My Wonderful, Beautiful, Not Bad, Very Good Day

WHAT A SATURDAY I had. Just about perfect in every way.

• Color is peaking in my own backyard, above.

• Eric the Tree Man is almost done taking down the big dying oak in front, below. That, plus some huge limbs that overhung the house, and one that protruded unkemptly into the street, are gone. That’ll be it for major tree removal, hopefully ever. There is still one huge dead tree in the back, but it’s perfectly shaped. It doesn’t bother me aesthetically, so I’ve been in no hurry to remove it. It could fall down though, and that wouldn’t be good.

• I went to 4 yard sales. The number has shrunk since Labor Day, but fall means people moving out of their houses. I got nothing at the first three sales. At the last, I got a load of gardening books for 25 cents apiece, terracotta saucers for under flowerpots 3 for $1.00, a clear glass urn perfect for a pillar candle $3, and an unused mint green rag rug, about 4′x6′, for $2. Whoopee do. Almost makes up for the grocery prices. Nothing is going to touch my yard sale triumph of two weeks ago, but I can still get a thrill from a Le Creuset pot for $2 or wicker chairs for $5, below.

• My daughter painted the front door. Can’t get enough of that Sailor’s Sea Blue.

• I took a drive down exquisite Further Lane, below. There are parts of this area I haven’t yet discovered, and I’m glad. I don’t want the sense of wonder to end, so I’m taking it slow. Further Lane is quintessential Hamptons. You can buy a lot of landscaping and, well, land — acres of meadow stretching down to the dunes — given enough millions. The houses are plenty big but you wouldn’t call them McMansions. They’re too good. They’re mostly hidden behind magnificently sculpted hedges.

• I went stone-shopping at Southampton Masonry on Springs Fireplace Road, below, looking at cut bluestone for a walk around the house. My thinking: buy the stuff, have a palette or two delivered, and then, one by one, whenever I’m feeling strong or help is around, move the stones into place, laying them directly on the compacted, sandy soil. My hope/fantasy is that they’ll settle in perfectly from people walking on them, and I’ll never have to go through that monstrous excavation/crushed rock/gravel/edging process that probably wouldn’t yield the kind of informal look I want anyway. (Next thing ya know, I’ll be having crushed stone dumped at the front of my property for a parking court without excavating there either. People do it, I’ve noticed, and life goes on.)

• No trick or treaters came to my door. I had laid in a stash of lollipops just in case, but did nothing to encourage them.

Yard Sale Triumph!

FOR FIVE MONTHS, I’ve been scouring local yard sales and thrift shops for something that would serve as a pantry/additional storage in my Springs, Long Island, cottage kitchen.

I was thinking maybe I’d find a 1920s Hoosier cabinet, or something more modern that I could paint up and be done with it. I knew I wanted closed storage on top and bottom, with an open area in the middle that would be a handy ’staging area’ for keys, mail, radio, etc., and could be used as a bar or buffet for entertaining.

But nothing had turned up in all this time…until last Saturday. As usual, I bought the East Hampton Star, and one of the yard sale classifieds advertised a “rustic, handmade hutch.” I made a beeline for that sale, and was there before 9 in the morning.

The hutch, located in the basement woodshop of Leo Snyder, a longtime local resident, is a beaut. It even comes with a legend: it’s made of old barn wood from an 18th century barn in East Hampton that was demolished in the 1970s. Leo took some of the old pine, which certainly looks like it could be 300 years old, richly colored and gnarly, and made this seven-foot-tall cabinet, with leather hinges and handles. He and his wife used it for over 30 years, and now, even though he said it was like “parting with a family member,” they were ready to say goodbye to it.

I paid $500 for it, gladly. Leo and his son-in-law delivered it yesterday, and it absolutely makes my kitchen — elevates the whole house, as a matter of fact.

Crazy Hamptons Prices and a Few Bargains

SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO LAUGH. Like the time my sister and I were having lunch at Babette’s in East Hampton, home of the unremarkable $18 omelette, and we perused the menu of ‘extras’ on the table. It included a side of raw organic phytoplankton for $60. (Sounds like something whales would eat.) You can also choose any fresh herb you wish to jazz up your bland food, at $4 per sprinkling.

Or the time I went into General Home Store, a housewares shop that bills themselves as “style merchants,” looking for a cheese grater. They had three, including a work of art in teak wood, for $110. The least expensive was $20. Thank god for Target.

I’ve had $19 hamburgers at East Hampton Point and 1770 House. The going rate for blueberries is $7.99. And just try to find a pair of rubber flip-flops under $20.

That makes bargain-hunting, one of my favorite sports, all the more fun here. This is end-of-summer sale time. Last week, my friend Mary-Liz and I hit Roberta Freymann in Southampton, a store selling lovely Indian-made clothes in exuberant prints that I love to look at but find hard to wear outside the house. (We bought gorgeous cotton kimonos for $25 apiece.) The next day we checked out the legendary annual Shoe-Inn sale, held in a vast American Legion Hall in Amagansett. From tables lined with shoe boxes three deep, and more on the floor, I chose a pair of open-toe suede flats by Francesco Morichetti. Even on sale, they were $70, but I love them.

Yesterday, because of the rain, there were fewer yard sales than usual, but I made it to a couple. Now when you’re at a yard sale, you generally assume things like the laundry detergent atop the washer/dryer and opened bottles of booze are not included in the sale. That was not the case here. Someone picked up a bottle of Bombay gin and was told “Five dollars.” At that point, a half-dozen other people, including myself, made a beeline for the liquor cabinet. I got a half-full bottle of Grey Goose vodka for $2 (let’s hope it’s not been watered down), as well as a brand new pad of Rhodia graph paper for a buck.

Here in the Hamptons, you take your bargains where you can find them.

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You might also like this post, “The 99 Cent Banana.”