and more spring fever

It’s the last day of our spring break here at Red Gate Farm, and you know what that means: pack­ing, doing end­less loads of laun­dry, eat­ing weird com­bi­na­tions of food to get it out of the fridge, mad­ly buy­ing the odd Amer­i­can things we can’t seem to live with­out in Lon­don like gal­lon Ziplock bags, Fox Point sea­son­ing, those Penn­syl­va­nia Dutch egg noo­dles Avery loves so much, and plen­ty of “stress-relief” eucalpy­tus and spearmint hand soap that I’m con­vinced is even more effec­tive than Xanax on an anx­ious day.  It’s cer­tain­ly more expen­sive!  My long-suf­fer­ing broth­er in law Joel, who patient­ly receives parcels for us dur­ing our Lon­don months and stores them in his base­ment, reports that said base­ment is dis­tinct­ly stressed-out now, since I’ve removed my stash to take it back with us.

We’ve had our last super brunch at the inim­itable Lau­rel Din­er, home of the but­ter­i­est hash­browns, the rich­est corned-beef hash and the nicest staff in the world.  Look what I came away with this time, how per­fect to wear bell­ring­ing in Lon­don!  You can bet I’ll be the only girl on my block with one of these tees.

Avery has been dili­gent­ly study­ing, or “revis­ing” as one says in Eng­lish Eng­lish, for the mas­sive exams loom­ing over her life next month, the dread­ed GCSEs.  Eleven sub­jects, over the course of a month, to be suf­fered through in the school Sports Hall under the most rig­or­ous of con­di­tions (no sneez­ing has been bandied about by the exam rumor mill, for exam­ple).  The din­ner table this “hol­i­day” has been tak­en over by her papers, files, books, pens.  We cleared off a small por­tion for our din­ners, though.  Lob­sters for Non­na’s last night!

To be per­fect­ly hon­est, the lob­ster din­ner was pret­ty much a very expen­sive excuse to get Avery to pho­to­graph a lob­ster roll.  We are mak­ing mas­sive head­way on the list of pho­tos we need for our cook­book-in-the-mak­ing, and this one tops the list for cov­er image, don’t you think?

The book is to be called “Ladle to Lens: A Col­lab­o­ra­tion in the Kitchen,” and all we need now is… a pub­lish­er.  That’s all.

We’ve sad­ly waved good­bye to Non­na, whose vis­it was as much fun as ever, punc­tu­at­ed with great cook­ing togeth­er, man­ic games of Aggravation…

She’s one of those peo­ple who makes you cool­er just by watch­ing what­ev­er you do and mak­ing it seem inter­est­ing.  Chop­ping gar­lic!  Set­ting the table!  With my moth­er in law by my side, even the most bor­ing tasks take on col­or because she’s so intense­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by every­thing going on around her.  And she gives won­der­ful gifts.  These lit­tle arti­choke can­dles are my new favorite possession.

But we could­n’t keep her for­ev­er.  Her real life beck­ons, so off she flew.  Until summer!

It was time for one last par­ty, one last gath­er­ing around the table with peo­ple we nev­er get to spend quite enough time with, for a bagel brunch loaded lux­u­ri­ous­ly with smoked salmon.  The spring light made the table so lovely.

This time the cast of char­ac­ters includ­ed our dear­est neigh­bor and friend Anne, up here all by her­self to accom­plish some home repairs across the road, leav­ing dear David and Kate behind.  How hard it is to wait until sum­mer to see them!  The Elder Rol­lie, as he must be called now that there’s not only Young Rol­lie but Even Younger Rol­lie these days, came with Judy who brought fruit sal­ad and daf­fodils, as well as her beau­ti­ful smile, one of the warmest in the world.  Such dear friends, all.

And dear Matt and Lau­ra, who brought a cake and even more impor­tant­ly the most beau­ti­ful baby this side of the Atlantic.  Can you just believe lit­tle Annabel­la, near­ly a year old now…

What fun it was to have a lit­tle one crawl­ing around here again, now that our nieces are so elder­ly, four and eight.  Annabel­la raced around on all fours, find­ing Avery’s old doll­house and all its accou­trements.  She is just charm itself, lis­ten­ing intent­ly to every­thing being said and smil­ing now and then as if at some inter­nal hap­py thought.

How we feast­ed!  Real Amer­i­can bagels, plen­ty of cream cheese, toma­toes, cucum­bers, onions, avo­ca­dos, the smoked salmon with fresh dill, Rol­lie’s deli­cious home-smoked blue­fish.  We lin­gered in the kitchen where Annabel­la was play­ing, sit­ting on var­i­ous uncom­fort­able sur­faces like the hard bench before the wood­stove, the straight-backed kitchen chairs, or the floor, in my case.  The pow­er went out, nat­u­ral­ly, as it does all the time in this crazy house, but even so, we stayed where we were.

No one want­ed to leave, and we all want­ed to watch the lit­tle girl enjoy the doll­house peo­ple, so we made cof­fee and tea and just hung around, chat­ting about the state of the local gov­ern­ment, the Land Trust, the peep­ers in the swamp, our fam­i­lies.  “Well, my dad’s slow­ing down, nat­u­ral­ly, as you do when you get old­er,” Matt said, then looked at The Elder Rol­lie.  “Well, not YOU, maybe, Rol­lie!”  “Yeah, that memo about slow­ing down, I did­n’t get it!” Rol­lie crowed.

And when every­one else final­ly did depart, Rol­lie stayed behind to help John set up the gen­er­a­tor, since as city folk we could not pos­si­bly go more than two hours with­out the inter­net!  They entered the feared and cob­web-fes­tooned crawl space to emerge with the mag­ic source of energy.

Judy and I stood to one side as “the boys” got the gen­er­a­tor going, then shout­ing a bit over the din, went over to inspect the new wall.  How beau­ti­ful it looks!  The most cost­ly expanse of stones I can imag­ine, but worth it to see it stand­ing firm now.

Should we be wor­ried about the expanse of moss accu­mu­lat­ing on our roof?  Rol­lie deems not.

The boys fill up the gen­er­a­tor with enough gas to get us through this ener­gy emer­gency (the pow­er came back on about an hour lat­er!), hap­py to be play­ing with machinery.

The par­ty was over, the ear­ly evening air chill.  The last guest gone, the hol­i­day over.  It’s back to Lon­don for us, to ring bells and mate socks at Lost Prop­er­ty for me, for John to con­tin­ue plan­ning his beloved riv­er-edge prop­er­ty, for Avery to take the wretched exams.  And when we see Red Gate Farm next, there will be a chick­en in the chick­en house for the first time in half a cen­tu­ry, I imag­ine.  That will be worth com­ing back for.  For now… hol­i­day over.