Monday, July 21, 2003

Coming Home. . .   From Vacation this time was the toughest it’s ever been.  From the green, cool reaches of Vermont. . .  to the dreary, muggy, grey City – even the weather has conspired to make it awful.   Vermont was another world of smell altogether – hay, ferns, more mowed grass. . . And my mother has outdone herself with the garden this year.  I can’t decide which of its phases I like the best.  There’s the pink, purple, light-yellow Lupin and Iris phase, of June, which I missed this year but saw pictures of and it was fabulous -- or the deep-purple and orange-yellow with splashes of hot pink and patches of soothing white which is the July phase we feasted our eyes on all week long.  I think I need to look at it from the comfortable position afforded by an Adirondack Chair under the maples for a couple of more weeks to decide.   Anyhow, we drank lots of good wines without really paying too much attention to them and grilled absolutely everything we could get our hands on every night for dinner.  And ate berries berries berries!!!  Several quarts of fresh strawberries from Dutton Farm, which were on their way out, season-wise, but still great.  And we picked quarts and quarts of the wild blueberries that were just starting on the hill.  A bumper crop this year!!  (I guess blueberries like a long rainy June as much as the flower garden.  We suffered then, but isn’t it nice to reap the benefits now?)  Teeny wild blueberries make the most wonderful muffins, provided you add much more than the chaste cup the Joy of Cooking recipe calls for (I go almost up to two, which means they don’t rise, but who the hell cares when they’re buttery and full of blueberries?!!)  Also I baked bread, which I’d forgotten I knew how to do, and both versions (a rich, slightly eggy white and a robust, toasty-tasting wheat) came out well and got eaten.   Now, here we are home, where it is too hot to cook muffins in the summer, so I’ll have to put the ones we brought home into the freezer for later.  So sad to live in a place where you can’t make muffins in the summer, or even (for that matter) enjoy the outdoors.  Central Park has nothing on my mother’s lawn.  The New York streets looked sad and dirty as we drove in last night.  Or maybe that was just my dark mood.  Lest I feel too sorry for myself, I focus on the fact that soon enough I’ll have a house of my own, and one that is closer than the long 4 hours to Vermont to boot.  I guess that’s worth working for, however the work fails to inspire.  I guess.  But I was just starting to relax and forget about the soul-suckingness of work.  Isn’t it a pain to come back?     9:12:41 AM    comment []