where mead­ows become pastures

Well, that’s the least of the trans­for­ma­tions in our lives from 48 hours ago until now. Yes, when we left our love­ly lit­tle Con­necti­cut hide­away in Decem­ber, the back mead­ow was… a mead­ow. In fact, it was a bit­ter win­ter waste­land rep­re­sent­ing what we knew from expe­ri­ence would morph into a spring phe­nom­e­non of tan­gled over­whelm­ing green, and by the height of sum­mer would be an over­grown jun­gle inhab­it­ed only by deer, coy­otes and… ticks. I per­son­al­ly have nev­er actu­al­ly been very far into that par­tic­u­lar bit of the acreage that com­pris­es our homestead.

Well.

Since then, our love­ly neigh­bors up the road, Mark who so kind­ly helped us paint our fence last sum­mer and his sweet wife and lit­tle daugh­ter, have trans­formed the whole lot into a pas­ture for their hors­es! It’s an unrec­og­niz­ably civ­i­lized space back there, bound­ed by some sort of elec­tri­cal fenc­ing so that the even­tu­al ponies will not be allowed to eat until they burst.

As I say, how­ev­er, that’s the least of the ways in which we feel we’ve fall­en down a rab­bit hole from the urban sprawl, end­less com­pe­ti­tion, crammed social cal­en­dar, long list of impen­e­tra­ble respon­si­bil­i­ties (and great gro­cery shop­ping), plus COLD RAIN that is our life in Lon­don, left behind just two days ago. Here, instead, we are liv­ing in a wel­ter of green grow­ing things, a house full of sum­mer mem­o­ries and spi­der webs, pro­duce stands full of sweet corn and basil, over­pow­er­ing heat and humid­i­ty, and the relent­less cheer­i­ness of Amer­i­can life! It’s just hard to believe that one can have both lives in one.

The weath­er greet­ed us as an open hand in our faces: my hair has explod­ed in a wel­ter of embar­rass­ing curls, all over my head. We take show­ers and then imme­di­ate­ly start pulling up weeds, sticks from the lawn, yank­ing the tram­po­line out of the big barn (cov­ered in bat poo, yuck), and are thus instant­ly cov­ered in sweat again. Need­less to say… we are in heaven.

A sort of trun­cat­ed heav­en, in which there are (for the first two days, any­way) no tele­phone, inter­net or car. We arrived from the air­port late-ish on Mon­day to find the dri­ve­way (I use the term loose­ly, refer­ring to the space cov­ered by grass and weeds that SHOULD be the dri­ve­way) occu­pied by dear farmer Rol­lie’s pick­up truck, his two helpers and some ran­dom uni­ver­si­ty boy try­ing to con­duct a sur­vey into the edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem of South­bury. Why all these peo­ple? Dead bat­tery in the sta­tion wag­on, pre­dictably, and it took all of two days to get it sort­ed, thank you Rol­lie. In the mean­time, we went into the house to find a refrig­er­a­tor full of food from our dear neigh­bors Anne and David (and their dar­ling new baby Katie)… a roast chick­en, ears of splen­did sweet­corn, a loaf of bread, eggs, you name it. Could we have bet­ter neigh­bors? Rhetor­i­cal question.

So Avery and I dogged­ly stayed up until the wee hours to avoid jet lag, and were up with the chick­ens the next day to sur­vey our domain. What accounts for the seren­i­ty here? Cer­tain­ly there’s no short­age of work to be done: down­spouts hideous, weeds every­where, win­dowsills crum­bling, dri­ve­way in des­per­ate need of 7 yards (would you believe that’s how it’s mea­sured? Rol­lie says, and Rol­lie knows) of grav­el. But there is some­thing of an eter­nal wel­come in Rol­lie’s wife Judy’s vis­it, a quick, shy New Eng­land hug, her bas­ket of red gera­ni­ums to greet us on our stag­ger­ing steps encum­bered by lug­gage, up to the house. And a look both ways to cross the road to Anne and David (Avery ask­ing all morn­ing yes­ter­day “Is this too ear­ly to vis­it peo­ple with a new baby?”), rejoic­ing over the sleep­ing mirac­u­lous crea­ture in her bassinet, pre­sent­ing them with the “cer­e­mo­ni­al first bowl of pesto of the year…”

And my brand of gar­den­ing, which I explained to my moth­er in law, is of the “reduc­tive” rather than the “addi­tive” school: pic­ture Michelan­ge­lo ver­sus Degas. I sculpt in REMOV­ING, rather than PLANT­I­NG. I can con­jure up no inter­est in putting things into the ground, but I don’t mind a lit­tle time spent pulling up weeds and gath­er­ing up sticks from the lawn to throw over the ever-use­ful back fence to clear up the place. So Avery and slaved this after­noon to make the lawn pre­sentable, and peri­od­i­cal­ly hoped Rol­lie would come back to fix the dead car bat­tery so we could go vis­it Jill, Joel and Jane tomor­row. And yes! As I spatch­cocked and mar­i­nat­ed my Cor­nish game hens, I found time to help Rol­lie remove the old bat­tery and put in the new, total­ly flash­ing back to my child­hood spent help­ing my dad do things to cars (how I have retained none of this knowl­edge, I can­not explain). To hear the starter turn over! Bliss. To drop one of the beau­ti­ful­ly char­grilled game hens into the new­ly-raked and de-sticked lawn? Price­less. Avery and I per­se­vered in eat­ing din­ner, but I would­n’t rec­om­mend even the clean­est Con­necti­cut crunchy dirt as a condi­ment for your next barbecue.

Sigh. We miss John. We miss the cats. But some­thing came and took away the half apple Avery left under the bird feed­er, so our hopes are high that our usu­al ground­hog Gary will reap­pear once he knows there is food to be had. We’ve had a clue that we’re not alone: after my first load of lawn sticks went over the back fence, there was the unmis­tak­able aro­ma of… skunk. As long as it’s not ON ME, I don’t object at all to skunk. I hope he did­n’t feel we were reject­ing him. A lit­tle half can­teloupe set tempt­ing­ly in the usu­al back­yard snack area should do the trick.

So the long and short of it is: we’re back in the sum­mer­time mode. No sched­ule, no expec­ta­tions, no make­up, no iron­ing. On the plus side: end­less corn on the cob, fresh crab­meat, live lob­sters on Thurs­days, ten­nis lessons to begin on Fri­day, fam­i­ly to appre­ci­ate, blue blue skies the order of the day. Wish you were here.