Farmstand Veggies and A Beach House Cigar

Where were we this weekend?

  No, not at a flower show.

Farmstand Flowers, Orient, NY

We were stalking things like this:

Possible captions for this picture:
1) "I told you not to touch that frog!  Next time listen to your mother."
2) "Hey, Doc, you got a salve for this?"
3) "What do you mean, I'm not Jack O'Lantern material?"
4) Getting the blue ribbon this fall, the gourd submitted by the Federal Government's
Plum Island Animal Disease Research facility, just off shore . . . .

What would your caption be?

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Yup, we were out on eastern Long Island.

We gathered, 11 of us, at the beach house,

to celebrate niece Mary's 22nd birthday.

It's been a long time since that many people stayed overnight in that house.

We should do it more often!

My sister Peggy, her husband Bill, Howard and I did some farm stand stalking. 

We headed east to Sep's in East Marion and Latham's in Orient.

When I look at this picture, a dozen remarks spring to mind.

None of which is blog fodder.

Don't ask me what I think when I look at this over-achiever.

My sister made friends with some weeny-teeny-mini veggies.

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Vegetables in the Fall look like they've just

tumbled out of a Dutch Old Master's canvas.

There is such bounty.

Summer's last hurrah, and those veggies that will go the distance and last into the winter months.

Peggy was so fond of this tiny purple pepper (and it is smaller than it looks in the picture),

that the farm stand lady gave it to her, along with a pinky-finger sized lavender eggplant.

This was a good thing, as we didn't want Peggy crying on the way home without her new friends.

Cauliflower season is in full swing, and James Beard and I agree:

Long Island Cauliflower is the bomb.

And sometimes it is even a bargain.

I did not make this up.  Scout's honor.

Oh dear.  At Sep's, they have painted the almost-a-word "PUNKINS" on a display.

Do we forgive them for being too cute?  Yes, because pumpkins just are that cute.

We piled all our vegetables and funky punky pumpkins into the red minivan,

and headed back to the beach house.  After a mile or so . . . Sniff sniff.

And . . . the unmistakable scent of cauliflower perfumed the air.

When we were kids, we'd hold our breath passing the cauliflower fields.

Although they weren't nearly as bad as the duck farms used to be!

Back at the beach house,

Howard headed for the bench on our lawn.

Long, late afternoon shadows . . . the days are so much shorter now.  Bummer.

He was checking out the unusually low tide.

Accompanied by a cigar.

It was a terrific weekend, and we'll probably be back next weekend,

taking advantage of those last glorious, mild Fall

weekends before Winter blows in and makes us all crabby.

If by "us all" we mean "me."

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Visit Mary at Little Red House for Mosaic Monday.

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Coming up in a day or so, a TOH blog post about an enchanted village.

Really.  Including Indians and little people.

Happy New Week!   -- Cass

A Day for Walls, and the Great Outdoors!

It is Wednesday (although just barely!) and I am participating in What's On Your Walls? and Outdoor Wednesday. You can find the links to the lovely hostesses (thank you, Susan at A Southern Daydreamer, and Barb at Grits and Glamour) who have created these special blogging days, below, so you can visit and see what the other participants have been up to!

Outdoor Wednesday

What's On Your Walls Wednesday


On my walls? Right now, paint, mostly. I haven't hung much in the way of framed things. But the paint? Whoa, baby, that gave me fits.

If I added up all the paint Howard and I have slapped on walls, I'd have -- well, I'd have one heck of a lot of paint. So, when we bought That Old House nearly a year ago, we figured we'd paint it ourselves.

All ten rooms of it.

One room later (in a Sherwin Williams soft green I can't remember the name of) ...

. . . and realizing that there were still 9 rooms to go, my husband suggested to me that the sweetest words in the world are not "Your Ebay item has been shipped," but ... "Pay the man!"

For the first time, we hired painters. Bliss and terror, in one fell swoop.

Bliss, because Danny and his crew gave an amazingly affordable quote for stripping wallpaper, fixing old plaster, and painting. Terror, because Danny handed me the enormous and intimidating Benjamin Moore color fan deck, and said, "Choose your colors. By tomorrow morning."

Yikes! I love color. I am a color junkie. But to choose so many colors from weensy little cardboard rectangles . . . scary stuff!

(The painters used the empty kitchen as their home away from home.)

I begged and got 2 days to make my choices. While Danny and the crew tore off wallpaper, patched, spackled, sanded . . . I sat at a tiny table in our conservatory and pored over those Benjamin Moore colors.

Here's what I finally chose, and what is on my walls!

Our front hall, above. To the left, the parlor in progress. The hallway is Moore's HC-45 Shaker Beige, which we used for the stair well and upstairs hall, also. You can see our red dining room through the doorway, in 1300 Tucson Red. More of that room is here.

Below, the parlor, in its new coat of HC-44 Lenox Tan. Surprisingly, Lenox Tan, Shaker Beige and Tucson Red are among Moore's most popular colors. I had no idea. My daughter Anne says I must have common tastes. Aren't children delightful? Well, she was kidding. She was. Really.

Now... up the front stairs...

The upstairs hall -- you can see the progress. Wallpaper down, walls under repair, spackle and primer on ... and finally the finished hall with its fresh clean paint!

This is the back bedroom, our official "guest room." It started as an aggressive lavender -- two shades -- with a wide floral border. It is now a clear pale yellow -- 198 Cornsilk. I love yellow walls; they make antique wood glow.

The hall bath. It is wearing a fresh coat of HC-143 Wythe Blue. This is a slightly more intense shade of HC-144 Palladian Blue -- the color we put in our master bedroom.

The front bedroom, nominally our daughter Alida's room, although as she is living in California for 5 years of graduate school, it is actually another guest room. It is painted in 015 Soft Shell, a pink that flirts a bit with peach. Very pretty color!

Not shown: my daughter Anne's rooms; she has two connecting rooms across the hall from the pink bedroom, but they are not yet painted. Anne wanted to do them herself. Yeah, that's worked out well. We are negotiating. As for my kitchen, it was due for renovation this year, but we are postponing it; I will live with its gold-ish walls for awhile longer.

Because of all the colors, I used the same paint for all of the woodwork, I-79 Atrium White. I am happy with my color choices, but oh my! I much prefer the usual system -- pick your rugs or fabrics first; you can always have paint mixed to match!

Now... for Outdoor Wednesday ... you can read the explanation, or just skip down to the pictures and enjoy! They are of Corey Creek, an inlet off Peconic Bay, and taken from my parents' front lawn.

Long Island is shaped like a fish, sort of, with its far ends slanting north and east into the cold Atlantic. The two "fins" at Island's end are called the "Forks." The South Fork is home to the fabled and gorgeous Hamptons, with wonderful fishing and farming, a rollicking social scene, and of course -- Ina Garten.

The North Fork is a much smaller land mass, and quieter than its riotous cousin across Peconic Bay. Dozens of vineyards and wineries have rescued the farming business (the climate and soil are almost identical to that of France's Bordeaux region), and the pace of life is slower, and I think sweeter.

In the winter of 1969, my parents saw a classified ad in the Sunday New York Times for a waterfront summer house in Southold, on the North Fork; they drove out and bought it that day.

In the 40 years since, the little house was expanded once, then twice, then again, and then in 1991 it was torn down completely, and my parents built their dream retirement place, a three story house with plenty of bedrooms, multiple decks, and a water view from every window.

This is what you see from their front lawn:
Now, to me, that is the Great Outdoors!
Thanks for visiting!