Saturday, July 13, 2013

Saturday, early

Every time I ride that lawn mower over the bumpy terrain of the back fields and, too, the young orchard, I walk away feeling my insides have been jiggled right out of me. Still, I offer to help Ed with the mowing because if we do it more often, rather than less often, I'm convinced we'll eliminate at least some of the mosquito hiding ground.


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Though this morning, I was reminded that there is one safe haven where they seem to really like to snuggle and that is the sprawling, weedy raspberry patch. We were going to replant the entire patch this summer, but the armies of bugs moved in during our absence and now we have to wait until they move on to their eternal resting ground (in September?), because you can't get me to enter a mosquito filled raspberry patch!

...unless I have friends in town and I know there are the luscious fruit ripening on the bushes and after all, how bad can it be?


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Awful. So a half bowl is all I could gather (and yes, I have bug garb and yes, I should have worn it).


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Never mind, good enough -- we have other fruits and granolas and strong coffee...


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...and all good things for a breakfast on the porch (where we admire the swooping swallows outside)...


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...Followed by a second breakfast with two younger generations of family (not mine -- Barbara's) -- downtown and as long as we were there, we poke around one of the newer ventures of that younger generation -- a butcher shop that is not really just a butcher shop but also a place where you can get homemade pickled cauliflower, and a sauerkraut that has a name ("Stimulus Package"), and a Vermut from Catalonia.


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The second breakfast was almost followed by lunch at the farmhouse until I caught myself -- you cannot go from one meal to the next, to the next in rapid succession without moving much -- except for when you move on the mower and your insides jiggle afterwards. So I sit down to jot down an Ocean post instead.

And of course, because it's summer, I give you, too, this look onto the flowers that border the farmhouse. To the side:


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To the front:


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Friday, late

It is the first time this year that I throw charcoal down and light up the grill. Grilled chicken, marinated in a summery vinaigrette and sauced over with tiny tomatoes, grilled corn, grilled avocado for the salad. And, too, I open Sorede rose wines. Not from this year -- I brought nothing back this year -- but from years past, saved for the day when I would have people here who love rose wine as much as I do.


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We sit out on the porch from the time of bright sunshine, until the last bit of light has faded, moving seamlessly from one plate of food to the next (garden rhubarb buttermilk cake for dessert), from one topic to the next, from one hour to the next. Ed comes out to eat with us and I am sure he has some degree of amazement that anyone can talk this much at a meal, or maybe he doesn't -- maybe he's seen this before, this stream of words that comes from friends living too far apart and relying for too long on scant email messages to catch up on what's really cookin' inside the head, inside the soul.


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The porch accommodates my solo hours of work, and too, breakfast, always that wonderful breakfast where Ed and I nibble on fruits and launch plans for the day, and now this -- a summer meal when Barbara and Diane come to town.