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.