sum­mer memories

I could­n’t resist basi­cal­ly a pic­ture post. How can we ever for­get the twin foals born at Red Horse Sta­bles? Nor how we found out: Avery and I are such well-known pool rats that when Anne and David had some­thing to tell us, they knew exact­ly where to go. It was so fun­ny to look up in the sun­shine at the side of the South­bury Munic­i­pal Pool and see ful­ly-dressed Anne com­ing toward us, arms prac­ti­cal­ly wav­ing with excite­ment. “There are twin baby hors­es in the pad­dock at Red Horse!” So we dried off and drove away, and sure enough: two lit­tle foals. Appar­ent­ly while it’s not that unusu­al for a mare to be preg­nant with twins, it’s very unlike­ly that both will be born safe­ly. So these two are real mir­a­cles. We have vis­it­ed them with loy­al fre­quen­cy ever since.

Then I had to show you the street sign from Mys­tic, Con­necti­cut, where I took Avery to vis­it twice, to see Cici. Can you believe it? There’s also Avery Cor­ner. Who was this Avery?

But noth­ing can top the pres­ence of Jane in our sum­mer. Have you ever seen such a crea­ture? We will miss her ter­ri­bly. Jill and Joel sim­ply have to sched­ule a vis­it to Lon­don, that’s all there is to it. There must be some impor­tant sport­ing event Jill can pro­duce, right? I’ll keep my eyes out. How can we pos­si­bly spend the next ten months just HEAR­ING what Jane is doing? Will she keep on sit­ting in her Think­ing Chair and Think­ing? Will she con­tin­ue to do touch­downs and find the book of fun­ny faces, and do “hap­py feet”? No, she’ll learn a whole bunch of new par­ty tricks and we won’t know. Thank good­ness for dig­i­tal cam­eras, and pret­ty soon she can talk well enough to spend lots of her par­ents’ mon­ey on exten­sive transat­lantic phone calls. Sob. Jane has great­ly added to our lit­er­ary knowl­edge this sum­mer, our mon­ey being on the hereto­fore unknown to us Mo Willems, author of such gems as “Don’t Let the Pigeon Dri­ve the Bus,” fol­lowed by the even more stim­u­lat­ing, “Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late”. Per­haps the best, though, is “Knuf­fle Bun­ny.” If you need baby presents, go for the whole pile.

Well, we’re off right now to din­ner at the Olive Tree, one of per­haps two din­ners out we have had here in Con­necti­cut. It’s too much fun to cook, to jus­ti­fy going out. But this restau­rant was rec­om­mend­ed by Rol­lie and Judy, and bor­ders two golf cours­es, so it should be pret­ty. We had such a nice din­ner at Rol­lie and Judy’s house, a real farm­house meal. Chick­en in a mush­room sauce, and then the veg­eta­bles! Steamed fresh beans and zuc­chi­ni, car­rots and tiny new pota­toes. And I brought pesto, so the boys (Rol­lie Junior, Chris and Todd) spread it on their bread. Then fresh peach and blue­ber­ry pie with a real lat­ticed crust. I don’t think I’ve ever eat­en a real pie like that served by the real per­son who made it! We’ll let you know how the Olive Tree is.