life is peaceful

Let’s see, aside from fish­ing for min­nows with the new min­now trap seen here (I actu­al­ly got us to the tack­le shop in New­town, and back, with­out get­ting sig­nif­i­cant­ly lost… well, I did, but I got us found again), going to the Hick­o­ry Stick Book­store in Wash­ing­ton Depot (quite sim­ply the best book­shop west of the Atlantic Ocean (I’m loy­al to Daunt in Lon­don, sor­ry!) and spend­ing all our dis­pos­able income, vis­it­ing Rol­lie’s wife Judy’s farm stand at Painter’s Ridge Farm and sam­pling the water­mel­on (also com­ing away with the best peach­es ever, and did you know that if you did­n’t bar light from reach­ing grow­ing cel­ery it would be dark green? nei­ther did I), noth­ing much is hap­pen­ing. Oh there was the night of a rain­storm so heavy that I turned off the fan I always sleep to, and lis­tened to the pat­ter on, var­i­ous­ly, the roofline out­side the bath­room win­dow, and bird feed­er out­side Avery’s win­dow, and the slop­ing, dense­ly-sur­round­ed mead­ow out­side my bed­room win­dow. Blissful.

Wait, there’s also the wood­chuck who eats dur­ing the after­noon, and the skunk who eats at night, and the deer cross­ing the road today in front of Quin­cy, our 1967 Land Rover, and the hum­ming­bird who almost drank from John’s dad’s cock­tail over the week­end, and the frog that Baby Jane did NOT like hop­ping about on a rock in a bowl full of water! “Uh oh! Uh oh!” she said. All was NOT right with that picture.

And our after-din­ner trips to Den­mo’s for the best ice cream in the world (accord­ing to peo­ple who eat ice cream, accom­pa­nied by peo­ple like me who watch peo­ple eat ice cream).

We stopped off yes­ter­day to see Jane and Joel on our way home from drop­ping off Rose­mary at the Hart­ford air­port. Sor­ry, Bradley Inter­na­tion­al Air­port. I saw a sign for Mid­west Air­lines and for a moment mis­read “Mideast Air­lines.” That’s right, non­stop from Hart­ford, CT, to… Dubai? Jane was most sur­prised to see us after her nap, and led us from one pos­ses­sion to anoth­er, show­ing us her lit­tle world, with a sweaty brow and hair in her eyes. Sweet Joel who had his gin­ger and gar­lic chopped for their gourmet stir-fried beef din­ner that evening. Well I remem­ber those lat­er-after­noon “she’s about to wake up, bet­ter under­chef din­ner” moments! Sad­ly we missed Jill who was slav­ing away at ESPN, but we shall see them for din­ner at their place on Fri­day. I won­der what has hap­pened to the lit­tle baby pigeon that fell from its nest dur­ing our vis­it. I wish you could see the lit­tle cutout in their fence, shared with their lit­tle-boy neigh­bors, labeled from Jane’s side with the leg­end “To Milo and Kai” and from their side, “To Jane.” Joel is a per­fect dad. These are the excit­ing events that make up sum­mer­time in our neck of the woods. Tomor­row I promise to blog about our babysit­ting with Jane. Suf­fice to say, this evening: Joel and Jill have their hands full! She’s a car­bon copy of her moth­er when a baby, and it took two par­ents and two sib­lings to help her sur­vive child­hood intact. She’s cook­ing with gas, that girl.