last adven­tures of the summer

Just being self­ish here with all these pho­tographs. I don’t want to for­get a thing.

A rau­cous din­ner par­ty a cou­ple of evenings ago with our farmer friend Rol­lie, his wife Judy and two of their sons, Christo­pher and Todd. Young Rol­lie was oth­er­wise occu­pied (his fire­torn house per­haps, or demand­ing swarms of bees behind Han­nan Hon­ey?), but we man­aged to talk over each oth­er just the sev­en of us, all evening. And did we eat? I should say here: I have nev­er before fed young farm­ers in August. Slight­ly elder­ly farm­ers in August yes, and slight­ly elder­ly farm­ers at Christ­mas and in Feb­ru­ary. But 20-some­thing guys who’ve been up haul­ing hay since 3 in the morn­ing? Nope. I have nev­er seen food dis­ap­pear so fast.

Joel’s Arti­choke Dip

Lil­lian Hell­mann Chicken

Scal­loped Corn

Toma­to Moz­zarel­la Salad

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With this all I served sliced sweet pep­pers in all the col­ors: yel­low, red, orange and pur­ple. Con­fes­sion: I can’t stand green pep­pers. Why? No reason.

Judy brought one of her divine lat­tice-topped blue­ber­ry and black­ber­ry pies, and choco­late cook­ies with tiny York pep­per­mint pat­ties baked into the tops! I must get that recipe.

The boys regaled us with sto­ries of their farm­ing adven­tures, among them a gig bal­ing hay on a farm that, no mat­ter who guys the prop­er­ty, comes with an 85-year-old man, in the barn. Lives there with his paraf­fin heater (fire haz­ard, any­one?!) and his cool­er full of beer and ham­burg­ers. Always wears a hard hat, day in, day out.

Next day found us at the South­bury His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety (nat­u­ral­ly my fam­i­ly says every “his­tor­i­cal” as “hys­ter­i­cal”, don’t know who start­ed that but even John says it now) where Anne had brought me over the week­end. A dar­ling place chron­i­cling the life of South Britain and South­bury over the last few hun­dreds of years. It’s well worth a vis­it, and manned by the nicest vol­un­teers you can imag­ine. The lady there on the Sun­day we went is a local farmer’s wife, and once Anne found out what land she has, Anne was tak­ing no pris­on­ers. She is a valiant sup­port­er (prob­a­bly the most) of the South­bury Land Trust that buys land and grants ease­ments on prop­er­ty so as to keep it out of the hands of nasty devel­op­ers who would plant 10 iden­ti­cal hous­es on a plot of land slight­ly larg­er than 10 acres, after of course denud­ing it of all its ancient trees. Our land is part of the trust, and there is noth­ing like the gleam in Anne’s eye when she has spot­ted a prospect.

The lady lis­tened with fair­ly good grace! “We have no inten­tion of sell­ing to any devel­op­er, ever,” she assured us, but Anne described all the clever oppor­tu­ni­ties for landown­ers that don’t include sell­ing, like mon­ey for restora­tion, life­time res­i­den­cy, all sort of things. As I remarked before we part­ed ways, it’s a good thing that Anne’s unbe­liev­able pow­ers of per­sua­sion are on the side of right­eous­ness, because she could talk me, per­son­al­ly, into almost any­thing. The Trust is a great idea for those fathers who don’t real­ly want gifts any­more at Christ­mas: you can donate in their names.

So Avery’s had her last rid­ing les­son, we’ve had our last trip to the pool, our last din­ner with Jill, Joel and Jane (sob). Joel fed us sim­ply divine shrimp, grilled in an alu­minum foil enve­lope in a dill but­ter sauce, with aspara­gus. Yum yum. And Jane and Avery ran around the yard tick­ling each oth­er and gig­gling. Sum­mer is wind­ing down. It’s always hard for me to believe that we have anoth­er life wait­ing for us on the oth­er side of August, on the oth­er side of the pond, but we’ll be there on Sun­day. Have we packed? No. We’re in denial.

A fun­ny Avery sto­ry, or least a sto­ry that high­lights one of my favorite things about her: her very wry sense of humor. We were dri­ving past our neigh­bor Kendra’s house where she keeps at least six hors­es in her front yard. “Ooh, there’s some­body rid­ing,” Avery said. “I’ve nev­er seen any­body rid­ing there before, just the hors­es.” I asked if it was Kendra her­self and before Avery could answer, John asked, “You know, I don’t even know if I’d rec­og­nize Kendra her­self, since we met her only that one time sev­er­al years ago. Pause. Then Avery said, “Well I don’t think this was Kendra. You see, it was… a MAN.”

All right, I’ve got to rouse myself and get ready for Anne and David to come to din­ner tonight. I’m try­ing to recre­ate a dish John’s dad had in Litch­field: shrimp and clams with lin­gui­ni, in a fab­u­lous­ly gar­licky sauce with white wine and crushed red pep­pers. Wish me luck.