With summer fully upon us, we hope you're making the most of it and checking items off your "sand pail list" (a seasonal variant of a bucket list). If you're in need of more activities, here are our suggestions — from summer reads to good eats, and more!

Reading the Strong Towns blog

Strong Towns is "an international movement that’s dedicated to making communities across the United States and Canada financially strong and resilient." Their site is full of articles on how small incremental changes driven by the people are key to thriving communities. Recommended if you've ever wondered what you can do to make our town a more enjoyable place to live.

<aside> 📙 The Strong Towns book comes out October 1st. If anyone is interested in joining an online book discussion group, reach out to us at [email protected].

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Checking out a new restaurant

This recommendation's on the pricier side, but if you've never been to The Tulip and The Rose Cafe on Main Street in Franklin you should definitely check it out (the menu changes weekly so check their Facebook page before you head out if you're a picky eater). Their tapas menus for August include South American, Chinese, Americana, locally sourced, dumpling night, Central American, vegan, and North and South Indian tapas. Often they have a special price for the whole menu, which should be enough to split between two people.

Enjoying the outdoors

Walton is a great location to partake in various outdoor activities.

Take a hike: try Bear Spring Mountain, the Nature Conservancy in Hamden (on Rt. 10 past the landfill but before the main hamlet of Hamden), or walk up to White Rock.

Go kayaking: if you don't own kayaks, you can rent them from 607 Kayaks.

Bike around town: just be sure to be safe and wear a helmet.

Gardening to save the planet

Growing food locally (and you can't get more local than your backyard!) is a great way to reduce carbon emissions. And you'll get super fresh fruits and vegetables affordably. While most gardening in our area starts with spring plantings, a number of plants can be planted in the late summer / early fall, including leafy greens (i.e., kale, lettuce, spinach), peas, radishes, cucumbers, and blueberries (optimal conditions for fall plantings may vary, so do some research first).

Another suggestion, via @BuildSoil on Twitter is to save the pits from the cherries (or plums/nectarines/peaches) you bought at the farmers market and prepare them for a spring planting.

If you want to take this to the next level you may be interested in these books: Edible Forest Gardening and The Garden Jungle.

https://mobile.twitter.com/BuildSoil/status/1154608035437805569

Reading a book set in a local town

There are several books, for both kids and adults, that take place in or near Walton! For kids, we suggest My Side of the Mountain (which takes place in Delhi) and Pictures of Hollis Woods (which takes place near Hancock, with Walton mentioned towards the end of the book!). Young adult and adult readers might enjoy Paper Towns (which was recently made into a movie in which the Roscoe Diner is mentioned).