleasures.
Wellesley is definitely growing on me! The Worcester diversity isn't here or its blue-collar scrappiness or the willingness of total Woo strangers to jump in and look under the hood of your jalopy and get involved in all your problems and, by the end of the encounter, you've made a pal. It's a bit more formal here. But Wellesley folks are well mannered, well spoken and ... nice. Yes, EVERYONE still asks me if my dogs are "rescues" and wants to give me a medal for adopting them. "GOOD FOR YOU!" they'll say in a concerned tone of voice or "MY DAUGHTER HAS A RESCUE!" or "I ONCE OWNED A RESCUE!" They're pretty wealthy here in Wellesley and, I guess, feel purebred dogs are the best and the natural choice. Of course, they can pay hundreds of dollars or a few thousand even for that Labradoodle or Aussie or Newfoundland or Springer Spaniel. Last week we practically walked into an Irish Wolfhound right by the bookstore! His owner was tying him to a parking meter so he could shop at the bookstore. I think I've only seen Irish Wolfhounds - they're magnificent looking! - on TV - watching the Westminster Dog Show! The peeps here are giving me credit for an open-heartedness that I just don't have! I mean I've been congratulated on my "rescues" at least 20 times since I moved to Wellesley - by all kinds of Wellesley folks. I always thank them after they compliment me and don't explain to them that even if I had the dough$$ to buy the perfect Labradoodle (the dog of choice in Wellesley) or French bulldog, I'd still get myself a shorthaired, medium-sized mutt at the Worcester Animal Rescue League. Probably with a touch of husky or shepherd in him! And you wouldn't have to give me a medal for it either! But I don't want to seem rude because, after all, true to Wellesley form, they're very polite and well meaning...
- Rose🌹
