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.