As it is and as it might be

We are getting closer. Closer to our new house, closer to Gilbertsville, closer to packing boxes and boxes and boxes and making the move. Yesterday, we had the inspection. While Patrick walked around with the guy, listening attentively (I can only hope) to talk of flashing and soffits, sashes, storms, and grading, I wandered from room to room, snapping pictures and imagining. This is how we roll: Patrick, logical, practical, and less given to heady romanticism; Me, given completely and unabashedly to heady romanticism.

I walked around, ticking off important things on my new house to-do list. Like, Find a place for my vintage tablecloths. And, Figure out where our Christmas tree is going to go. Picture our kids' faces when they come down the stairs Christmas morning. See? Important things.

This is one of the bedrooms. I'm more than a little in love with this room, with its sweet matched closets and little dresser nook. The colors must go, but we'll address that later.

The inspector was at it a long time. I jotted notes. I drew a future kitchen floor plan, and considered the possibilities of wide-plank shelving under the back stairs. I ate a few handfuls of blueberries from my very own soon-to-be blueberry bush. I picked a corner where we might, someday, put a woodstove.

But mostly, I saw it as it is and as it might be. There is much work to be done. Much painting and de-carpeting and wallpaper-stripping. But, we know what we will ask of it. And we are ready for what it will ask of us.

Hike + pancakes = happy.

All the best Sundays begin with pancakes. When I was a little kid, it was after-church pumpkin seed pancakes, before my family caved in to its heathenish ways and we stopped going. In college, a friend's famous wholegrain pancakes (involving rolled oats) would lure me twenty miles by bicycle for the taste. And now I am happily married to a wholehearted breakfast food enthusiast. When you behold a plateful of pancakes, how can you not be happy?

After breakfast, finding the day still fairly young, we traveled a familiar road to an unfamiliar place. A brief newspaper clipping, and an even briefer Google search, and we've found a new place to hike. A broad expanse of swamp studded everywhere with hot pink pond lily flowers.

A saw a pair of frisky goldfinches, a titmouse, and a mockingbird eating wild cherries. We did not see a single turtle, though a rather obstreperous frog nearly sent me into cardiac arrest.

It was, altogether, a fine way to spend a Sunday.

In the garden

The garden holds lots of wonders this time of year. The Great Grass-Eating Cat, for starters.

Arugula in bloom. Isn't it pretty?

The first red tomatoes, rolling in this week.

The architecture of chard.

And the Cucumber Vine That Conquered the World. I've been getting a dozen cukes a week. Suffice to say, I've been pickling.

For Emily

Yesterday, I made a gift for a special young lady with an encroaching birthday. This is Amy's "No-Cash Wallet," and it was a joy to sew up. I made it from the front of a button-down shirt, though you can't really tell that from the picture.

Emily is a friend's daughter, my flower girl, for her entire life the youngest person on my gift list. This is an important role. But she's important for bigger reasons, too.

When I was in high school, her father was my freshman year global studies teacher. I was smart though mostly friendless, and miserable. He was a remarkably caring and generous human being. He gave me books to read. The Bearded Lion Who Roars. Snow Falling on Cedars. Memoirs of a Geisha. He showed me applications for essay contests, scholarships, poetry competitions, and anything else that crossed his desk. He encouraged me to write an essay entitled "America's Role in the 21st Century," which won me a $1,500 scholarship and an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, DC, when I was seventeen. Gradually, self-esteem began to seep its way in, as I learned to stand in front of 500 people and a microphone without my knees clanking together. Firmly and patiently as steering a ship, he guided me towards affirmation. He kept a file folder full of newspaper articles and announcements of my achievements.

I remember the day he told me he and his wife were expecting. How happy and blessed he seemed. I babysat for a three-month-old Emily, walking around and around their creaky townhouse with a sleeping infant on my shoulder. He moved away; I visited. We chatted on instant messenger while I was in college. Instead of high school cliques and cafeteria lunchtime, now he helped me navigate the treacherous waters of Politics 324 and my first boyfriend.

Relaying the news of his passing on to me was maybe the hardest thing my mom ever had to do. Like an atomic bomb dropped in the middle of my junior year, my first boyfriend, and Politics 324, a phone call from home, late at night. A car accident. With life and its conventions whirling around me, I could hardly pause to be sad.

All the hurt is buried now, mostly. It's been nearly seven years. There's times when I imagine a conversation we might have, and what wisdom he'd offer me now, on the loaded topic of marriage. There's times when I grieve that he never got to meet my husband, but I can't go too far down that path before all the other "never got to's" come pouring in. Keeping in touch, keeping his wife and daughter close in my thoughts, is the most I can do. And making things, taking small stitches one at a time, sewing a button on a birthday present for his daughter is the best enactment of my love.

Gone pickin'

The most important thing is finding an interesting conversation to eavesdrop on. I'm far from a veteran picker, but after three years doing this, I know how overhearing someone else's juicy gossip can make the time fly.

Yesterday, I spotted a couple of Midwesterners before I'd even gotten off the wagon, and set up my one-woman picking party nearby. The accents were almost enough on their own. Add some good family dirt, and I had to hide my smile in a bush.

"Heard from Kelly, there, hun?"

"Ooh, YAH, just yesterday."

"How's she gettin' on with that boyfriend of hers, then?"

"Oooh, good. She'll have to go at the end of the summer, though."

"Well now isn't that iRONical!"

Plunk plunk plunk went the berries in my bucket. I hoped they didn't notice me. I hoped they were too busy marveling at the gorgeous marble-sized berries, and speculating about summer boyfriends.

Consider this fair warning: if you go berry picking with friends or family, beware the nonchalant bystander. She's hearing every word.

What to do with Zucchini

I present this piece as a public service announcement. It's zucchini season, friends, and anyone with a garden needs this recipe in their arsenal.

Gone is my love for zucchini. This happens every year: in May, I yearn for those first supple little slices, meltingly tasty and bright green. In July, I celebrate the first garden zucchini almost as enthusiastically as I celebrate the first tomato. I fill our meal plans with them. I roast them, bake them, grill them and saute them.

And then August rolls around and I start to pray for a killing frost. A frost, a flood, even a blizzard, something to dull the vigor of the vines. By now, it's begun to seem almost menacing, the way they persist in filling my kitchen countertops with corpulent squashes. Don't they know they're no longer needed? Or even wanted? In a capitalist culture, there's something unsettling about beings that continue producing long after demand is met. Zucchini are a economic enigma. Adam Smith's worst nightmare.

I'm still using them, of course. But by now I'm going for covert employments of zucchini, as opposed to making them center stage. I shred them mercilessly, running the long green spindles one by one through my food processor as if it were a wood chipper. This is a recipe we adapted from an old Moosewood cookbook (circa 1973, I believe). It's ridded our kitchen of a scourge of zucchini many a time.

The recipe calls for shredded zucchini, which, at our house, means pulling out the food processor. We like to make this recipe when we have many zucchinis we'd like to be rid of, running them all through the processor, wood-chipper style, to make enough for many meals of zucchini-crusted pizza. We divide the shredded squash into 3 1/2 cup portions (as needed for the recipe) and salt and drain it before freezing. This makes a whole winter's worth of zucchini crusted pizza a snap.

Zucchini-crusted Pizza

3 1/2 cups coarsely shredded zucchini

salt

Salt the zucchini amply and let sit in a colander over the sink for twenty minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400 degrees, and oil a 9 x 13 baking dish. Squeeze out the excess moisture, and combine in a bowl with:

1/3 cup flour

3 beaten eggs

1 cup grated cheese

The cheese you choose is up to you. I like to use a combination of half soft, melty cheese (like mozzarella) and half hard, strong-flavored cheese (like parmesan). But anything goes. Really.

Dump this eggy cheesy zucchini glop into the baking dish, and spread it out. Bake for 25 minutes, until the surface is dry. For a crisper crust, at this point you can brush the top with oil and broil for five minutes-- but I tend to forgo this step in favor of a speedier meal.

And now, folks, comes the fun part. It's terrific enough that this recipe uses up zucchini. But what makes it even better, in my mind, is that it uses leftovers, too. Amazing. For toppings, as with cheese, anything is fair game. Here's a few combinations we've tried and loved at our house:

Pizza sauce, mushrooms/olives, and mozzarella cheese

Salsa, black beans, corn, and monterey jack cheese

Sliced fresh tomato, basil, and fresh mozzarella

White beans, broccoli, and cherry tomatoes (pictured above)

Green beans, red onion, wholegrain mustard, and swiss cheese

Turn your oven down to 350, pile on your toppings, and slide the zucchini pie back in for 20 minutes.

August Eve

Have you ever parked your car on a gravel road and stumbled upon a place like this?

The periwinkle blue sky, the periwinkle blue door, and the flushing hydrangeas were singing in harmony.

The air held hazy end-of-summer-afternoon light. The old stones bucked and leaned in their mossy banks.

The grass was soft.

Everytime we go back to Gilbertsville, I tell myself: It's not going to be the same. It's not as good as you remember. Surely there's some broken down houses you didn't see last time. Surely, surely. And everytime, we find it better than we left it. We find the little stone church with the blue door, surrounded by flushing hydrangeas.

I laid in the grass, and let the sun kiss my eyelids.

I watched my husband pausing and walking amid the stones.

And when it was done, and we were finished exploring, we headed down into town for dinner.

I'm not sure I believe in heaven. But if there is one, I'm pretty sure it looks like Gilbertsville.