Having Meredith here over the weekend and staying in the camper with me, I got to thinking about how far I’ve come with Catalina. Merry went with me around Christmas to put a deposit down on her, in a normal residential neighborhood in a dumpy North Shore town. Catalina had been sitting in the driveway for a long time, tires flat, propped on wooden pallets and cinderblocks, filled with all sorts of trash and carpenter’s odds and ends.

Looking at the pictures now, I’m not entirely sure what I saw in her. The $200 price tag, to be sure. But really, she was a fixer-upper of fairly epic proportions. I am not a plumber, a carpenter, an electrician, not even a born tinkerer really. I’d prefer to pick up the phone book and get somebody who knows what they’re doing to come help.

But somehow, in the height of summer, she’s become this rather dreamy place to live, shady and simple, and I’m proud that I was actually able to put such an oddball idea in motion. It’s a little tough when I have guests – she’s really built for one or two. And it seems that something or other is always breaking – most recently, one of the benches on the dinette gave out when my friend was sitting down to dinner.

I’ve already found a buyer for her, a farmer I used to work for, and she’s going to stay on-island after I go, when the winter comes on. I thought about keeping her, maybe towing her somewhere else for the winter, but it would be really expensive, and she’s really old, and I’m afraid I’d mess up my beloved truck, which always comes first in my heart. Also, I love the idea of other twenty-something flower girls sleeping in the little loft in summers to come, adding to her bit by bit. Maybe somebody’ll finally finish the goddam electrical wiring – sure as hell won’t be me.

So I got back to the stand around lunch today, and someone had given us this outstanding ceramic chicken. I was thrilled. It reminded me of one of my favorite thrift stores, Chicken Alley in Vineyard Haven. They have a permanent collection of chicken objects behind the register, figurines and potholders and such, and whenever I go in there it’s the things I want most that aren’t for sale.

I carried her around, this chicken, for like five minutes, trying to get everyone on the farm to agree upon how awesome she is. Suffice it to say they were slightly less enthused.

She’s going to stay down there and guard the produce. I think it’s perhaps a theft deterrent to have this ceramic chicken watching your every move. We’ll see.

Nathan and I went down to Sepiessa late this morning, to harvest for tomorrow’s market. I set him up picking pea shoots, which he gamely consented to – as any field worker can tell you, picking pea shoots is perhaps one of the most annoying and unfulfilling harvest tasks around. You feel like you’re going blind, looking for the telltale curlicues amid the thickets of green, and after half an hour or so of focused work you’ll have a few ounces to show for your labor.

I went out among the tomatoes with a paper cronig’s bag in hand, partly to avoid picking pea shoots, and partly because I am an eternal optimist regarding those plants. We fertilized and mulched and watered our little guts out over them, and whatever we can get out of them, however paltry, however woefully short of our expectations, I am going to collect every last freakin bit of it.

To my surprise, there were a decent number of fruits to take away – maybe ten pounds or so. Nothing to call the bank over. But still not bad for July.