good­bye July

Whew, it’s hot!  Our ten­nis games are sweaty affairs where we quit when we’ve run out of cold water to drink.  The Grumpy Old Men at the ten­nis court out­do them­selves with queru­lous com­plaint.  “Ira, what in the world is wrong with you?  That shot was so LAWNG.”  “Shel­don, when I say SERVE, I mean over the g*****d net!  Are you blind?”  “That was cer­tain­ly not 30 15, that was 30 30.”  Cen­tral cast­ing.  But hey: they’re out there, argu­ing their way through yet anoth­er match.

The air hangs heavy over Red Gate Farm, coax­ing the blos­soms from the hydrangea tree, final­ly.  Every July we wring our hands, say­ing, “It’s nev­er THIS late before they bloom!  What’s wrong?” and then in August, right on cue, they bloom.

Shots ring out across the back mead­ow as Tri­cia pur­sues the coy­otes (she plans on a coat when she gets nine of them, and I just hope she suc­ceeds before they eat up any more of the bun­nies run­ning around.  She’s more wor­ried about her baby son in his back­yard pool).  Not to men­tion these lit­tle guys who peo­ple our ter­race.  We feed them shame­less­ly, watch­ing them car­ry their booty to their secret homes.

All the usu­al sus­pects are account­ed for this sum­mer, in our lit­tle com­mu­ni­ty, with the beloved addi­tion of Mike and Lau­ren’s new baby, Abi­gail.  She can, as the late, great nov­el­ist Lau­rie Col­win said, be judged by adult stan­dards of beauty.

I was allowed to hold her.  How tiny they start out!  Avery con­duct­ed a bril­liant pho­to ses­sion as a gift to Abi­gail’s parents.

These are the sort of peo­ple who, two months before the birth of their first child, trav­el out of state to adopt a res­cue dog to show­er love on.  Noel seems to real­ize that she has fall­en into the pot of jam, with her new family.

Mike will always hold a spe­cial place in our hearts because he fell in love with and adopt­ed Avery’s fos­ter kit­ten Jes­si­ca, sev­er­al sum­mers ago.  He is, pre­dictably, an amaz­ing dad.

It was heart­warm­ing to vis­it them at home sev­er­al days lat­er, and to see Jes­si­ca reunit­ed with her res­cuer, both of them quite grown up now.

Of course we’ve been tool­ing around in Quin­cy, the 1967 Land Rover who is John’s pride and joy.  He takes us to the ice cream stand down our coun­try road, the most Amer­i­can place you can ever imagine.

I always go along for the ride, even though I don’t “do” ice cream.  I’d rather save all that but­ter­fat for just plain BUT­TER.  But it would­n’t be sum­mer with­out Rich’s Ice Cream, and the flag.

Quin­cy is show­ing his age, how­ev­er.  One sul­try after­noon, John and I dropped Avery and Rose­mary off at our beloved local library, say­ing we’d be “right back.”  We stopped at the car repair place to sched­ule a check­up for Quin­cy and went to the gro­cery store for lob­sters, emerg­ing to find that Quin­cy had had enough and would not start.  HOW I wish I had had my cam­era that after­noon, because two rather alarm­ing­ly tatooed and slight­ly dicey look­ing men emerged from a car with Mass­a­chu­setts plates and approached us.  “Hey, what a cool ride.  Havin’ trou­ble, are ya?”

Where­upon they put their backs into the awe­some job of push­ing Quin­cy across the park­ing lot try­ing to sur­prise him into start­ing.  They pro­duced jumper cables.  No luck.  “No way this baby’s staaatin’,” averred one guy (with skulls all up and down his arms and a heart sur­round­ing the words “Maris­sa” and “Kon­ny­lynn”).  “Starter’s toast.”  We shook hands.  “Our good deed for the day, any­way,” they smiled and drove away.  I can’t believe we did­n’t think to give them a twen­ty.  It took AAA to start the car.

I thought to myself, “That is what Amer­i­ca is all about.  Two guys, total strangers, try­ing their best to help us out of the good­ness of their hearts.”

July would­n’t be com­plete with­out a vis­it from our local Great Blue Heron, who flies across from Anne’s pond across the road to land on our barn roof.

From the roof, after sur­vey­ing all his domain, he sails into our pond, to eat as many of our min­nows as he can.

Jill and her fam­i­ly have been to vis­it, one mem­o­rably thun­dery after­noon (Jane does not do thun­der, so we had to offer lots of Olympic cov­er­age to dis­tract her).  Luck­i­ly we made it to the swim­ming pool before the heav­ens opened, and then came home to con­gre­gate in the kitchen (as every­one seems to do no mat­ter what house I’m in), set­ting up Avery’s child­hood doll­house for Jane and Mol­ly to redis­cov­er.  We mea­sured every­one, as usu­al.  Mol­ly is far too small for her name to appear any­where near Avery’s, this summer!

And Jane’s request­ed spaghet­ti and meat­balls for din­ner!  I don’t know what sto­ry I was telling here, but it must have had a great punchline.

This week saw us on our twice-year­ly trip up to Wash­ing­ton, Con­necti­cut, to pop into our favorite book­store.  We detoured to our friend Judy’s broth­er’s farm­stand, high on the hill­top over­look­ing the val­ley, where we were lucky enough to find Judy her­self and have a vis­it, plus stock up on beets, peach­es, corn and lettuce.

Onward to the Hick­o­ry Stick, one of those mag­i­cal book­shops where you find books you would nev­er have dreamed of, and feel good about buy­ing them.  Take that, Amazon!

We went on to Litch­field for our tra­di­tion­al trip to my favorite wool­lens shop, R. Der­win, where I ful­ly intend­ed to give myself and Avery new cash­mere sweaters, as we do every sum­mer.  But my GOOD­NESS!  What has hap­pened to the prices?  Reces­sion, what reces­sion?  All we could afford were sweaters on the “dam­aged” rack, with lit­tle moth-holes pep­pered about.  Those will fit right into my wardrobe in Lon­don where every­thing has a hole!

This sum­mer has also, of course, been tak­en over by the Olympics.  John streams cov­er­age live from the BBC until they close up for the day, then we turn to NBC for the evenings.  Oh, the Open­ing Cer­e­mo­ny: daft!  so British!  the Queen arriv­ing in a heli­copter, dozens of Mary Pop­pins float­ing in with black umbrel­las, and Ken­neth Branagh in mut­ton chop side­burns quot­ing from Cal­a­ban?  Only in Eng­land!  Dur­ing the Parade of Nations, Avery mused, “St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines?  Sounds like a rock band.”

Avery’s sense of humor has brought many a shout of laugh­ter from us all this sum­mer.  High on my list was her reply to my moan­ing about the demise of the Amer­i­can Soap Opera indus­try (I was raised on “Days of Our Lives.”).  “It’s just a shame when ANY indus­try goes under,” I soap­boxed.  “All those jobs lost, all the pas­sion for it dis­solved.  No indus­try should suf­fer that fate.”  Pause.  Avery: “Well, there IS human trafficking.”

She is the best.

One impos­si­bly steamy after­noon, we acquired a gen­er­a­tor.  After last sum­mer’s deba­cle with Hur­ri­cane Irene and six days with no elec­tric­i­ty or water (well water), we deter­mined nev­er to live through that again.  So our very roman­tic wed­ding anniver­sary and Christ­mas gift to each oth­er was this baby.

As John and the elec­tri­cian agreed, the pow­er will now NEV­ER go off again.

Through­out it all, Rose­mary and I have been cook­ing, cook­ing, cook­ing.  What a joy it is to have com­pa­ny in the kitchen!  She and I have been at this, our favorite activ­i­ty, for going on 30 years now, and we have the rou­tine down pat.  She chops the gar­lic, the shal­lots, the mint, the basil — what­ev­er requires pre­ci­sion and ded­i­ca­tion!  I try to keep track of get­ting every­thing to the table on time.  Fried had­dock, BBQ chick­en wings, END­LESS bean sal­ads, slaws and roast­ed veg­eta­bles, chick­en burg­ers, roast­ed salmon, BLTs, you name it.  Corn on the cob near­ly every night!

And the spe­cial treat with­out which no sum­mer would be com­plete: Maine lobster.

Avery was a reluc­tant pho­tog­ra­ph­er on this occa­sion, not rel­ish­ing being quite so close to the food chain.  As Kim Kar­dashi­an said, “Lob­sters are the only food we kill before we eat them.”  Hmmm… what­ev­er, they were deli­cious, steamed and served with a spicy aioli.

Buy a cou­ple of extra lob­sters, because then the next day, with­out hav­ing to kill any­thing afresh, you can have…

Lob­ster Rolls

(one lob­ster per two people)

lob­sters (steamed and chilled)

minced cel­ery

minced white onion

may­on­naise, chili sauce and lemon juice to taste

top-split hot dog rolls

chopped chives

Sim­ply take your lob­ster apart: tail and claws.  I know there is meat in the rest of it, but I don’t ever know how to find it (except suck­ing on the legs!).  Wash the tail thor­ough­ly to remove any green goo.  Chop the meat into the size bites you like and mix with the cel­ery, onion and dress­ing ingre­di­ents.  Pile gen­er­ous­ly into the rolls and sprin­kle with chives.

Yes­ter­day found us at the town pool (for­ev­er to be known as the Town Poo, when the “L” fell off the sign last sum­mer), on a tru­ly per­fect, Amer­i­can pool day.  There was a camp there, so shouts of “Mar­co… Polo…” drift­ed across the water, as they have for cen­turies in pools just like this one.  “Don’t run!” the super­mod­el life­guards screech.”  “Don’t hang on the ladder!”

And so we stroll lazi­ly into the rest of our hot, hot sum­mer.  The bird feed­ers are full, hawks float over­head look­ing for an unwary bun­ny.  The mint flour­ish­es.  It’s August at Red Gate Farm.