reunited!

As much as I love sum­mer for its Amer­i­can beauty, its glo­ri­ous Red Gate Farm adven­tures, its blue skies and green grass, I love it even more for the peo­ple.  Each day brings another “hello!” to help us recover from all the “good­byes” at Christ­mas time.

First among these this sum­mer was John’s mom!  There is some­thing inno­cent and sweet about the Westch­ester air­port where we always pick her up, sum­mer and Christ­mas.  Every­one there seems to be on hol­i­day!  Chil­dren being kissed by grand­moth­ers, cou­ples who look like they’re on hon­ey­moon, every­one dash­ing to and fro with brightly-colored tote bags from L.L. Bean, strollers, golf club bags.  And there she was, as always, ready to come home with us and start summer.

How lovely to come home and set­tle onto the sunny ter­race for the first of many catchings-up, look­ing out over the heav­enly landscape.

And then before we could blink, the longed-for day had come and it was time to drive to Brook­lyn and pick up Avery!  She seemed to have grown six inches in two weeks, and was bliss­fully full of sto­ries of her pho­tog­ra­phy camp adven­tures.  How com­pletely divine to have her back.

Even though I couldn’t under­stand ninety per­cent of her con­ver­sa­tion, pep­pered as it was with lenses, focus, “the expo­sure tri­an­gle” (which sounds ter­ri­bly dan­ger­ous) and all man­ner of pan­e­gyrics on the beau­ties of film ver­sus dig­i­tal, just the sound of her voice made me happy.  We headed straight to Williams­burg and to brunch at Egg, with my dar­ling Alyssa, one of our favorite peo­ple in the world.  Yay, together again!

What a deli­cious place!  We each had some­thing dif­fer­ent, Alyssa and Steve opt­ing for pan­cakes and the rest of us for eggs in brioche, hashed brown pota­toes, a three-egg Grafton ched­dar omelette, sausage gravy and bis­cuits, French toast!  And a broiled grape­fruit with mint.  Lovely.  A totally cool atmos­phere of effort­less chic.  “How many hip­sters does it take to change a light­bulb?” Avery asks.  “Well, it’s a really obscure num­ber and you’ve prob­a­bly never heard of it.”

And then the long drive up to Con­necti­cut, lis­ten­ing to Avery’s sto­ries.  The dancers she pho­tographed, the annoy­ing boy from Brook­lyn obsessed with air traf­fic con­trol and claim­ing to speak Russ­ian (that was quickly retracted when Avery turned out ACTU­ALLY to speak Russ­ian), the rev­e­la­tion that for two weeks “break­fast was a dough­nut and Sierra mist, then lunch was pizza and a dought­nut if there were any left, and Sierra Mist,” and guess what was for sup­per!  She was happy to come home and have broc­coli pasta and cros­tini, and to pho­to­graph them, of course.

As much as I love her food pho­tog­ra­phy and her archi­tec­tural pho­tog­ra­phy, it’s the self-portraits I love the most.  Con­tem­pla­tive Avery…

But I actu­ally might pre­fer this self-portrait, which makes me think of an off-duty Russ­ian dou­ble — or even triple — agent.  The atmos­phere, the mystery.

We scarcely had time to absorb her return when Sun­day brought our beloved neigh­bors, Anne, David and lit­tle Kate, over for a lun­cheon party in the sun.

There is some­thing unend­ingly cozy about this lit­tle bend in our Con­necti­cut road, with all of us dash­ing across the road and back for a chicken burger with all the trim­mings, a look at each other’s ponds, shim­mer­ing in the heat, a round or two on the tram­po­line, a fever­ish attempt to talk fast enough to catch up all the winter’s and spring’s stories.

We had no sooner fin­ished our lunch than it was time for me to pop in the car and head west, to ring some bells in the beau­ti­ful tower at Mel­rose School, Brewster.

The Mel­rose School, as it turns out, has gone bank­rupt.  All the school is empty, save for our ring­ing tower.  I had been a bit ner­vous about grab­bing a rope again after nearly a month’s break, but it was like rid­ing the prover­bial bike.  Straight onto cov­er­ing on the tenor for Cam­bridge Sur­prise Major on eight bells.  How I love those peo­ple, Amer­i­can ver­sions of my beloved British ring­ing friends.

I am always amazed by the com­plete, absolute con­ti­nu­ity between my British and Amer­i­can ring­ing worlds.  Amer­ica seemed com­pelled to tweak or even trans­form every­thing we brought from Britain, from turn­ing lor­ries into trucks and lifts into ele­va­tors, dri­ving on the other side of the road and leav­ing blood pud­ding on the other side of the pond com­pletely.  But bell­ring­ing?  It’s IDEN­TI­CAL.  The ter­mi­nol­ogy, the meth­ods of teach­ing, even the per­son­al­i­ties of the ringers.  Uni­ver­sally phe­nom­e­nally intel­li­gent (present com­pany excepted), ringers are with­out excep­tion gen­er­ous, devoted to the craft, addicted to per­fec­tion.  The only dif­fer­ences in my two worlds are atmos­pheric.  Mel­rose is high in the sky over the New York hills, bask­ing in the relent­less sun­shine, a wooden struc­ture of seem­ing fragility (if we don’t time our ring­ing right and crash into each other’s sound, the tower moves per­cep­ti­bly back and forth).  The tower was built by nuns, specif­i­cally to con­tain bells and noth­ing else, in 1974.  There is, sur­pris­ingly, no men­tion of God.  There are only bells, to be rung, and with such love.

Barnes, in my lovely Eng­lish home, is by con­trast 800 years old, built of ancient stone that sur­vived an arsonist’s attack at just about the same time my Mel­rose tower was built. We ring on the ground floor of the church and are presided over by our lovely Vicar, and watched with admi­ra­tion by the Sunday-dressed parish­ioners.  There is a sense of grav­ity and his­tory and god­li­ness, for lack of a bet­ter word.  Of course, if you sit in the medieval, smoke-blackened tower steps up to the bel­fry while the bells are being rung, that tower moves too, but with a heavy, Eng­lish move­ment.  There is a god-fearing seri­ous­ness of pur­pose there, whether you are reli­gious or not.  It is just THERE.

How I love them both, those gor­geous places that have given me so much happiness.

Yes­ter­day saw us at the dreaded/much-anticipated Mall visit, let­ting Nonna buy clothes for us!  I am lov­ing my new denim Bermuda shorts!

And does any­thing say sum­mer fun like messy, deli­cious chicken wings?  They’re so easy to make at home and NOT fried.  Just nice, spicy wings.

Home­made Buf­falo Wings

(allow eight half-wings per person)

chicken wings, cut into the drum­stick part and the wing part (if this hasn’t already been done by the shop)

1 packet McCormick’s Buf­falo Wings Hick­ory BBQ herb mix (per 2 lbs chicken)

2 tbsps olive oil (per 2 lbs chicken)

Place all ingre­di­ents in a large reseal­able plas­tic bag.  Shake thor­oughly.  This will take long than you think, so be patient and make sure you squeeze and shake until each wing is coated.  Place on a foil-lined cookie sheet in a sin­gle layer, skin side up.  Bake at 450F/220C for 15 min­utes, then turn down to 375F/190C and bake for a fur­ther 45 min­utes.  Serve with blue cheese dress­ing and LOTS of paper towels!

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Such a beau­ti­ful sum­mer evening, eat­ing wing after wing, ear after ear of corn drip­ping with but­ter!  And to salve our con­sciences, the most per­fect slaw ever.

Fen­nel and Car­rot Slaw with Poppy Seed Dressing

(serves eight as a side dish)

2 large bulbs fen­nel, trimmed and sliced very fine

6 car­rots, peeled and cut into very small matchsticks

1/3 cup mayonnaise

juice of 1 or 2 lemons, depend­ing on how much juice they yield and how much you want

squirt of hot sauce if wanted

1 tbsp poppy seeds

lots of fresh black pepper.

To serve, sim­ply shake up the dress­ing ingre­di­ents in a jar (add a bit of hot water if too thick) and toss with the veg­eta­bles.  It’s best if you do this slightly ahead of din­ner, because the veg­eta­bles will then absorb the dress­ing and sort of meld together.  Toss just before serving.

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Thank you, Avery, for these beau­ti­ful pho­tographs.  And for this one, which per­fectly encap­su­lates our happy Red Gate Farm sum­mer, sur­rounded by fam­ily and friends.