Cinderella's castle, eat your heart out! I have found the end-all-be-all of femininity, and it is Pickity Place! It is a compound of cottages and garden sheds, built in the 1700's, and converted in the 50's to an herb farm/garden center with gift shops and a restaurant. It was also featured in the 1948 English edition of Little Red Ridinghood by Elizabeth Orton Jones. Because of this, there is an intense Little Red Ridinghood shrine in the main cottage. One room is done up as it appeared in the book (which is also on display). A stuffed wolf (not taxidermy) dressed in Grandma garb peers out at you from under the covers, which is pretty unnerving. In the gift shops you can purchase garden ornaments, wind chimes, tea towels, little pots labeled "ashes of ex-husbands", you name it. Visitors would feel quite at ease wearing straw hats with ribbons (many do), pinafores, and pushing antique baby carriages.

I went to Pickity Place with my mother, a high school friend of hers, and her daughter. We were there for lunch, which is served twice a day in the Grandma Wolf Cottage in a dining room featuring Little Red Riding Hood memorabilia and country cottage flair. There is a set menu, with a choice of entrée, which changes every month to reflect seasonal foods. Let me tell you, it is a rare restaurant indeed that offers a menu like that of Pickity Place. Being an herb farm, they go heavy on the herbs. The first course was chilled honeydew melon soup with mint. I chose vegetable risotto with anise for my entrée and we had a fruit tart for desert. There were also rolls with tarragon butter spread. We washed it down with Lavender lemonade, which is not purple, but pink with little lavender seeds at the bottom. The waitresses wore dresses with floral prints, frilly aprons, and little wreaths of flowers and ribbons on their heads. I wished I had one. Our waitress introduced each new food by describing the herbs used to prepare it and how they would complement the dish. We also learned that July is dill month, and on the menu we found different uses for dill which might not have occurred to us.

It was probably 100 degrees and very humid. I wondered if I was going a little overboard by chugging down Lavender Lemonade as if it were Super Big Gulp when it was clearly a dainty little drink befitting a dainty little place. Our party was a sweaty mess. We left big sweaty back and butt marks on the floral upholstered chairs and we probably stank. Still, we fit the atmosphere better than the one and only man that I saw at Pickity Place. He was almost hiding at the back of the lawn behind large shrubbery on a wrought iron bench with some ladies. He didn't know where to look. Up until that point I had thought to myself that I just loved this place and was dying to go back again to sample next month's menu, with my husband. Looking at the poor soul waiting to have his lunch at Pickity Place I realized that this was a really bad idea. Oh well, it's not for everyone. But if you've just been to Hooter's or a professional wrestling event and are in need of something female oriented to regain balance, look no further. If you want edgy, go elsewhere. At Pickity Place they do hardcore cute, so put your game face on, strap on your maryjanes and get ready for an herbilicious lunch.