pick your own, anyone?

But before I get to that, pick­ing apples that is, some love­ly per­son left a very nice com­ment on my last post, describ­ing one post as “Ram­seyesque.” Anony­mous Read­er, would you be so kind as to tell me what this adjec­tive means? I feel very igno­rant and would like not to be. Please?

We will, though, go apple-pick­ing next week­end, I think. Apple (and pear, come to that) pick­ing was a cher­ished tra­di­tion in our New York lives, always shared with Avery’s beloved friend Annabelle’s fam­i­ly. I remem­ber we began going in Sep­tem­ber or Octo­ber of 1999, and the fol­low­ing autumn it was enough of a tra­di­tion that I, the least crafty of all pos­si­ble moth­ers, paint­ed lit­tle tin pails with “Apple Pick­ing With Avery and Annbelle 2000” the next year, and the girls used them every year after that. I won­der where that pail is now? Some­thing tells me it’s gath­er­ing dust in the cup­board over the refrig­er­a­tor where things we nev­er use can go, because it’s too hard to get to. But I’ve got to dig it out and find some­thing for Anna to use, as well, because she’s going to join us. I’ve found the per­fect farm.

Home Cot­tage Farm have a stand at the prac­ti­cal­ly per­fect Maryle­bone Farmer’s Mar­ket, and I bought sev­er­al vari­eties of apples there this morn­ing, rev­el­ling as I do every Sun­day in the delight­ful atmos­phere of the mar­ket. It’s filled, every week, with good peo­ple mak­ing good food and sell­ing it hap­pi­ly to oth­er nice peo­ple, and their dogs and chil­dren. It reas­sures me that human­i­ty is not all some­thing scary, to see pur­vey­ors of pro­duce, fish­es, duck­lings, every cheese you can imag­ine, bread of every descrip­tion, all smil­ing­ly hand­ing over their wares and pay­ing their bills and feed­ing their fam­i­lies there­by. Of course, I am a suck­er for food-shop­ping of any kind, but it’s still my favorite hour of the week, just about. So I came away with a vari­ety of apple I had nev­er heard of, Lord Lam­bourne, with a curi­ous­ly waxy (the man behind the stand called it “soapy” skin, noth­ing you need to wash off, just a fun­ny feel­ing that he says keeps the apple itself incred­i­bly juicy, and it was.

So the guy at Home Cot­tage stand tells me it’s a 15-mile dri­ve from where we were stand­ing, and I think that’s our brief for next Sat­ur­day: up at a decent hour, col­lect Anna, and head off, in time to be back for Avery’s act­ing les­son mid-after­noon. She’s lov­ing it: gets dressed up and imag­ines what she would do if some cast­ing per­son came look­ing for a tee­ny-wee­ny ver­sion of Scar­lett Johans­son (Avery’s a dead ringer for her). They’re doing all sort of improv, and role-play­ing, and she’s in the 11–14 age group now, so see­ing as how she’s a month shy of 11, she’s in with the big girls and boys.

I seem to have spent the entire­ty of last week mak­ing plans for things to do in the future, as opposed to actu­al­ly doing any­thing right NOW. As a result, we have tick­ets to go to York for Avery’s actu­al birth­day, and we’re hot on the trail of a tiny, tiny cas­tle in Som­er­set (with a moat!) for the week­end in the mid­dle of the month when half-term will be over and she can take her friends Anna and Jamie off for two days of adven­ture. Her great­est wish is to see Exmoor ponies in the wild, and since her two friends are near­ly equal­ly horse-mad, it should be great fun. Then, John got tick­ets for us to go back to Con­necti­cut for Christ­mas with all the fam­i­ly, and I got tick­ets for us to see the Olympia Horse Show, an annu­al favorite, right before we fly off. Whew.

I must say, some fes­tiv­i­ties are in order because she is work­ing incred­i­bly hard get­ting ready for these exams in Jan­u­ary. Oh, that’s the oth­er thing I spent last week doing: fill­ing out admis­sions forms for next year’s school, wher­ev­er it shall be. It strikes me that most of our lives, right now, fea­ture an uncom­fort­able degree of uncer­tain­ty (I hate uncer­tain­ty!). John still has no job (not that he minds), we have no house, we don’t know where Avery will be in school next year. I know it’s crim­i­nal to wish any time in this life away, but I will be hap­pi­er when I know a bit more about how we’re going to be arranged for these sev­er­al real­ly impor­tant things. Shiv­er. In the mean­time, though, every day after school has been a strug­gle, to tell about results on prac­tice exams and be reas­sured that it’s all going to be fine, to hear sto­ries of unfair home­work prac­tices, hor­rid judg­men­tal teach­ers who refuse to acknowl­edge that she’s already per­fect (sigh), reas­sur­ances that com­ing sec­ond in the Poet­ry Com­pe­ti­tion is not tan­ta­mount to excom­mu­ni­ca­tion from the school (and all of Eng­land, she seemed to feel). She takes every­thing so to heart, poor child. My par­ents laughed when I told them this, ask­ing, “Does­n’t any of this remind you of any­one?” Well, I don’t think I was accom­plished enough at Avery’s age to feel it as intense­ly as she feels it.

I’m try­ing to use some of my expe­ri­ences at my new writ­ing course to help her accept crit­i­cism from her teach­ers, but so far I have to say my tech­nique is falling on deaf ears. “Look at it this way, Avery: I’m will­ing to PAY peo­ple to lis­ten to my writ­ing and tell me what’s wrong with it. Try to lis­ten to what the teach­ers say so you can improve.” Alas, a piece of Dover white cliff would have been more recep­tive. Sigh. The writ­ing class has been extreme­ly enjoy­able: a large-ish group of peo­ple all seem­ing­ly quite com­mit­ted to turn­ing up reg­u­lar­ly, pro­duc­ing a piece of writ­ing, being will­ing to read aloud. I walked out after­ward this week with two late-mid­dle age ladies, one from Dublin with a gor­geous lilt­ing accent. She actu­al­ly said, “Sure, and…” just like in books. We seem to be form­ing a nice sup­port­ive group, ready to fol­low the class rule of “the sound­proof box,” in which the per­son who’s read aloud must lis­ten to all the com­ments made, but any response has to wait till the end of the com­ments. Any­thing the read­er would say before the end could not pen­e­trate the sound­proof box! It’s so hard to lis­ten to crit­i­cism and not jump in with “Well, what I MEANT to say…”!

In any case, the best thing to do is look toward the future and some adven­tures to come. This week will bring the first meet­ing of the Form VI Moth­ers’ Singing Group! Becky says she’s get­ting cold feet. What if it’s only five or so of us, and the music mis­tress at school decides we should enter­tain the Christ­mas car­ol con­cert? I still think we’ll be fine. I for one adore to sing, and I’ve missed singing since my old col­lege days, mak­ing extra mon­ey as part of a rather rag-tag but still pret­ty good band, back in Indi­anapo­lis. I think we’ll have a great time.

I’m sit­ting here sniff­ing as the aro­ma of day-long-cook­ing brisket floats into my study. John and I just came back from a five-mile walk through the Park and back, and Avery spent the entire day muck­ing out stalls and can­ter­ing down Rot­ten Row, so I feel ful­ly jus­ti­fied in serv­ing, with my brisket, a nice dish of Shet­land Black Pota­toes, from Morghew Farm, fried in…goose fat. Real­ly. I bought a jar of it at the super­mar­ket and tonight’s the night. I love crazy heir­loom pro­duce, so plen­ti­ful in this coun­try of ours. I will appease my con­science, not that I need to, harumph, with an enor­mous dish of roast­ed beet­root with bal­sam­ic vine­gar. For some rea­son this veg­etable, so repel­lent to so many peo­ple, is Avery’s near-favorite. Go fig­ure. She’s cozy in a post-barn bath, John and I are about to watch a side-split­ting episode of “A Bit of Fry and Lau­rie” (fea­tur­ing two British come­di­ans either of whom would make, most of us believe, a more com­pe­tent Prime Min­is­ter than any can­di­dates we have now). Enjoy your Sunday…

Roast­ed Beet­root with Bal­sam­ic Vinegar