August beau­ty

Here I sit on my sun­ny ter­race, feast­ing my eyes on this gor­geous crop of toma­toes, a gift from old friends with a fab­u­lous gar­den, and des­tined for toma­to moz­zarel­la sal­ad tomor­row.  The lawn is shim­mer­ing in the mid-August heat, green from just enough rain, which falls con­ve­nient­ly at night, leav­ing us with day after day of warm calm.

Calm!  That makes me laugh, because the only thing calm about our sum­mer IS the weath­er.  It’s the usu­al revolv­ing door here, wel­com­ing guests who find Red Gate Far­m’s par­tic­u­lar brand of peace an anti­dote to the rig­ors of dai­ly life.

John’s sis­ter Cathy and niece Ellen were our lat­est vis­i­tors this week, come to bask in the sun, chat, share our table, vis­it our library, car­ry a book out to the ter­race to read.  But as Ellen said, “I bring my book out here, but then I just want to BE here, and look around, and feel the pas­sage of time.”  Cathy was hap­py to do just that.

Avery and Ellen braved the heat to jump on the tram­po­line, then to col­lapse and dis­cuss the state of the world, under the spread­ing branch­es of the enor­mous, elder­ly maple tree.

They were hap­py to take a break from all the bounc­ing to set the table for a cel­e­bra­to­ry din­ner with Rol­lie and Judy, and to res­cue a Jes­samy who has once again dis­cov­ered how to slip out the back screen door.

We were so busy pass­ing trays of home-fried chick­en ten­ders, sweet corn and cheesy egg­plant stew, and laugh­ing over the crazy Christ­mas tree stand sto­ries that Rol­lie and Judy always tell, that I for­got to take any pic­tures of our par­ty!  Avery caught one of the egg­plant, though, gar­licky and savoury with fresh thyme and mozzarella.

We took a trip up the hill to vis­it Young Rol­lie’s bee­hives, where Ellen was prompt­ly stung, but she was enchant­ed with them anyway.

How Ellen adores her Uncle John, who real­ly treats her like the lit­tle sis­ter he nev­er had.

When Cathy went into the city for a busi­ness trip, the rest of us suit­ed up for an after­noon at Quassy, the local amuse­ment and water park, with whom I have a love-hate rela­tion­ship.  I love the old-fash­ioned atmos­phere, the hot dogs, the view over the lake, glis­ten­ing under a blink­ing blue and gray sky, the ancient carousel.

What I do not love is the deaf­en­ing noise of the music at the bumper cars…

but I’m the only one…

I also do not love the scary rides every­one always makes me go on!  But hot dogs, onion rings and watch­ing the girls have fun make it all worthwhile.

We came home sick to our stom­achs, sun­burned, sticky and tired.  The only thing to do was put out the min­now trap and catch some tiny fish in the pond.

And John, obsessed as always with his pre­cious birds, acquired one more feed­er, this one just for goldfinch­es.  How do they know?  But they do.  There are often six of them cling­ing to it at a time.

Through it all, we watched the clos­ing cer­e­monies of the Olympics — the high­light being Eric Idle and “Always Look on The Bright Side of Life”!  And we went for ice cream in Quin­cy the Land Rover, who has had an over­haul and now (sort of) always starts when we want him to.  We argued pol­i­tics with the crazy ladies stand­ing out­side the library on Pri­ma­ry Day, piled every veg­etable in the world on home­made piz­zas, read aloud from our var­i­ous favorite books, and breathed in the heavy sum­mer air.

We went to the pool and swam under­wa­ter races with Ellen, cham­pi­on com­peti­tor for her high school team.  John and I went to the hard­ware store to get the gril­l’s propane tank filled up.  In a total­ly typ­i­cal Con­necti­cut nego­ti­a­tion, John asked the clerk if he thought it was a good idea to have an “extra propane tank.”

“Ayuh, always good to have an extra tank.  Nev­er know when you’re gonna run out.”

“Well, great.  We’ll take one.”

“That’ll be $40.”

“Includ­ing propane?”

“Oh, no, propane will be anoth­er $15.  You want­ed propane, too, did you?”

No, what we REAL­LY want­ed was an EMP­TY extra propane tank.  Because it’s always good to have an EXTRA emp­ty propane tank.

Final­ly Cathy and Ellen had to go home, and because it is against our reli­gion to sit still for more than sev­en­teen min­utes at a time, we hopped in the car and head­ed up to New York State to vis­it our old friends Chris and Mar­la, and their beau­ti­ful kids Aidan and Hele­na, at their big white farmhouse.

How Avery laughed over old pho­to albums of us with 90s hair and clothes, each of us about 20 pounds lighter and with no gray hair!  “You guys were so COOL!  Big par­ties with peo­ple in black tie and bath­tubs full of bot­tles of cham­pagne…” her voice trails off, clear­ly reluc­tant to con­front the dull old peo­ple we are now!

We exchanged news about what we’re all up to, eat­ing all the pick­led veg­eta­bles Mar­la has been putting up — kohlra­bi!  bril­liant — while the kids bounced around, Hele­na look­ing exact­ly like a tiny Marla.

From there we head­ed even far­ther upstate to eat lunch with our great pals Olimpia and Tony, at their log cab­in nes­tled in the woods at the end of a dri­ve­way 3/4 mile long!

Olimpia is one of the most bril­liant cooks I know — helped by being Ital­ian through and through, and she gave us falling-apart beef ribs in a rich gravy, with a side dish of a real­ly intrigu­ing pas­ta, which we cooked togeth­er.  The noo­dles are cooked in wine and stock, like risot­to rice.

Olimpia’s Green Veg­etable Cam­pan­elle

(serves about 6–8)

3 tbsps olive oil

4 leeks

4 cloves garlic

1 large bunch aspara­gus, cut in 2‑inch pieces

3/4 cup baby peas

pinch chopped mint (option­al)

1 cup dry white wine

veg­etable or chick­en stock (about 4 cups, enough to ful­ly cook the noodles)

1 pound cam­pan­elle noo­dles (bell-shaped!)

1 cup grat­ed Parmesan

Heat the oil until shim­mer­ing.  Wash the white and light green parts of the leeks and cut them in 1/2 inch slices.  Add to the oil and cook until very soft and browned.  Add gar­lic and aspara­gus and peas, plus mint if using, and stir well.  Remove to a bowl.

In the remain­ing oil, stir the dry pas­ta until coat­ed.  Add the wine all at once, and cook until wine is absorbed by noo­dles.  Add the stock one cup at a time, stir­ring in between until the noo­dles are com­plete­ly cooked.  Add the cheese and stir well, then add the veg­eta­bles and stir well..  Serve hot.

So love­ly!  It tastes creamy although there is no cream, from the noo­dles cook­ing in the stock and wine.  Light, sum­mery, delicious.

We took Olimpia’s fresh pan­na cot­ta out to the ter­race sur­round­ed by dense woods and chat­ted, catch­ing up on all our news since we last saw them at my moth­er’s birth­day par­ty, a year ago.  We remem­bered all the oth­er times we had cooked and eat­en togeth­er, in our New York apart­ment, in our Lon­don hous­es.  Since Tony has 3/4 of a mile of stone walls, on each side of his dri­ve­way, we sought his opin­ion about our poor old wall by the mead­ow, des­per­ate­ly need­ing repair.  I think we’ll end up get­ting the stone­ma­son out here in the fall to do it while we’re away.  “Don’t look at me!” Tony said, even though he has all the coolest trac­tors, back­hoes, chain­saws that a man could want.

We had a love­ly afternoon.

Today, we are recov­er­ing, spend­ing a qui­et day just the three of us, watch­ing the chip­munks cavort in their nev­er-end­ing quest for peanuts.  They have got­ten com­plete­ly insa­tiable, and if the glass is not kept full, they take on a sin­is­ter, preda­to­ry appear­ance, and I real­ize we are total­ly, WAY out­num­bered.  One actu­al­ly jumped up on my lap, at which point I real­ized that until now, I had always thought it would be kind of cute to have a chip­munk on my lap.

Jes­samy sits inside, her hands propped up on the spring of the screen door, watch­ing in mute, feline frustration.

Two weeks from today, Avery will be back at school.  I will be slav­ing away at Lost Prop­er­ty, John will be hard at work on the school Christ­mas Fair.  For now we’ll take a deep breath and enjoy these last days of August peace.