At the recent Architectural Digest Design Show in Manhattan, a panel about daring design turned into a more free-form discussion of trends, clients, art, backgrounds, and big budgets, much to the delight of the crowd of practicing and aspiring designers assembled in the fair’s auditorium on Pier 94.

The participants were three designers who are no strangers to the South Fork, and Fern Mallis, the force behind New York’s Fashion Week for many years and a sought-after interviewer and author with a popular series at the 92nd Street Y, who also has a bungalow retreat on Big Fresh Pond in Southampton. 

The panel featured John Loecke and Jason Oliver Nixon of Madcap Cottage design of New York and North Carolina, whose first professional project was a cottage on Meeting House Lane in Southampton, and Joe Nahem, who has a house on Further Lane that was part of last year’s East Hampton Historical Society house tour.

Asked about a daring design detail, Mr. Nahem spoke about the residence off Main Street that he designed for Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey. In a late-19th-century house, he suggested, and they agreed to, a sunken living room and a fireplace with a wraparound ceramic wall by Peter Lane. “It was great to see the material and then blow it up to 20 times its size,” Mr. Nahem said.

Mr. Loecke and Mr. Nixon are working on a 40,000-square-foot Georgetown “newish-build” mansion that they are decking out in Robert Adam-style neo-classical plaster architectural details and inlaid floors with different patterns. “We want it to look like the great country houses of England,” Mr. Loecke said.

While not dishing on their clients, they answered Ms. Mallis’s questions with candor, including their most expensive jobs — $10 million and $12 million with construction — and how they persuade clients that their prized piece of artwork might not work with the couch they picked out for the room.

“Most people want their home to feel like someone lives there and is not a museum. It’s a challenge to balance that,” Mr. Nahem said. “You don’t want it to feel like you are in a gallery or can’t watch TV and eat popcorn on the couch.”

While they can often travel around the country or around the world in search of objects for their design projects, Mr. Nahem said, “It’s not glamorous at all. I tell interns all of the time, we’re not riding on private jets or the back of limos, mostly we’re riding the subway with a lampshade. We’re basically two steps above a body shop in Queens.”

In their younger days, they were often accumulating, but now are trying to keep their inventory of furniture and objects spare. “We’re more selective now,” Mr. Nixon said. “We don’t want to have an inventory of stuff we’re beholden to.”

Mr. Nahem said he buys when he sees something he has a specific use for or “when I see something I don’t want another designer to get, I’ll buy it.”

As to the internet, all three said it has changed things for them. “Clients used to come with pages ripped out of magazines and we had to figure out what they wanted . . . . Now with Pinterest they come to us with 7,200 pins and we have to say the opposite, ‘What is it you really like?’ ” Mr. Nahem said.

Like most designers, Mr. Nixon said they had a strong presence on Instagram. “We get a lot of business from it, and most of our current clients.” Tracing the general interest in design back to the first publication of Domino magazine, Mr. Nixon said there has been a clear democratization of design “where good design is available to all. It started with Martha Stewart at Kmart” and has continued, including with their own products now selling at Steinmart and on the Home Shopping Network. “Our sheets at home are from HSN. We’re not going to sell a product I wouldn’t use in my own home. If I find something at Ikea or Pottery Barn that works in a design, you bet I’m going to use it!”

Jason Norris may have a landscaping crew at his command, but that doesn’t mean he sits behind some particleboard desk, plastic hunk of phone pressed to his ear, staring into the half-distance as he lines up the next property for his Norris Organics guys to attack with spinning blades, shovels, rakes, and enough bags of mulch to dam a small river.

No, on the final Friday of a notably cold and wet April, he could be found alone in the spritzing rain, walking behind a mechanized overseeder across a throbbingly green lawn in his care off Crestview Lane in Sagaponack. To his right, the well-appointed estate. To his left, a view that not all that long ago gave onto dunes and beach grass now showed a phalanx of huge three-story houses, a veritable mountain range of wealth in defiance of the wild and encroaching Atlantic beyond.

Despite the long stretch of lousy weather, it’s been a busy spring, Mr. Norris’s crew of five spreading out across the South Fork, from Southampton to Montauk, six days a week on missions of, in his words, full property maintenance. 

“I’m one of the few NOFA-accredited organic landscapers,” he said of the Northeast Organic Farming Association, through which he completed a five-day program of study. So what does that mean, exactly, down in the dirt? For one thing, he said in the course of a brief chat under the shelter of a carport, the roar of the ocean a constant in the distance, “We re-incorporate all leaves — we use them in the mulch as part of our organic treatments.”

For another, while he tries to get all his clients to compost, “We make our own compost tea, an organic fertilizer. It’s a liquid with fish enzymes and molasses. It’s got a beneficial living bacteria that helps with grubs and helps with fungal disease.” Squid juice is one ingredient.

More broadly, “Three hundred and fifty million pounds of fertilizer go on lawns every year in the U.S.,” he pointed out, “but here, the toxin-free properties are some of the nicest properties in the Hamptons. The lack of synthetics does not affect the aesthetic look.” 

He used to surround himself with a different kind of green — the briny depths — on commercial fishing trips out of Montauk. “We’d go for tuna and swordfish for 30 to 50 days at a time, to the Grand Banks, all over.”

“It’s great to do when you’re young, but it’s rough, man.” After 22 years, “I couldn’t handle the lifestyle anymore. It was just too much on the brain and body.” 

His path to becoming a professional landlubber went through the doyenne of environmentally conscious landscape design hereabouts, Edwina von Gal, the founder of the Perfect Earth Project. Back when he was a one-man operation with a push mower and a pickup, she asked him if he wanted to mow her lawn, and she went on to introduce him around to acquaintances in need of a landscaper. He still maintains her property in Springs. “She’s been a real mentor to me,” he said. 

With long blond hair and a genial earnestness, like a Chip (“Fixer Upper”) Gaines who went into a somewhat less lucrative vocation, he’s 47 now, married, and has two young children. “They were a main reason for switching jobs,” he said. He started Norris Organics in 2014, “and it’s really blown up.” 

Now he lives a quiet, normal life in Springs. He even keeps bees in his backyard. In the off-season he’ll do some tree work, in the deep winter snowplowing and removal.

“One thing about organic landscapers, we’re not in competition with each other. We don’t want every house on the block to be a client. We just want every house on the block to be organic.”

Around 30 years ago, I designed an exhibition titled “Long Island Modern” at East Hampton’s Guild Hall. Curated by Alastair Gordon, the architecture critic and historian who at the time was a columnist for The East Hampton Star, the show was a celebration of the early modernist houses built on the East End in the post-World War II period, principally in the 1950s and beyond. These houses were experimental in design but also modest and lightweight, employing conventional building technologies. They mostly featured natural wood exteriors, geometric forms, large expanses of glass, and clever but decidedly not grandiose floor plans and spaces.

The exhibition, a reminder of the distinguished heritage of these fresh and inspirational houses, was also conceived as a wake-up call in the face of the beginning of a phenomenon taking over the landscape. Droves of new homeowners and builders flocking to partake of and sell the pleasures of the East End had hit upon a product that would take off like a nostalgic rocket — the McMansion. These bloated, anachronistic edifices were purported to deliver the contextual appropriateness of the graceful, original Shingle Style houses of which the region was justifiably proud.

 The fact that most of them wound up defiling farm fields and wooded landscapes, and that their designs often demonstrated a profound lack of understanding of the basic principles of their co-opted styles, seemed woefully lost on their creators. And how bizarre that a whole swath of a population that was obsessively embracing the latest in fashion, music, technology, automotive design, and the like would choose home designs that brought to mind times redolent of petticoats, pinafores, knickers, pantaloons, and horse-drawn carriages. 

Of course, we know what they were after: an icon of taste and pedigree, a trophy for a winner, proof that one had made it. Never mind that most of these houses were unoccupied most of the time, and that when they were inhabited rarely used all the space, and spaces, they contained. They stood as symbols of success and power just by sitting there, yet ironically became as repetitive and ubiquitous as fast-food restaurants, earning the McMansion epithet.

I grew up in a four-family brick box in Queens. Eight hundred square feet somehow squeezed in a living room, dining room, eat-in kitchen, foyer, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. It felt perfectly adequate. I had no trouble imagining our lives as similar to the families in the popular and beloved TV shows of the time: “Ozzie and Harriet” “Father Knows Best,” “The Donna Reed Show,” and my favorite, “Leave It to Beaver.” But those TV families lived in free-standing houses. 

And, because I really had zero knowledge of architectural styles at the time, for some reason I knew them all as ranch houses. Were they, in fact, ranch houses? Who knows? Maybe split-level ranches, raised ranches, or not ranches at all. I remember that someone in our neighborhood lived in one of them, and we called him “Peter Ranchhouse.”

What a distinctly American phenomenon! The embodiment of the American Dream. A home of one’s own. A paean to the romance of the open road, the burgeoning car culture of postwar America. And let us not forget our 1950s and ’60s cultural obsession with the Wild West that never was, as romanticized and made epic by shows like “Gunsmoke,” “Bonanza,” “Rawhide,” “Have Gun, Will Travel,” etc. Of course, apart from the Ponderosa, it was never clear where our cowboy heroes actually lived.

While the genesis of the style was the 1920s South and Southwest, the explosion of development, home ownership, and rapidly accreting subdivisions ushered in the proliferation of the basic ranch house: low-slung, long and horizontal like the westward expansion toward the “fruited plains” and beyond. These houses promised freedom, independence, and comfort, along with the necessary economy and achievability. This was a house for Everyman. 

Originally, what they didn’t offer was a heck of a lot of choice. You could certainly choose your own color, maybe add shutters or a bay window, some artificial stone or a few courses of brick. And there were some options in siding: wood shingles, clapboard, vertical siding, or board-and-batten (the ranchiest of all).

Fast-forward 50 or 60 years and I often found myself riding my bike up in the hills of Mount Misery, just south of Sag Harbor Village — ranch house heaven, where the insane bubble that is today’s Sag Harbor real estate market — with Victorians, captains mansions, and tiny houses built for workers on as little as one-tenth of an acre — sell for $2, $5, and $10 million and more give way, just past Middle Line Highway, to a snug community of modest middle-class homes of year-rounders — at least until recently.

 What I have begun to notice is that as nouveau Sag Harbor has become glutted with the wealthy and their attendant ambitious beautifications and struggles to cover as much un-built ground as their lawyers can wrangle, there is another rippling-out occurring. With no place else to look to get some of their own Sag Harbor lifestyle, vibe, and pedigree, new waves of house buyers have created a ring around the village with a housing stock of a markedly different stripe.

These houses, largely built from the 1950s to 1970s, reflect the architectural style of their day. In an ironically serendipitous twist, their new owners are finding very favorable attributes in these previously forgotten and/or smugly belittled structures. They are modest. They have a more minimal impact on the visual and ecological environment. They are cheaper and easier to purchase and maintain. So, at the same time that there is a renewed and refreshing interest in a modern architectural vocabulary of simple lines, less overwhelming scale, and sustainable lifestyles, there is a plethora of ranch houses to be obtained and enhanced to address and satisfy contemporary taste and priorities.

And in yet another, even more specific synergistic circumstance, there has been an enormous trend toward an appreciation for, and acquisition of, midcentury modern design. Furniture, rugs, housewares, and decorative elements from this era are flying out of antiques stores wherever the cognoscenti gather and compete for status. How wonderfully appropriate that they can deploy these cultural artifacts to fill and adorn their contemporaneous environments.

But one last crucial observation must be made — and its operative impact acknowledged. Luckily for architects, designers, and builders, house buyers out East will rarely be satisfied until they make the most of their purchases, and make them distinctly their own. And, to be honest, most of these original ranch houses can use a fair amount of work.

 On the inside, wiring, heating and cooling, some structural and spatial reconfiguration, new finishes, kitchens and bathrooms, updated digital and media technology, lighting, sustainable features, and, of course, furnishings are all fair game for revision and refinement. On the outside, we’re often looking at some modest expansion or addition, pools, decks, terraces, landscaping and gardens, and perhaps some updating and/or modernization of the exterior siding, trim, windows, color palette, and detailing. All of which welcomes the ascendant phenomenon of the McRanchion. 

Of course, there will be some misguided souls who will violate these innocent and unsuspecting structures through the introduction of cupolas, Palladian windows, stunted towers, or eyebrow dormers. But based on a wholly unscientific analysis, I note that far more follow the lead that the designs suggest: casement or sliding windows and doors for additional light and views, modest new wings with compatible rooflines, perhaps a partial second story, and stylish refreshing of the exterior materials or colors.

 In my book this is to be praised and welcomed. I believe that a healthy portion of modesty and subtlety goes a long way these days. So for the sake of clarity let me offer that, unlike its crudely offensive distant cousin, the McMansion, the introduction of the McRanchion into the architectural lexicon of the East End and beyond is a cause for plaintive and humble celebration.

If you have traveled on Montauk Highway, going in and out of Bridgehampton during the last six months, you may have noticed and wondered about white posts standing off to the side of the property just east of the Bridgehampton Inn. 

Punit Chugh and Anjali Gupta, a husband-and-wife team who own Aman Developers, have recently won approval from Southampton Town to build what they say is a minimalistic structure that will showcase the type of construction technology they offer. The posts outline the space on which they plan to start building this month.

The new office will be an example of the Aman Developers’ work. As the exclusive representative of Germany’s Davinci Haus in the United States, Aman is introducing passive home technology that provides a custom-engineered house with architect-designed style and floor plans, along with rapid construction, for a locked-in price. It is called a smart haus. 

These passive houses have a rigorous standard for energy efficiency, which reduces their ecological footprint. Germany was the first to meet the demand for such energy efficient concepts, developing techniques that were eventually brought to this country. The price is $350 a square foot, which is typical of most houses here, and the cost goes up based on finishings. The savings is in the locked-in price once the contract is signed, whereas with other houses there always are contingencies. 

“This is the Tesla of homes,” Mr. Chugh said while showing designs for a specific Davinci Haus known as the beach house, created with an oceanfront view in mind. It has high-performing insulation, air-tight envelopes, energy recovery ventilation, and high-performance triple-glaze windows. 

In addition to reducing the energy required for heating and cooling and having the cost fixed in advance, a smart haus has a shorter building time. “There’s uncertainty that comes into play when building a house — typically a two-year building window,” Mr. Chugh said. But a smart haus can be built, from start to finish, in 28 weeks. The house is made watertight in 10 days, which is one reason why it comes with a three-year warranty as opposed to a more traditional one-year warranty. “You won’t lose a season of not being able to live in the Hamptons,” Mr. Chugh said. 

The new part of the Aman Developers office is just 15-by-15-feet square. There is no bathroom or kitchen. 

“The site, the mature beech trees and the landscape around, called for a structure that looked organic and built respecting the landscape,” Mr. Chugh said. The space will be three feet above the ground, with a reflection pool beneath it. Built on nine helical piles, its thin white columns will contrast with the darker trunks of trees nearby. The exterior will be white and gray with glass, and a natural stone copper Bahama roof. 

“The size was intentionally small and the clearly defined lines of the space with its raised platform provides a vision of a floating structure amid the nature-perfect setting.” he said.

The square-sized office addition is on a diagonal axis so that it can be viewed from the street. Its direction is meant to make it seem inviting. The couple call the area around it a “pocket park,” noting that those walking or driving along the street now find most of the buildings right up against the walkways. Their existing office is the only one set back — 80 feet. “There’s no place to find a peaceful moment,” Mr. Chugh said. 

The location was also key to the design. Situated close to the highway, the multilayered wall system will help create a noise buffer. They are made in Germany and shipped here in containers. “We want to show that you can shut out the traffic,” he said. 

When Mr. Chugh was investigating Davinci Haus, he traveled to Germany and spent a night in one of the company’s show houses. “It was eerily quiet. You couldn’t hear anything.” 

The couple hope their office will be a showcase for their work. “With the design studio, we’re hoping to show the value of our construction.” 

Joe Nahem of Fox-Nahem Associates and Jeff Fields, his partner in life as well as work, welcomed a visitor to their modest house on Further Lane, Amagansett, recently and said they had gone from living in “a crappy little nothing house, which we were fine with at the time” to one with unique personality in keeping with the firm, which is on Elle Décor’s A List and is one of Architectural Digest’s “AD 100.”   

They might have mentioned, but didn’t, that among the clients who relish the Fox-Nahem approach are Robert Downey Jr., the actor, and his wife, the producer Susan Downey, who asked Mr. Nahem to design their Malibu residence and do what he could to make their traditional but somewhat spectacular house off Main Street in East Hampton Village more livable for themselves and their children.     

The house contains a windmill, was used in Sidney Lumet’s 1992 film “Deathtrap,” and with the couple is featured on the cover of the December issue of Architectural Digest. 

 Mr. Nahem and Mr. Fields, who have worked together for the last 12 years and been together for 30, qualify as longtime, part-time residents of Further Lane, having rented there for six years before buying a house of their own near the ocean. “It hadn’t been touched for 20 years. It was one story, and when we bought it, we would climb up on the roof and say, ‘One day this will be our view,’ ” Mr. Nahem said. 

Six years of renovations followed, but eventually they decided to tear down the house and start over. Working with the architect Steve Chrostowski, they designed a three-level dwelling of more than 5,000 square feet with a pool, pool house, extensive decks, and, yes, an ocean view.

The living room has a high ceiling. A two-story, stacked-stone fireplace open on both sides divides it. The designers realized their dream view by adding a second story for the master bedroom and bath.

A guest room that has its own garden is on the lower level of the house, as well as a sauna and gym, which “has become our second den,” Mr. Nahem said. A pool and pool house with a kitchenette and a large cabana with a fireplace are on the ocean side of the property, which is surrounded by conserved land that has become a bird sanctuary.

Even though every space has a unique look, Mr. Nahem said “the goal was to have everything blend. We didn’t want it to look like a show house. The house has a lot of personality. Many clients we work with don’t want this much personality. But we like the look to be entertaining.”

“We like it very modern but with natural materials,” Mr. Fields said. ‘It’s not slick, but it’s not overly country.” 

To say materials are important is an understatement. No drywall is used and the doors and windows are mahogany. Heavy stone tiles in the entrance foyer were shipped from a French chateau, and the living room flooring is wood that was reclaimed and re-milled.

“As designers, one of the joys is all the artisans we get to meet,” Mr. Nahem said, pointing to an elaborate chandelier by the glass artist Jeff Zimmerman in the dining room. It hangs above a table created by Based Upon, two English designers. Resin was poured over layers of metal to create the table’s translucent surface, which evokes a clear, shallow pond.

As for the kitchen, Mr. Nahem said the old house had had one that “was a nice size, but we wanted to make it into a sort of den. We live here. We hardly go to the other side of the house over the weekends.” A counter in the kitchen is made from two book-matched pieces of black walnut designed by Mira Nakashima, who took over the New Hope, Pa., studio that had been used by her father, the renowned furniture designer George Nakashima, after his death.

Mr. Nahem and Mr. Fields chose all the materials and fixtures personally. “The interesting thing is, when you’re building your own house you have to remember that you’re not your client. They’re at a different level. But at the same time, you have to practice what you preach. You can’t tell clients, ‘This is the hardware you need, but I’m going to go buy Home Depot hardware for myself,’ ” Mr. Nahem said.

The house is one of five that will be on the East Hampton Historical Society’s annual house and garden tour, which will take place Saturday from 1 to 4:30 p.m.

“We’ve been asked for many years to be part of the tour, and the only reason we haven’t done it before is that it’s on Thanksgiving weekend, which is the only time our two families converge. And everybody’s a slob,” Mr. Nahem said. “But this year we only have one family, so we figured we can control it and get everybody up and out of bed.”

For those who wish a broader view of Mr. Nahem’s work, “Fox-Nahem: The Design Vision of Joe Nahem,” written by Anthony Iannacci with a foreword by Mr. Downey, has just been published by Abrams. The book features 15 of the designer’s projects.

The East Hampton Historical Society’s 2017 House and Garden Tour will feature five houses ranging in style from traditional to modern on Nov. 25 from 1 to 4 p.m. A cocktail party to benefit the historical society will take place at the Maidstone Club on Friday, Nov. 24, from 6 to 8:30 p.m.

One highlight of the tour is Kilkare, an estate within the Georgia Association that was built in 1877 by shipbuilders on 330 feet of Atlantic Ocean beachfront. Its 85 windows and screened double doors afford sweeping views of the ocean and Georgica Pond.

Another singular property on the tour is the Woodhouse Playhouse on Huntting Lane, built 100 years ago by the philanthropist and arts patron Mary Woodhouse. The Elizabethan-style house is notable for its 75-foot-long great room, with its 30-foot gabled peak and church-like nave, an Aeolian-Skinner organ, and massive fireplace.

A stylistic outlier of sorts is an early-20th-century village cottage with French and English influences. The interiors reflect France with hand-finished plaster walls, antique limestone floors and mantels, period paneling, and a La Cornue range. Intricate stonework and a swooping shingle roof suggest an English cottage.

A shingle-style house on Further Lane is distinguished by two balanced, curved turrets, multi-pane windows, spacious rooms, and well-appointed furnishings. 

Also on Further Lane is the house of the interior designer Joe Nahem and Jeff Fields, who have filled the contemporary spaces with new, vintage, and antique furnishings, traditional materials, and an extensive art collection. “Fox-Nahem: The Design Vision of Joe Nahem” has just been published by Abrams.

Tickets to the self-guided tour are $65 in advance and $75 on the day of the tour. Cocktail party tickets are $200 and include the tour. Tickets are available at easthamptonhistory.org or by calling 631-324-6850.

The grounds of the historic Mulford Farm on Main Street in East Hampton Village will be jammed with antiques and art from 50 dealers — and with shoppers hoping to find objects they just cannot do without — next weekend at the 11th annual East Hampton Antiques Show sponsored by the East Hampton Historical Society. 

Everything from Ikat textiles to vintage sunglasses will be available among the rattan, bamboo, Art Deco, Moderne, and country-decorated furniture, light fixtures, garden ornaments, wrought-iron accessories, paintings, vintage jewelry, weathervanes, and mirrors. 

A preview cocktail party takes place Friday, July 21, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Tickets to the show, which opens at 10 a.m., are $10 on July 22 and July 23, with early birds admitted at 9 for $20. For those who really want a jump on things, preview party tickets start at $150 and include admission on the following days. Junior tickets for the party are available for those 40 and under at $100.

Tom Samet, an interior designer, is honorary chairman of this year’s event. “With a broad range of styles from classic to contemporary represented, there is truly something available for everyone,” he said.

 The show itself is organized and vendors selected by Brian Ferguson Antiques. The East Hampton restaurant Bostwick’s and Debbie Geppert Events Catering will provide an on-site cafe. 

Tickets can be purchased by phone at 631-324-6850, by e-mail at [email protected], online at easthamptonhistory.org, in person at the East Hampton Historical Society Osborn-Jackson House, 101 Main Street, or at the gate.

The hours are from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on July 22 and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. July 23. Party and show ticket proceeds benefit the East Hampton Historical Society.

“Signs and Seasons” is an astrology cookbook by Amy Zerner, Monte Farber, and the chef John Okas. The book teaches you about the various foods that “feed your sign,” and describes the various ways we entertain, cook, and eat, according to our signs. For instance, Leos do not like to be seated next to someone who won’t listen to their stories, and they really like corn, peaches, mozzarella, and saffron.

Do you believe in astrology? Do you know what it is? Depending on which source you consult, the population of the United States is around 323.1 million, and one-third of that number believes in astrology. Over 90 percent of people know their sign and well over half of them believe the characteristics ascribed to that sign are accurate. More than half of millennials believe astrology is a science.

In the simplest terms, astrology is the study of movements and relative positions of celestial bodies interpreted as having an influence on humans and the natural world. It was devised in the Middle East and classical Greece between the fifth and first centuries B.C.E. It is based on the 12 signs of the Zodiac, a word derived from the Greek kyklos zokiakos or circle of life.

I am a Libra and I believe the personality traits pertaining to Librans are very accurate: fair, balanced . . . indecisive. I know my numerology number (9), have had my palm read and Tarot cards interpreted, I wish upon stars, and I pluck daisy petals to determine if “he loves me.” So, needless to say, I totally dig this book.

The cookbook is basically divided into the four seasons and emphasizes what is appropriate for each. In other words, if you are an Aquarian, you are destined for wintry foods like choucroute garni and oyster stew with Gruyere and potatoes, hearty wintry, slow-cooked dishes. 

A refreshing aspect of the book is that it is very vegetable-heavy, and the recipes are mostly Mediterranean and a bit Middle Eastern.

Mr. Farber and Ms. Zerner have been residents of Springs for many years. They have written numerous books on astrology and Tarot, and Ms. Zerner is an artist and clothing designer specializing in “robes of rapture,” caftans, jackets, and scarves that are sold at Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. 

Her “spiritual couture” has been worn by the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley MacLaine, and Oprah. John Okas has worked as a private chef on the East End for years and is a consultant for the Highway Restaurant in East Hampton.

If the general population followed their simple advice in the introduction, we wouldn’t need or have so many fad diets. “We study the Zodiac to learn harmony and balance. Harmony and balance also happen to be basic principles of fine cooking and sound eating.” 

“By thinking ‘more of this and less of that’ rather than ‘this is forbidden and that is compulsory,’ we can revive our attitudes toward eating and cooking and toward life,” they write. 

I can’t say whether their astrological-culinary profiling is accurate, except for the Libra sign. I like scallops and oats, apparently. True! My favorite herbs are vanilla and cinnamon. Close, but those are actually spices not herbs. I am good at flower arranging and have a hard time deciding what to eat on a daily basis. True. I don’t like spicy food. Not true. Ratchet that chile pepper to 10,000 units on the Scoville heat scale, I can handle it.

There are plenty of delicious, healthy, and original recipes in the book, such as deviled eggs with diablo slaw, sriracha salmon cakes, polenta bites with sage-hazelnut pesto, cauliflower-potato curry with spaghetti squash. I’m not too excited about some of the Libra dishes, so what the heck, I’ll invite an Aries over and we’ll have some of their balanced and harmonious recipes.

Each section has color photos taken by Mr. Farber, and many of the dishes are plated on fabrics or artwork by Ms. Zerner, which is all fabulously Stevie Nicks-ish with patterns of swans and stars, lily pads and sparkly beads, and color, color, color.

Whether you believe in astrology or not, it’s still a fun book to read, and you can “feed your sign the food it craves” as the cover suggests. I’m off to make the Libra apple crumble. Or the scallops with Israeli couscous. Or maybe the butternut squash lasagna, I can’t decide. . . .

“I am one of the only people in town who can do almost anything,” Bob Linker said the other day. “You bring me your brass, bronze, your grandfather’s knickknack, and I’ll fix it.”

His Jeep, with IRONY2 plates, was parked just outside and he was in a hurry, he told an unexpected visitor, what with a boat owner meeting him in half an hour at the Sag Harbor Yacht Yard to install an iron railing. Mr. Linker, who creates custom metal products for clients from architects and interior designers to people who drop by with the oddest ends — right now he’s restoring a “little copper watering can that most people would throw out” — runs a mom-and-pop business with help only from the mom half, his wife, Elizabeth, who deals with customers and balances the books.

By 1993, when he took a seasonal lease on a potato barn in Water Mill for his first stab at self-employment, Mr. Linker had been working “in automotive” for 20 years, 10 at the old Olympic Heights garage on Three Mile Harbor Road and then 10 more maintaining vintage race cars in Southampton. “I honed a lot of metal skills working on race cars,” he said, “and I enjoyed creating with my new skill.” He opened The Irony, at 53 Sag Harbor Turnpike, three years later, in a building that was originally the freight station at the Long Island Rail Road’s East Hampton terminus, back before the tracks got to Montauk.

Now, his bronze, brass, copper, steel, aluminum, or iron creations are found in houses and commercial establishments all over town: pocket door frames commissioned by John Hummel, a builder of high-end Hamptons houses, front-entrance gate railings made for the Montauk restaurant North by Northwest, davits repaired at the town marina on Three Mile Harbor, an intricate gate on East Hollow Road near Baiting Hollow Road in East Hampton, a table for the Rayner family of West End Road, street gratings in Amagansett, a stainless-steel stair railing for a waterfront estate in Noyac, and many, many more.

That last job was one of Mr. Linker’s favorites. It took weeks, he said. “Every rod was hand-fitted.” In the end, though, “I lost my shirt. It should have been twice as much, but she wouldn’t pay me any more than we agreed on. But it’s one of the jobs I’m proudest of.”

“I like contemporary design, and I like the look of stainless steel,” he said. “That railing was intended to be glass, but everything else there was glass, inside and out, and she changed her mind. It is the centerpiece of the house. You walk in the door and that’s what you see.”

He also enjoyed making the copper sea-monster weathervane that now adorns the roof of the Thomas Moran House in East Hampton: “I didn’t have to do the usual arrows, letters, all that stuff.” That job, like many others, came through Mr. Hummel, whose office is in the same complex as The Irony and who was closely involved with the restoration of the Moran house, a national historic landmark.

Mr. Linker was once called in to an East Hampton estate where an 18-foot-high steel sculpture called “Leaves,” purchased in South America and shipped to Briar Patch Road, had rusted. There, his years of training came in handy. “I put an automotive clear coat on it,” he said. A year later, however, it was showing signs of rust again. He went back a second time, tried something else, “and now it’s okay.”

Another job, which like “Leaves” required scaffolding, involved a 19-foot fireplace in a Northwest spec house built by the real estate broker Evan Kulman of Compass. The metalsmith used acorn nuts, which cover exposed threads and provide a finished appearance, to help fasten its steel-plate sheathing to the concrete block underneath.

“This is not hack work,” he said. “You need to think about it, cut it, and assemble it into a finished product.”

“We have decorated our home with custom furniture and home goods from this company,” one satisfied client wrote on Google. “Fireplace screens, accent tables, light fixtures. . . . Everything is much better quality than what you can purchase from department stores.”

The commissioned work Mr. Linker does for upmarket designers and developers usually comes as the house in question is nearing completion. “And that’s my problem,” he said, shaking his head. “You do all that, and by then your pockets are empty.” He meant the homeowner’s, and, by extension, his own as well. The Linkers and their 14-year-old son live in Northwest Woods, but it sounds like they may be unable to stay in East Hampton much longer. The last few years have been hard.

“In this environment,” he said, as a Mercedes and two BMWs chased each other along Route 114 outside his office window, “employees want $35 an hour. I can’t do it. If you have 12 employees, you can make money, but I can’t do it. We’re swamped all season, then no work at all, all winter. Can’t pay the bills, struggling the entire time. Living on our boat two months now.”

The Linkers have talked about selling The Irony and moving, maybe to Riverhead, where their son will attend Mercy High School in the fall. It might happen, it might not. Right now it’s high summer, and there are all those tables, gates, railings, weathervanes, and fences to make and install.

Fireplace Farm, where Paul Hamilton grows produce and flowers and keeps bees and chickens, is a rural place right near Gardiner’s Bay, with hardly any houses to be seen. On two acres off Hog Creek Lane at the northern end of Springs-Fireplace Road, he plants enough vegetables, berries, and lettuces to sell at a farm stand and at the Springs Farmers Market, which he runs. In early June, he told a visitor that strawberries, which were beginning to ripen, thrive in the farm’s sandy, dry soil but that as a result of the cool, wet spring, were coming in later than usual.

Mr. Hamilton is something of a Johnny Appleseed. He also plans, plants, and maintains seven private kitchen gardens in East Hampton, which are “an extension of this place,” he said. A chef who depends on one of these gardens is pleased when Mr. Hamilton is able to supply a desired vegetable from Fireplace Farm if his garden is not producing it. Whatever is left at Fireplace Farm after harvesting goes to the East Hampton Town Senior Citizens Center on Springs-Fireplace Road.

The biggest private garden Mr. Hamilton oversees is a quarter of an acre, with 40 apple and pear trees, 30 chickens, and many herbs. The smallest one has eight 4-by-16-foot raised beds. He planted one of the private kitchen gardens 10 years ago. Today, the private gardens, which have increased by word of mouth, are just about at capacity.

Fireplace Farm was once part of a girls camp called Fire Place Lodge. The farm exists through the courtesy of Mary Ryan, who bought the property years ago and receives only farm bounty in exchange. She recently said that she delights in the land’s agricultural use and is anticipating that a small area will be farmed by children this summer.

 Mr. Hamilton plows Fireplace Farm’s fields by tractor, and the crops are tended by hand with part-time help. This year he is growing arugula, cucumbers, carrots, beets, squash, corn, raspberries and strawberries, lettuce, peppers, eggplant, beans, leeks, and apples. He also has seven different kinds of basil, 24 different kinds of tomatoes, and lots of greens. He grows buckwheat and sunflowers to help his bees make honey.

Even though he learned how to farm over a three-year period in the Peace Corps, in Belize and Niger, Mr. Hamilton grew up around farms in Yaphank and, once he had returned to the States, became an apprentice and then assistant mzanager at Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett, which is owned by the Peconic Land Trust and was the first community supported agriculture venture on the South Fork. He also managed the East End Community Organic Farm in East Hampton.

Mr. Hamilton said all that chefs have wanted so far this summer are ramps and peppers. He seems to want only to continue what he is doing, as a man comfortable in his own skin and his world.