Suddenly, summer

Today is the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend which traditionally begins summer for us. The weather is obliging--if you can call it that--by switching very quickly from lovely cool spring days to much hotter summer ones. The temperature is already 78 degrees and it's just after 10 AM.

We live only a few blocks from the beach and our neighborhood owns and maintains a little strip of sand and stone jetty which I will no doubt write about at some point but our real sense of "our" beach is a club on the other side of the Connecticut River of which we have been members for more than 20 years. It is a perfect club for us with just the right amount of amenities--a deck, some picnic tables, a lifeguard during the day in high season, bathrooms, changing rooms, showers and trash pickup. Nothing else--you bring your own food and wine and beach chairs. We love it so much we paid for our membership while away in Africa and are always glad to use it again when home. Our great-nephew, Joe Ogden, called it "the best beach in the world", which is stretching things a bit but it is very good.

One of the pleasures is that you can have a very grownup dinner on the deck while allowing children to run free on the beach. Once, many years ago when Theo was eight or nine we were enjoying ourselves in this fashion and idly watching our children (Theo plus two boys and two girls all roughly the same age) play some intricate game on the beach that involved lots of running and climbing on the small dunes while shouting instructions to one another. Eventually a man who had been sunbathing in their general vicinity folded up his things and started home, stopping first at our table to say "I just love listening to your children play. It's just like The Lord of the Flies." He offered no further explanation.

So we had our first picnic last night--just the two of us--and afterwards stopped at Hallmark, a nearby establishment that sells home made ice cream. We usually try to avoid it since a Hallmark ice cream every time you go to the beach is a big new calorie load. But summer has to start somewhere. I am posting the list of ice cream flavors for those of you who are planning visits (or might be persuaded to plan visits) to us this summer. (You can click to get a full sized picture and read the list very easily.) That's Roger in the hat.

Liquid Fence

Jean asks if Liquid Fence really works. I can say with confidence that it works on a not very hungry deer in Connecticut--we had three nights running of bud chomping and now have been free of that for close to a week. Whether it would work on a hungry rabbit in Scotland is another matter entirely. Perhaps you should first inquire locally about similar Scottish products before considering importing it. I can't offer to bring it along because it really smells absolutely dreadful and after the olive oil experience I would not trust it to the tender mercies of the security system. (See April 25 of this blog). It seems to be made of rotten eggs.