Seven Arrows Garden Center, Attleboro, MA

Okay, Seven Arrows is possibly one of the coolest garden centers I have ever visited, although their website could use some love – it doesn’t come close to describing how undeniably refreshing this place is.

Alison & Mac picked me up this morning to go to Seven Arrows & to pick strawberries, though by the end of it we were completely lost trying to find the strawberry farm so we just came home instead. It’s really confusing to drive around here, and she’s even newer to the area than me – and I don’t drive regularly – so I’m not much of a navigator. Mac was cool about it, though. He proves my time-tested theory that six-year-olds are the coolest people, ever.

The collection of herbs, both medicinal and culinary (agreed: there are plenty of crossovers), is astounding. Example: I don’t even like mint, but I bought four mint plants to make a mint garden. Justin has been wanting peppermint, but then there were just so many to choose, so I grabbed up orange mint, chocolate mint and spearmint, too. Paired up with the mint we grabbed from Dave’s front yard I think this will be a kick-ass herb box. I also picked up some stevia and oregano plus a couple extra basil because, really.. can one ever have too much basil? (No!)

Inside they had a complete apothecary. Ridiculously cool. It was both a little too overwhelming and a little too expensive, so I didn’t stay long, but it was really cool to visit.

There’s a small farm on the grounds with a pig, goat, some chickens & geese and several free-roaming roosters, one of which followed Alison, Mac & me around for a while.

He was mostly pretty cool. He was crowing around, strutting like a rooster. Fitting.

There was a bunch of clamor on the other side of the pen, so Mac & I went to investigate and found this goose:

This goose was unfairly upset by our presence… he honked us away from the animal pen.

It reminded me how much I dislike geese. They are mean, spiteful and awful fowl. I remember an experience as a child where my mom had a gaggle in the side yard and Damian & I used to make a game out of jumping the side fence into the yard and then outrunning the geese and jumping the front fence to our freedom. Then we’d stand on the other side of the fence and point and laugh at the stupid geese who couldn’t get us. I hated them then, too.

The whole place is just charming. We found the berries and unlawfully ate lunch, then bought a raspberry bush, maybe a little out of guilt, but more because the community garden needs immediate edibles for the kids to just grab and eat at their leisure.

Way fun…