a brush with the fuzz

Well, it’s a first in my expe­ri­ence of our lit­tle unevent­ful Con­necti­cut road (dirt in most places, the way we like it, to keep traf­fic down). I was out wash­ing the car, some­thing I have a strange love for, a throw­back to fun with my dad, no doubt, when Avery decid­ed it was time to go across the road to feed Anne and David’s cats, her wel­come job when they are away for a few days. As I was scrub­bing away the filth of not only an entire sum­mer but an entire win­ter AND spring in the barn under count­less birds’ nests, across the road she came again, say­ing, “They appear to have an alarm and I’m not sure what to do with it.” John jumped down from the ter­race and said he’d run across to help her. It was but the work of a moment for him to reap­pear, ask­ing me, “Do you have Anne’s num­ber in the city? I’ve set off the alarm…”

Min­utes lat­er, after leav­ing a mes­sage for Anne who unac­count­ably was away from her phone in the way peo­ple you hope to find often are, the fuzz arrived. Yes, two of how many can South­bury pos­si­bly have? appeared in our road, pass­ing up both hous­es at first as a result of their hap­py lack of acquain­tance with us. I paused with a cold soapy car mitt in hand, with the cer­tain knowl­edge that they would turn around and be back with us in how­ev­er long it takes to shake a cat’s tail. Sure enough, back they came, into Anne’s dri­ve­way, and up saun­tered John, friend­ly smile in place, with Avery lag­ging behind, notice­ably less com­fort­able with the author­i­ties as befits a near-teenager.

“All I had to do was show my dri­ver’s license and prove that we live across the road, and explain about feed­ing the kit­ties…” John said, with the same glee he used to show when he got out of a speed­ing tick­et by hav­ing a small girl in a fan­cy rid­ing cos­tume in the back seat. “But offi­cer, we’re on our way to a horse show and we’re late…”

More excite­ment than we’re used to, although, sad­ly, the Offi­cers of the Law eschewed their sirens and lights, darn it. We spent the rest of the day doing bor­ing things like con­tin­u­ing to wash and vac­u­um the car (find­ing such trea­sures as the lost Pool Pass, although since we’re there every day, the life­guards don’t even care any­more), the sun­screen that I’ve neglect­ed all sum­mer, argu­ing to myself that if we’re out only an hour it’s OK, if we’re out past 4 o’clock it’s OK, you name it, I’ve got an excuse for fail­ing to apply sun­screen. I also found any num­ber of Amer­i­can coins that had Avery found them soon­er would have fund­ed an end­less num­ber of pool treats. A dread­ful­ly sweaty day to accom­plish this task, but it was worth it to have a gor­geous­ly clean car. Off to ten­nis, where we were flanked on the adjoin­ing court by a hideous­ly young and fit pair of high school boys, mak­ing us all the more aware of our mid­dle-aged efforts! The worst? Once their game broke up, one of the boys STAYED and watched us! Prob­a­bly he took pic­tures with his phone and entered us into some old peo­ple’s ten­nis tour­na­ment and we’ll get a notice in the mail. Nev­er mind, our hearts will thank us.

A quick dip in the pool, and home for lunch. My new favorite thing? An inspi­ra­tion from my inspir­ing hus­band, who look­ing at a bag of Fritos that we longed to dip in lux­u­ri­ous sour cream, said, “What would hap­pen if you whizzed up your bean sal­ad in the Cuisi­nart and made bean dip of it? Could­n’t we dip Fritos in that?” And there you have it. The best bean sal­ad, when you get tired of it, becomes quite the best rea­son for you to excuse buy­ing that bag of chips. And a huge amount of your dai­ly sug­gest­ed veg, as well.

The Best Bean Salad
(serves? at least four for lunch and then dip)

1 soup-size can each black beans and hari­cots (small white beans), rinsed and drained
2 ears raw corn, ker­nels cut off (cut them into the sal­ad bowl so they don’t fly away)
hand­ful sug­ar snap peas, sliced into quarters
1 red, orange or yel­low pep­per, diced
1 bunch scal­lions, sliced white and green parts
hand­ful chives, chopped
2 cloves gar­lic, minced WITH juice of 1 lemon and 1 tsp salt
zest of 1 lemon
fresh black pep­per to taste
sprin­kle crushed red pep­per flakes
1/2 cup olive oil

Sim­ply mix every­thing. The rea­son I advise you to mince your gar­lic WITH the lemon juice and salt is that the process pul­ver­izes the gar­lic to a mush, which is much nicer than a mince. Trust me. Mix WELL.

Now, when you have had your sal­ad for lunch, put the rest in your Cuisi­nart and add a cou­ple of table­spoons of olive oil, then pulse until pureed. Add as much olive oil as you need to get the tex­ture you like. DIVINE. Serve with raw car­rot and cel­ery sticks, wedges of red cab­bage, sticks of jica­ma, kohlra­bi and turnip. PERFECT!

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As you can see here, any­way, I want­ed you to enjoy the last view of Red Gate Farm at Sun­day’s par­ty for my moth­er, now safe­ly (I hope!) back in Indi­ana. My par­ents stopped kind­ly in our lit­tle town on their way home yes­ter­day to see Avery on Red Baron, jump­ing those high jumps, then they head­ed home. What a glo­ri­ous vis­it we all had, and we tried hard to cram in enough mem­o­ries to last six months, till we get togeth­er again, we hope, at Christmastime.

Avery and I spent this hot, humid after­noon slav­ing over a hot stove mak­ing, I’m not kid­ding, desserts! Avery has become deserved­ly famous for her blue­ber­ry tart, and so this after­noon in advance of our din­ner at our farmer friends Rol­lie and Judy’s house, she made anoth­er. And I made anoth­er batch of lemon bars to take to Fire Island tomor­row to vis­it my adored friend Alyssa and her fam­i­ly, includ­ing Annabelle, Avery’s friend since age about 2 1/2, home now from her long sojourn at sum­mer camp! No soon­er had we fin­ished our spa-like exer­cise in humid­i­ty and sweat­ing that is bak­ing on the hottest day of the year than the next adven­ture arrived: giv­ing the fos­ter kit­ties to their prospec­tive new family!

Yes, Avery suc­ceed­ed in find­ing a poten­tial new home for the babies. She asked at the sta­ble when she was rid­ing yes­ter­day, and sure enough, the dar­ling girl who helps her bathe the Red Baron was inter­est­ed! “Just let me call my mom, who says she thinks she’s aller­gic, but she’s a total softy; she let us bring a dog home for about a day once, and sev­en years lat­er he’s still with us!” Sure enough, the long-suf­fer­ing moth­er agreed to babysit the lit­tle kit­ties for us while we’re in Fire Island, and who knows after that what might hap­pen: if they fall in love, we’ve found homes for them. So they arrived in the swel­ter­ing ear­ly evening, came into the house and the room we’d set aside for their belong­ings (which I’d clev­er­ly vac­u­umed and scrubbed so they would­n’t imme­di­ate­ly see the messy evi­dence of the kids’ pres­ence), and hap­pi­ly took away the lit­ter box, lit­ter, food and the kit­ties them­selves. Avery and I had each spent a lov­ing half hour or so right before the han­dover, cud­dling and encour­ag­ing them to be lov­able, calm and adoptable.

“Let’s call it babysit­ting for right now,” said Karen, the moth­er, while Katie the barn girl and her broth­er Andrew qui­et­ly fell in love. “And we’ll take it from there.” Fin­gers mas­sive­ly crossed that, as much as we love them, we don’t get them back.

Off in an instant after that (well, five min­utes spent in front of a fan, chang­ing clothes and reap­ply­ing antiper­spi­rant, plus mak­ing cheese sauce for mac­a­roni to take to Alyssa’s fam­i­ly) to Rol­lie and Judy’s for din­ner. We rose above the heat to sit out­side in the evening air, feel­ing the tem­per­a­ture drop as we enjoyed cru­dites and dip, watch­ing trucks come in and out of the dri­ve­way con­tain­ing their three stal­wart boys and friends, lis­ten­ing to the new milk­ing cows moo­ing in the dis­tance, Max the lab and Mr. B the enor­mous vanil­la-col­ored tom­cat weav­ing in and out of our legs. I always love the atmos­phere at Rol­lie and Judy’s: crazy activ­i­ty, sun-browned boys (now men, real­ly) rush­ing in con­trolled chaos from job to job on the farm, Rol­lie enlist­ing John’s help as traf­fic cop as a new trail­er gets deliv­ered to Young Rol­lie’s farm down the road.

And Judy pre­sides over all with calm, joy­ous appre­ci­a­tion of all her boys and her vis­i­tors. Calm is the word! With three boys who appeared in few­er than five years, she’d have to be. And she fed us, oh how she fed us. Glo­ri­ous bar­be­cued shred­ded (sliced? some of each) beef, ten­der in an incred­i­bly rich sauce that I will try to glean from Judy. Per­fect­ly crisp corn on the cob, pota­to sal­ad. Avery’s blue­ber­ry tart for dessert, applause all around. I must say, I’m so pleased at how she ris­es to being the only child, with so many adults. To ques­tions about her school, her friends, rid­ing, she answers gra­cious­ly with fun­ny sto­ries and just the right amount of detail. A most sat­is­fac­to­ry girl. And she can BAKE.

We stag­gered home after such sump­tu­ous food and packed up for our adven­ture tomor­row. It’s been YEARS since we made it to Alyssa’s on Fire Island. Two years ago we were stopped by a hur­ri­cane! And last year I sim­ply can­not remem­ber what kept us away. But it’s against my reli­gion to let more than six months go by with­out Avery and Annabelle see­ing each oth­er, and it’s too long this year. We’ll report. If we’re not in the slam­mer by then, I mean.