a brush with the fuzz

Well, it’s a first in my expe­ri­ence of our lit­tle unevent­ful Con­necti­cut road (dirt in most places, the way we like it, to keep traf­fic down). I was out wash­ing the car, some­thing I have a strange love for, a throw­back to fun with my dad, no doubt, when Avery decided it was time to go across the road to feed Anne and David’s cats, her wel­come job when they are away for a few days. As I was scrub­bing away the filth of not only an entire sum­mer but an entire win­ter AND spring in the barn under count­less birds’ nests, across the road she came again, say­ing, “They appear to have an alarm and I’m not sure what to do with it.” John jumped down from the ter­race and said he’d run across to help her. It was but the work of a moment for him to reap­pear, ask­ing me, “Do you have Anne’s num­ber in the city? I’ve set off the alarm…”

Min­utes later, after leav­ing a mes­sage for Anne who unac­count­ably was away from her phone in the way peo­ple you hope to find often are, the fuzz arrived. Yes, two of how many can South­bury pos­si­bly have? appeared in our road, pass­ing up both houses at first as a result of their happy lack of acquain­tance with us. I paused with a cold soapy car mitt in hand, with the cer­tain knowl­edge that they would turn around and be back with us in how­ever long it takes to shake a cat’s tail. Sure enough, back they came, into Anne’s dri­ve­way, and up saun­tered John, friendly smile in place, with Avery lag­ging behind, notice­ably less com­fort­able with the author­i­ties as befits a near-teenager.

“All I had to do was show my driver’s license and prove that we live across the road, and explain about feed­ing the kit­ties…” John said, with the same glee he used to show when he got out of a speed­ing ticket by hav­ing a small girl in a fancy rid­ing cos­tume in the back seat. “But offi­cer, we’re on our way to a horse show and we’re late…”

More excite­ment than we’re used to, although, sadly, the Offi­cers of the Law eschewed their sirens and lights, darn it. We spent the rest of the day doing bor­ing things like con­tin­u­ing to wash and vac­uum the car (find­ing such trea­sures as the lost Pool Pass, although since we’re there every day, the life­guards don’t even care any­more), the sun­screen that I’ve neglected all sum­mer, argu­ing to myself that if we’re out only an hour it’s OK, if we’re out past 4 o’clock it’s OK, you name it, I’ve got an excuse for fail­ing to apply sun­screen. I also found any num­ber of Amer­i­can coins that had Avery found them sooner would have funded an end­less num­ber of pool treats. A dread­fully sweaty day to accom­plish this task, but it was worth it to have a gor­geously clean car. Off to ten­nis, where we were flanked on the adjoin­ing court by a hideously young and fit pair of high school boys, mak­ing us all the more aware of our middle-aged efforts! The worst? Once their game broke up, one of the boys STAYED and watched us! Prob­a­bly he took pic­tures with his phone and entered us into some old people’s ten­nis tour­na­ment and we’ll get a notice in the mail. Never mind, our hearts will thank us.

A quick dip in the pool, and home for lunch. My new favorite thing? An inspi­ra­tion from my inspir­ing hus­band, who look­ing at a bag of Fritos that we longed to dip in lux­u­ri­ous sour cream, said, “What would hap­pen if you whizzed up your bean salad in the Cuisi­nart and made bean dip of it? Couldn’t we dip Fritos in that?” And there you have it. The best bean salad, when you get tired of it, becomes quite the best rea­son for you to excuse buy­ing that bag of chips. And a huge amount of your daily sug­gested veg, as well.

The Best Bean Salad
(serves? at least four for lunch and then dip)

1 soup-size can each black beans and hari­cots (small white beans), rinsed and drained
2 ears raw corn, ker­nels cut off (cut them into the salad bowl so they don’t fly away)
hand­ful sugar snap peas, sliced into quar­ters
1 red, orange or yel­low pep­per, diced
1 bunch scal­lions, sliced white and green parts
hand­ful chives, chopped
2 cloves gar­lic, minced WITH juice of 1 lemon and 1 tsp salt
zest of 1 lemon
fresh black pep­per to taste
sprin­kle crushed red pep­per flakes
1/2 cup olive oil

Sim­ply mix every­thing. The rea­son I advise you to mince your gar­lic WITH the lemon juice and salt is that the process pul­ver­izes the gar­lic to a mush, which is much nicer than a mince. Trust me. Mix WELL.

Now, when you have had your salad for lunch, put the rest in your Cuisi­nart and add a cou­ple of table­spoons of olive oil, then pulse until pureed. Add as much olive oil as you need to get the tex­ture you like. DIVINE. Serve with raw car­rot and cel­ery sticks, wedges of red cab­bage, sticks of jicama, kohlrabi and turnip. PERFECT!

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As you can see here, any­way, I wanted you to enjoy the last view of Red Gate Farm at Sunday’s party for my mother, now safely (I hope!) back in Indi­ana. My par­ents stopped kindly in our lit­tle town on their way home yes­ter­day to see Avery on Red Baron, jump­ing those high jumps, then they headed home. What a glo­ri­ous visit we all had, and we tried hard to cram in enough mem­o­ries to last six months, till we get together again, we hope, at Christmastime.

Avery and I spent this hot, humid after­noon slav­ing over a hot stove mak­ing, I’m not kid­ding, desserts! Avery has become deservedly famous for her blue­berry tart, and so this after­noon in advance of our din­ner at our farmer friends Rol­lie and Judy’s house, she made another. And I made another batch of lemon bars to take to Fire Island tomor­row to visit my adored friend Alyssa and her fam­ily, includ­ing Annabelle, Avery’s friend since age about 2 1/2, home now from her long sojourn at sum­mer camp! No sooner had we fin­ished our spa-like exer­cise in humid­ity and sweat­ing that is bak­ing on the hottest day of the year than the next adven­ture arrived: giv­ing the fos­ter kit­ties to their prospec­tive new family!

Yes, Avery suc­ceeded in find­ing a poten­tial new home for the babies. She asked at the sta­ble when she was rid­ing yes­ter­day, and sure enough, the dar­ling girl who helps her bathe the Red Baron was inter­ested! “Just let me call my mom, who says she thinks she’s aller­gic, but she’s a total softy; she let us bring a dog home for about a day once, and seven years later he’s still with us!” Sure enough, the long-suffering mother agreed to babysit the lit­tle kit­ties for us while we’re in Fire Island, and who knows after that what might hap­pen: if they fall in love, we’ve found homes for them. So they arrived in the swel­ter­ing early evening, came into the house and the room we’d set aside for their belong­ings (which I’d clev­erly vac­u­umed and scrubbed so they wouldn’t imme­di­ately see the messy evi­dence of the kids’ pres­ence), and hap­pily took away the lit­ter box, lit­ter, food and the kit­ties them­selves. Avery and I had each spent a lov­ing half hour or so right before the han­dover, cud­dling and encour­ag­ing them to be lov­able, calm and adoptable.

“Let’s call it babysit­ting for right now,” said Karen, the mother, while Katie the barn girl and her brother Andrew qui­etly fell in love. “And we’ll take it from there.” Fin­gers mas­sively crossed that, as much as we love them, we don’t get them back.

Off in an instant after that (well, five min­utes spent in front of a fan, chang­ing clothes and reap­ply­ing antiper­spi­rant, plus mak­ing cheese sauce for mac­a­roni to take to Alyssa’s fam­ily) to Rol­lie and Judy’s for din­ner. We rose above the heat to sit out­side in the evening air, feel­ing the tem­per­a­ture drop as we enjoyed cru­dites and dip, watch­ing trucks come in and out of the dri­ve­way con­tain­ing their three stal­wart boys and friends, lis­ten­ing to the new milk­ing cows moo­ing in the dis­tance, Max the lab and Mr. B the enor­mous vanilla-colored tom­cat weav­ing in and out of our legs. I always love the atmos­phere at Rol­lie and Judy’s: crazy activ­ity, sun-browned boys (now men, really) rush­ing in con­trolled chaos from job to job on the farm, Rol­lie enlist­ing John’s help as traf­fic cop as a new trailer gets deliv­ered to Young Rollie’s farm down the road.

And Judy pre­sides over all with calm, joy­ous appre­ci­a­tion of all her boys and her vis­i­tors. Calm is the word! With three boys who appeared in fewer than five years, she’d have to be. And she fed us, oh how she fed us. Glo­ri­ous bar­be­cued shred­ded (sliced? some of each) beef, ten­der in an incred­i­bly rich sauce that I will try to glean from Judy. Per­fectly crisp corn on the cob, potato salad. Avery’s blue­berry tart for dessert, applause all around. I must say, I’m so pleased at how she rises to being the only child, with so many adults. To ques­tions about her school, her friends, rid­ing, she answers gra­ciously with funny sto­ries and just the right amount of detail. A most sat­is­fac­tory girl. And she can BAKE.

We stag­gered home after such sump­tu­ous food and packed up for our adven­ture tomor­row. It’s been YEARS since we made it to Alyssa’s on Fire Island. Two years ago we were stopped by a hur­ri­cane! And last year I sim­ply can­not remem­ber what kept us away. But it’s against my reli­gion to let more than six months go by with­out Avery and Annabelle see­ing each other, and it’s too long this year. We’ll report. If we’re not in the slam­mer by then, I mean.