History in August

The end of summer in Vermont is conflicted. The gardens are bursting from all the rain and this tardy sunshine. The sun flowers are grinning and bobbing their heads looking like summer herself. They are huge and cheerful and we are filling vases with them all over the house. The tomatoes are finally red, hiding one minute behind a leaf, a quiet dash of orange, and the next jumping out leaving you wondering how in the world you missed this red ripe thing only last evening. And the flower gardens look like they are posing for a catalog. Everything is in full and glorious bloom, only it's 52 degrees here this morning and the tops of the mountains are beginning to be tinged with red. I needed a sweater in the garden before breakfast and who eats watermelon when they feel chilled?

By mid day it will likely be pushing 80. These thirty degree shifts give me whiplash and everybody I know has a little bit of a cold. Nobody is really and truly sick, but we are all passing around this little bug that makes us feel colder than we are. And yet the counter is covered with tomatoes in red yellow, black and orange, and there is a pile of zucchini that is just waiting to be split and ladled with a little olive oil and Parmesan before spending a few minutes on the grill.

The flower gardens are a riot of color. The lavender is fading just a bit into a twilight of purple and sage. But the roses are big and flashy and they smell so sweet that the whole place smells like a party. There are Black Eyed Susan's and every kind of Violet. There are these big lacy red things that looked pretty in those winter seed brochures and looks even prettier out there now. Darned if I remember what they were called. We still have all kinds of Lilies and there is Cock's Comb next to Zinnias and all colors of Daisy. The whole thing looks giddy and happy like autumn is but a distant worry.

The land around us seems to know that there are real celebrations going on. It has been the week of the Democratic convention which is like the Super Bowl around here. My candidate didn't win, but Barack Obama broke a different glass ceiling for African Americans. Last night was a monumental moment in American history whether Senator Obama was your first candidate or not. And then he and Hillary each got more votes than any other primary candidate in presidential political history. She at least cracked our ceiling and made its shattering something we could all imagine anyway.

Now comes John McCain aiming another shot with Sarah Palin. She will be the first woman at the top of the ticket in 24 years. She and I don't share much political ideology, but our lives are now forever connected. When the time comes I will vote my interests, but today I celebrate and honor John McCain with his intention to be on the right side of history. Her place on their ticket is an historic moment for all of us and a joyful one for women of ideologies different than mine. . Perhaps it is a transparent bid to get Hillary supporter's to switch. But he could have made other political choices, like an African American, or some other niche group whose votes he wants to court, including another white man from Michigan or Pennsylvania. But he did this instead, and I am grateful for it.

This is a moment that asks us to pay attention. We are less a bunch of red and blue states right now than we are all Americans sharing this historical stage. Neither side has the market on patriotism this morning.

When I am really worried or really happy I bake bread. In the winter the smell of rising dough makes everyone feel warm long before the oven gets hot. And while no one wants to make the kitchen hot in summer, if you can get it in early enough, there is something extra special about homemade bread alongside the freshness of the garden. Tonight we will have a bread and tomato salad with just picked berries in homemade ice cream for dessert. We will celebrate with a red white and blue supper on our table because the gardens aren't the only thing blooming. History is bursting out all over....
It is a time to pay attention.

Panzanella
(Tomato and Bread Salad)

Cut up a loaf of good crusty bread into bite sized chunks
Toss with olive oil and garlic. Spread on a greased cookie sheet and toast at 350.
Toss the resulting croutons with 8 tomatoes preferably several different varieties also cut into bite sized chunks.
Add a jar of drained capers.
Add twenty or thirty oil cured olives...(those deep purply black wrinkled Italian kind) cut into pieces.
Add many fat leaves of barely chopped fresh sweet basil.
Lightly toss with a good Balsamic Vinegar.

This is lunch all by itself and with a little grilled tuna on the side it is a perfect summer supper.

Summer Crostada

The blackberries are ripe on the bush. Finally the late summer sun has fattened and sweetened them and the sun is glinting off their shiny purply backs beckoning me to find my basket and get on with it.. A quick walk around tells me that this is the perfect weekend for the big sugary cobbler. And if there are enough, maybe biscuits with a blackberry sauce for breakfast. It is a very different from the late August days of my childhood.

I grew up in a dirty little racist steel town. Maybe it has evolved in the years since I have been away, but for the first eighteen years of my life Granite City was widely known for its bar fights, wife beater shirts, dirty runny nosed children, zero African American population, and the steel mill. The mill offered guaranteed work for countless middle class families in the fifties and the sixties and filled our skies with dark sludge that coated nearby houses and neighborhoods for many blocks. There wasn't much wildlife. We'd get a few cardinals and robins every spring and people filled their bird feeders with hope anew. But then the mosquitoes would come and they were the final pestilence that the folks of Granite would not accept.

They fought back every Thursday night. Just before dark at about 7:30 or 8 the bug sprayers would begin circling the neighborhoods. The DDT had a sweet smell and created a white misty fog that made our streets seem almost mysterious. It was not like the smoke from the mill. This was wispy and wet like fog. People were warned by the Granite City Press Record to put cars in their garages on Thursday evenings. The mist was apparently not good for the paint. But the kids were excepted from that same protection. We followed the bug sprayers and weaved in and out of the fog on our bikes inhaling the sweet wet stuff and pretending we lived in an enchanted forest. That we started finding dead robins and cardinals in our yards did not frighten our parents into keeping us inside on Thursdays. We were reminded to wipe off our bikes when we got home and we had to bathe before sitting on the good sofa, but the dead birds were never connected to our own health. After all we could wash the stuff off and the birds couldn't.

Then one summer in the late sixties Dutch Elm Disease came to town. The tree trunks were all covered with worms, and the gracious Elm's leaves were covered with fine little holes and dead spots. The town responded by increasing the sprayer to three days a week. We had to defeat this thing that was killing all our trees. People were proud of those trees. Wilson Park, where every family gathered for little league and soccer, where the town swimming pool was, and the rock garden where everyone without a church got married, was filled with the majestic old elms. It was sad to see them slowly dying with their trunks painted with ugly white swaths of some thick medicine that didn't seem to be winning the war. Someone figured out that the DDT could cure the trees. Money was soon allocated and more bug sprayers were deployed. Of course it killed pretty much all the rest of the birds. The feeders stayed full and by August the spring birdsong was a memory. The street sweeper came in the mornings after the bug sprayer and got the little cardinals and robins out of our sight. The apple trees didn't fare so well either in those years. The DDT wasn't supposed to hurt plants, only bugs, but apples must have been excepted from that calculation. We wondered why our apples looked small and shriveled, but it was put off to not enough rain or maybe it had been too much. I had breast cancer when I was thirty one. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out why.

Now I live in Vermont where the air is so clean I can see for miles. The birds here make the kind of raucous noise in the mornings that causes the dogs to bark. When I planted my raspberry bushes up here I remembered that my sister had planted raspberry bushes one year back in Granite. My mother warned about how hard they were to grow but she'd decided to try just the same. Mom's prophesy turned out to be true. Most years tiny little golden fruits never grew much after they first appeared and went from yellow to black by August. Here the fruit got as big as nickels and are red and juicy by July. And these blackberries came all by themselves. The birds must have carried the seeds to our land from somewhere else. They were a gift our second year here. Eli found them by accident. He wondered if he could eat them. I was thrilled to find a few vines draped across our honeysuckle. Then the next year there were more and now the vines cover one whole end of a huge bush and have crept over to the edges of our woods besides. Here nature throws a party every day. The bats eat the mosquitoes and the people eat all that the land tosses up.

I might make a crostada instead of a cobbler. I have my Gram's old recipe. She grew raspberries and blackberries and her roses were known for miles. By the modern sixties when mothers gave up nursing in favor of the new fangled formula, and the bug sprayers were brought in to improve everyone's barbecue and eliminate the mosquitoes, by the time all that came around she had moved. She wanted to be further out of town. She said she needed a bigger garden in her old age and that the modern ways with the avocado counter tops and noodles from a box were not for her. Her windowsills were covered with jelly jars filled with flowers. She kept a teacup of roses by her bed. She taught me how to make my noodles from scratch, and she also said a little sugar never hurt anybody either. That crosada has a fair bit. It is a sweet dough dumped almost like dumplings in round white crystal dusted heaps all over the fresh fruit. It tastes like summer.
Or anyway it tastes like summer in Vermont...

Gram's Crostada

For the pastry (makes enough for 2)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated or superfine sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 pound (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, diced
6 tablespoons (3 ounces) ice water
For the filling (makes 1 crostata):
2 pounds of fruit...strawberries and blackberries are good together. peaches are good by themselves or with blueberries.
1 tablespoon plus 1/4 cup all-purpose flour, divided
1 tablespoon plus 1/4 cup granulated sugar, divided
1/4 teaspoon grated orange zest
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) cold unsalted butter, diced

For the pastry:
Place the flour, sugar, and salt in the mixing bowl...(these days you can use a food processor fitted with a steel blade) Mix a few times to combine. Add the butter and toss quickly (and carefully!) with your fingers to coat each cube of butter with the flour. Mix or pulse 12 to 15 times, or until the butter is the size of peas. With the mixer running, add the ice water all at once through the feed tube. Keep hitting the pulse button to combine, but stop just before the dough comes together. Turn the dough out onto a well-floured board, roll it into a ball, cut in half, and form into 2 flat disks. Wrap the disks in plastic and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. If you only need 1 disk of dough The other disk of dough can be frozen.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Now you can either toll the pastry into an 11-inch circle on a lightly floured surface. Transfer it to the baking sheet and/or
Dump in flattened balls around the bottom and the top of the fruit. Rustic is good here. You just want a little bit of dough in every bite. Lots of times I make stretchy little flat ovals and scatter than around the bottom, and the top.

For the filling:
Cut the fruit into biggish bites and place in a bowl with the smaller fruit like the blueberries. Toss them with 1 tablespoon of the flour, 1 tablespoon of the sugar, the orange zest, and the orange juice. Place the mixed fruit on the dough circle, leaving a 1 1/2-inch border.
Combine the 1/4 cup flour, the 1/4 cup sugar, and the salt in the mixer or the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture is crumbly. Pour into a bowl and rub it with your fingers until it starts to hold together. Drop in round sprinkles over the fruit.
Bake the crostata for 20 to 25 minutes, until the crust is golden and the fruit is tender. Let the crostata cool for 5 minutes, then use 2 large spatulas to transfer it to a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Whipped cream on top will make you have happy dreams...

I Wanna Roo You

For eleven days every year we are the same age. The rest of the time my husband can claim he married an older woman. But right now we get to be the same age, because we celebrated a birthday around here the other day. We made ice cream with his new ice cream machine. Then later we watched Back to the Future and made popcorn with an old fashioned popcorn popper. It's the kind where you twirl the handle over the stove and presto chango in about two minutes you have popcorn. We used Amish kernels in the brand new pan that promises to have a black bottom before long. It sounds like a kid's birthday, but really these were the presents chosen by the kids for their dad, John, the father and husband of this loud liberal 'gypsies in the country' parade he leads.

The presents were perfect for the guy whose every act defines him as the family man he is. When I met him we were twenty-four and twenty-five. I had already been married for about fifteen minutes in a famously horribly bad mis-match. From that marriage I toted a wild blond haired two and a half year old savage. He would grow into a strapping six foot three gentle indie music loving artist. But for that moment in time he was a study in motion and noise. When I finally introduced him to this man I had been dating quietly while he slept, or visited his bio dad in those little in between bites of time, I was already in love. I hadn't wanted him to meet men that I might date only a man that I might marry. This was the one. But how to introduce him to my wild child? I picked a piney forest where he could run free and we would all cut down John's, (soon to be our Johnny) first ever adult Christmas tree. We dropped by his apartment to pick him up and he took my apprehensive boy into his kitchen for a secret...I peeked around the corner and watched him tell Benjamin to close his eyes while he squirted whipped cream from a can right into his mouth. Their friendship was sealed and I was hooked. A few weeks later he stopped by our house with a loaf of bread he'd baked that day with his grandmother. That settled it and those two guys of mine still share a love of British football, New England beaches, oysters, weird indie pop music, and canned whipped cream.

We lived an urban hip hop life for a while before moving to a small sweet little town that boasted a real root beer stand, and a pond in the middle replete with hungry ducks. Later when we were five instead of just three we moved back to that urban life. This time it was to a three story restored Victorian on an elegant boulevard blocks away from really good Thai and Indian and anything else you might think up to want at ten o'clock at night. Then after a few wonderful years of that we continued this adventure in family up here in Vermont.

At every stop this man has been here coaching the kid's teams and cheering for them at plays and on the field and court. He always got up first and took whatever baby downstairs so mommy could sleep a little more. For a little while when there were just two he danced one to sleep with Van Morrison while I read to the other. He is the only quiet one in our group and he speaks with a soft irony that cracks up everybody around him while he looks serene and elegant in whatever solemn surroundings. He reads the maps and leads the way through Italy or the lower East side. I can call him from anywhere in the world, lost and bereft and he will have me on my way giggling and on the right road again in under a minute. This newly forty five year old is still the handsomest sexiest man I know. He has brown curly hair touched now with a little gray, and a smile on chiseled cheeks that keeps me warm and safe. He makes me laugh every single day and when invariably I have something to apologize for he graciously accepts and reminds me that the misses are the blips and the hits are the main show around here.

I fell in love with this funny poet who made me cassette tapes, (remember them?) of Van Morrison and Ella Fitzgerald. We went to independent films and listened to a live bluesy duo who toasted us when we walked in with one of our favorite songs. We read to each other and the kids. We share a love of books, politics, travel, and food. He taught me to slow down and brought a calm rhythm to my life that I had never known. Once recently I walked into a coffee shop and he was buying a cappuccino. I thought," wow who is that gorgeous guy", and then got that little chill when I realized he was mine.

This is a guy who loves Elvis Costello, Arsenal, loathes the German national team, writes with humor and care, takes his little girl, (shhh, yes she's in college, but he still thinks she's twelve), on daddy daughter dates to every single Hugh Grant movie, his twelve year old Tom Sawyer kid to Pennsylvania, (six hours away!) for fireworks with his best pal Timmy, and makes fabulous dinner from whatever comes out of the garden that day. He plays endless games of poker or chess or pinochle with whichever kid wishes for a match, and takes everyone to see Obama, or Hillary or whoever their candidate happens to be. He listens to new music with the oldest one and walks endless miles with Stuart and Eloise and Pippi, the dogs who trail after him with love and devotion. Then he carries Mildred the arthritic chicken into the henhouse at dark every night. He has taught our boys what it means to be men and our daughter how to choose a husband. It isn't about the size of the paycheck, but rather the size of the heart. He has taught them that it isn't weak to struggle, only to give up. From time to time this gentlest of men has risen up in a fierce protectiveness for one of us reminding us that quiet strength is the most powerful of all. He has shown them that having a life of the mind and being willing to welcome change will keep you young and vibrant. And they know, as I know, that we are his favorite way to spend a weekend, his best pals, we are where his heart lives.

I cannot believe he's forty-five. It seems like it all just started a couple of years ago. And I cannot believe my luck either. I am married to a man who wanted to spend his birthday making batches of ice cream until he got his recipe just right. He holds my hand and still looks into my eyes when he kisses me. I hope he has another forty five at least and that I get to be here for every single one.

Coveting...

I am cold. It is late August, the time we used to think of as the dog days of summer. But it is 57 degrees on this sunny morning in late August and I am chilly. We have 57 windows in this old restored farmhouse and I have been running around closing them all and wondering how we will service this winter. All the talk at the general store is about whether to pre-buy oil this year or not. You have to decide in August and then you are stuck with whatever price you lock in. A few weeks ago as the price was climbing every day this seemed like a simple decision. We burned twenty-two hundred gallons last year in this big old drafty house. And our friends head straight to the linen closet and wrap themselves in soft lap blankets when they visit anytime between November and April. One end of our house, the part built in 1838 is almost cold even in summer and in the winter there are mornings when you can see your breath down on that end of the house. It is where the dining room is and the playroom where we watch old movies and build big roaring hot fires that burn themselves out and barely warm the room. We have fantasized about tearing out the wall in between the playroom and the dining room and opening the whole thing up with a big two sided fireplace in the middle. But now, this year we are thinking about adding a woodstove to the playroom instead.. We have acres of timber which is completely renewable. Plus it is a lot cheaper than oil. The pellet stoves have all been sold and they are taking orders for 2009, but there are still woodstoves in stock and they are calling me.

Meanwhile the wood piles are coming out all over the village. Nobody ever has enough, even those of us who have heretofore just used our piles for cheery little fires in the fireplace. Our pile takes up a big wood room at the end of the cellar. When it is all piled and stacked in the summer it surely seems like a lot. There is usually one wall that could use another cord and we always mean to add it. Thoreau said that wood warms twice, once when its cut and again later when it burns. True enough. There is a particular satisfaction is splitting wood. We don't even chop ours. We get it delivered and only need to split the big logs into manageable pieces. When we are really lazy we buy it already split too and then all we have to do is stack it. But in July like grasshoppers we play and winter seems far away. There is nothing worse than smokey green wood in the coldest part of the year. It seems like the whole mountain runs out sometime in January except for the second home owners who bring a certain Zen to their woodpiles. Theirs are built in neat inclines along the sides of their houses. Some of them even build next to the window closest to their woodstove and they shift the whole thing mid winter so they can just open the window reach out and add a few logs whenever they feel the need. You see those folks dressed in Vermonty coats and big boots moving a few logs on sunny afternoons. They are to winter in Vermont what the office worker with a Bonsai is to an Iowa farmer. But maybe the rest of us are just jealous.

I used to hate the 100 degree days that defined late August in St Louis. My wild unmade bed looking curly hair got bigger and bigger all summer long. By August I looked like a member of the band Aerosmith. I hated the summer colds that I caught running in and out of hermetically sealed cold buildings where the freezing cold AC blew the germs around. It was like getting in and out of airplanes all day long. But I surely never worried about winter as I sipped cold drinks on those slow Saturdays by the pool. So now I live in Vermont where the winter occupies my thoughts even in August. I guess rather than looking at end of the season strappy pink sandals I will spend a few chilly mornings pouring over woodstoves on the Internet instead......

The One That Almost Got Away

It was fast becoming one of those summers that got away. And this weekend I decided things had gone far enough. I took Eli to the Vineyard on Friday morning. We got up before the chickens and carried our steaming mugs of cocoa and coffee to the highways. We were there by lunchtime settled into a cool booth at the Black Dog with the two big kids eating burgers and giggling about the way the sun has colored them both. Benjamin is a blond again, even his eyebrows. He hasn't been this blond in years. But unending days on the beach with a bunch of little boys who want "More Benjamin more...let's go in again!" will do that to you I guess. Both of them were brown as nuts too. The salt water and ocean winds had mussed and streaked their hair and they looked like flower children with long lovely natural looking highlights and their teeth were shiny white against those tanned bodies.

Hannah had to work in the afternoon so it was with the boys that I headed to Benjamin's new favorite beach, Great Rock. It is secluded and known mostly by the locals. You walk down a long winding flower scented woodsy trail to get there. I have always had crummy balance and the steep decline was hell on my toes and my posture. I tippy toed along hanging onto my six foot three inch oldest son, who wondered how in the hell I was going to manage ever being old. We kvetched all the way down the hill and then there it was. The beach is surrounded by small clay cliffs and the great rock 100 yards from shore where we swam, and which Benjamin climbed and dove off of like a teenage porpoise flipping and splashing and playing with his little brother. We came home tired and sandy, full and happy.

The next day he worked and Hannah was off so she took us to the secret pond. Ice House Pond has just been opened this year to the public. Only twenty bathers at a time may swim and the Land Bank fellows meet you at the trail head to take your count and dole out the rules. On the day that we went we were the only people there. The water stretched out before us, a shimmering flat mesmerizing invitation. Surrounded by a piney wood we swam and swam feeling like maybe we were the only people left in the world. Eli and Hannah played with the fish who were as curious about us as any critter seeing a new mammal might be. Un-used to people they darted in and out of our legs and swam up close to get a better view. While they giggled over the fish I floated, just me and the water, the distant hum of my kid's voices and the wide open sky. It was in all ways a lovely moment in what has been a hectic summer.

Then yesterday they were both off and back to the beach for another long day of salty breezes under a perfect blue sky. We spent Sunday evening cuddled up on the dock in Menemsha listening to the local Bluegrass guys pick out the old songs for a whole new generation. I left Eli there yesterday and he reminded me that he is practically a teenager and the reminders I called in every half hour on my way home were no longer necessary.

What was completely necessary though were those moments in the water, on the trail, and on the dock listening to the sounds of these almost grown up voices reminding me that we have a whole nother lifetime ahead of us. They are making their lives, and these bits outside of college offered us all a glimpse of what the next ones might be like. Somehow they get up every day go to work on time, and on their days off find these places filled with natural beauty where they spend their free time. These are the people whom I love deeply with a fierce passion, but they are also people I respect and like. They are smart, well informed, funny and kind. And they understand that a quiet perfectly beautiful spot is often better than a busy popular one.

They spend their extra dollars on ice cream and wonder that all the really good stuff is free, Oh they love the shops too, but hadn't felt called by them in all the weeks they had already been there. They are learning how to please each other and themselves. There is no one to mediate their squabbles and so they are quieter in the mornings until coffee has been drunk and the edges have been softened. They are becoming who they will be in this next phase and we held hands as we tasted each other's cones and felt amazed by it all together. It didn't need words, just rich chocolate ice cream with raspberry swirls and sand between our toes. This summer didn't get away after all....

Perspective Shift

This was not the summer I'd planned to have.

I fantasied about unscheduled weekends and meandering drives between farmer's markets. I planned to fill a basket every morning with stuff from the garden and pick new recipes to try on sunny weekend afternoons with my daughter as we giggled and sunbathed on the balcony. It was the last summer post homeschooling and pre regular school for our twelve year old and I imagined reading some old fashioned boy adventure stories together curled up in the cool screen porch on balmy summer nights. It might have been the last summer with our twenty three year old at home since he has only one college semester left and a life of his own looming on some near horizon. We would drink coffee at the river and talk about how to build a life that matters.

Turns out that the two big ones are having a beachy summer. They have a shared job and apartment on the vineyard. So I spend mornings hearing about Sunday nights at Menemsha with a hot bluegrass band, under a cold beach wind, and a harbor master who passes out oysters and offers a couple of good plain sauces on an old rickety card table. They are learning about beach barbecues with fish instead of hot dogs and clam bakes that take days to prepare. And I hear about it all secondhand sometimes during, usually right after, whatever new event. My girl has always been chatty and free minutes keep the conversations flowing.

The 23 year old is loving the job and finding his rhythm making money and fun with a bunch of happy sandy unruly little boys. I get the same quick staccato reports I always have and in between I referee their squabbles.

The twelve year old discovered Facebook and he and his new school pals are teaching each other and posting pictures and messages with all the thrill of discovery. We had a party with his new class and that was the last I saw of him. In between these Internet escapades he runs outside with his best pal and they seem to gobble up the air worrying as they do about the change Eli's new school is sure to bring to their sweet time together. Eli is going to middle school at a little country private school while his best friend goes to the village school. Eli wanted a bigger social circle but now there is a threat to what has always been and so he and Timmy run faster and play harder. Plus now he has all this summer reading which effectively messes up the whole adventure reading plan.

A business project delay finds me racing around bidding on new projects and my heart is beating a little faster again. I haven't even been able to figure out how to drive down to the Vineyard to let Eli hang out a bit with the big kids. John is racing too, bidding on his own projects and planning the coaching schedule which he has just added to his fall routine.

And it is raining buckets. The VT weather guys said that this July recorded more rain than any July since 1800.

This is not the summer I wanted, but it is the one I have so I better quick figure out how to want the one I've got. I am going to the bookstore with Eli tonight and we are going to pick out something that thrills us damnit. I can read it to him at night under the covers and then it won't seem like more on top of, but instead something sweet on the side. I am going to take him down to the Vineyard this weekend because soccer practice and school are just right around the corner. This is his only thirteenth summer...(Geez he really will be thirteen this winter. Thirteen, gasp, a teenager!) and we won't remember the worries in ten years, but I'll bet he will always remember hanging out on the beach with his brother and sister and no adults to bring up pesky details like bed at 2AM. Come to think of it this is my only 46th summer too. I think I will just stay over until Monday and go to one of those bluegrass concerts on Menemsha on Sunday night too. Why not? Staying here to worry will not help, but an oyster next to the sea, under a blanket with maybe a thermos of something steamy just might. You don't always get what you want, but I do know that you can figure out how to want what you have. I've got to go and check those ferry schedules....

The Understory

These rains just keep coming. There are sunny breaks but they are just that, moments when the sun breaks through before the storms blow back and take over the skies, the roads, and our mountains. A quiet walk through our mountain woods tell the tale. The understory of our wooded trails are plants gone wild. The paths have winding curling vines creeping, crawling, and climbing up the sides of the trees, and covering the paths of these soft cushy piney woods. The smell of pine, always strong in these Green Mountains, is especially heady during these wet days.

The Rupert Carnival was tonight. It is the first of a string of late summer then autumn festivals. All the little towns come out. We raise money for our volunteer firefighters with vinegary French fries and maple shakes. The kids run wild playing games of chance and winning poppers and silly kazoos. There is always a honky tonk band. The names change but the sounds are the same from town to town. And every evening ends with a plate of maple and cinnamon drenched funnel cakes. Tonight the rains kept us all huddling under the big tents. We still sucked up the bad for you but delicious foods that the local ladies turned out in spite of the thunder and lightening over head. The sluice of water flowed in rivulets through the tents. We slid and squeaked and added sweat shirts as we shivered.

But the firefighters were all there. So we were too. Because they always are. In a mountain town where the nearest hospital is about forty five minutes away these guys give the words 'first responders' a whole new meaning. You call 911 and before you get the phone hung up all your local volunteer firefighters are pulling up your road. They come from your town and the one just over. Whoever thinks they are close, comes. There are a few who know how to treat a burn, and others who specialize in heart attacks. These are the guys who put out fires and carry a chain saw in the back of their trucks for clearing our roads after a storm. These men and women are there for us, and for a few summer nights every year, rain or shine we get to be there for them too. They are the understory on the town side of the woods. They keep us safe. And these humble little carnivals are a celebration in honor of them. Tonight, soaking wet and shivering, we thank them with funnel cakes and maple shakes. We literally couldn't live without them.....

The Smithsonian Please.....

I can just imagine the headlines: Rainforest Tours in Vermont! The little local newspapers are always on the look out for the quaint or the quirky and unfortunately we may just qualify....again.

It has been raining up here for days. July recorded the highest rainfall of any July since 1800 according to the Fairbank's Museum in Waterbury who keeps track of these things. They say that the Farmer's Almanac used to keep the records and going way back it isn't until the year 1800 that there was more than this. We have had over a foot just in July alone. Typically July boasts only two or three inches. And of course this was the year that we planted our first ever humble little vegetable garden.

I had been feeling pretty smug about our charming small patch. Oh, every couple of days I would let two or three chickens into the garden where I would sprinkle corn on all the weeds. They would root around and scratch and eat, and by noon the score would be chickens one hundred and three/weeds zero. Burt everyone has heard the old phrase 'mad as a wet hen". Well, chickens like other feathered critters do not like to get wet. Thus they have been particularly perturbed by all this rain. It gets down into their feathers and can cause sickening mold growing bacteria to form. Chickens understand this inherently and run into their house at the first sign of a drizzle. They are known for sunny day dust baths in the pine needles where they can get dry down to the ends of their quills. So no coaxing or bribing would entice any chicken worth her salt into the garden when the air is green and smells like rain. Nevermind that I would hustle them right back into the hen house if drops fell. They don't trust my promises and nothing has been enticing them out.

So my garden has fended for itself. And now it looks like a very pretty and quite wild rainforest has sprung up out there. The tomato plants, all heirloom, some of them are now nine or ten feet tall. The Swiss chard and the zucchini blossoms are trailing out of the fence and this morning I found an accidental 2 foot long zucchini that had been hiding I swear until just today. I found some English beans that I had forgotten about, but I cannot find the Romaine anywhere at all. I had a hankering for a Cesar salad for lunch and there was gobs of Romaine out there just the other day so I know damn well that it is still there. Only where is the question. There are hundreds of green tomatoes waiting for a little sunshine to turn red and ripe. The basil has big frothy fans of Queen Anne's lace growing up and all around it. The Lace is a couple of feet high and it is choking the basil bushes. It was not there last weekend. Well, it wasn't! And there are these lovely white flowers everywhere absolutely chocking the life out of everything else. A few inches of rain, no chickens and the thing looks like something maybe I should call the Smithsonian about. Steven King could plot a whole series of weird plant related killings out there. There are these tall blue scratchy things that I don't think we planted. They are everywhere. And they have thorns. On the plus side the butterflies seem to like them, so this morning I pretended I put them there precisely to attract butterflies which after all are a nice addition to any garden. And then my feet got tangled up in some gnarly winding thing that has obliterated our neat little blue rock paths and I slipped and fell in the mud. Sitting there contemplating the havoc I discovered a huge head of cauliflower that was not visible at my former height. The aforementioned monster zucchini was discovered from that same slippery vantage point.

Nearby stands our cheerful satisfying little chicken house. It looks like a child's drawing of a house with big red doors and green peaked roof topped off by a crowing rooster weathervane. Inside sit my weeders cackling and clucking and doing nothing much at all about the mess just outside their house. I went in there this morning aiming to carry a couple out and force them by God to weed. After all they had their favorite left over spaghetti for breakfast. It was time they earned their keep. Only just as I started sprinkling the corn the rain started in again. It was coming down sideways by the time I got back inside. Now, looking out the screened porch I think I just might spy the Romaine. It is next to something that looks like Brussels sprouts. Huh...I forgot all about those....