Habitat

Way back in 1999, I lived in the servants’ quarters of an “antique” cottage on a tiny one-way lane, hidden on the east side of Georgica Pond. As I worked as an architect from its hot, spidery second-floor apartment, I heard the rumblings of something going on next door. New construction. Should be interesting to watch, I thought.

Mile-a-minute vine has established a foothold in East Hampton. It grows six inches a day and 20 feet in one season, can smother and kill anything in its wake, and can even cover phragmites, itself a rapacious invasive weed. Unlike other invasive plants, it would be fairly easy to contain or eliminate manually and with biological controls, if only we had the will and organization.

What’s the point of having the luxury of a long view into the garden if it’s blocked by a conventional flower border?

The work of Hans Hokanson, the Swedish-born sculptor who lived in East Hampton from 1961 until his death in 1997, is in many notable public and private collections, but a massive work that would be at home in a museum or a sculpture park such as the Storm King Art Center, where his other work is represented, has remained out of view in a secluded East Hampton house for 45 years.

Summertime is berry-picking time, and for those of us lucky to have berries in our gardens, it is also a time of challenges: getting to the ripened berries before the birds do, picking the berries before they rot or fall, and — in the case of the weekend gardener — remembering what weekend the berries will come in, so that we can clear our schedules and devote ourselves full-time to gathering them, processing them, and putting them up as jams for the coming year. One berry, however, makes all of this easy for me: the gooseberry.

Combine equal weights of fruit puree and sugar in a large heavy pot, one that allows several inches of headroom between the mixture and the top of the pot.

Yes, the only person who cares about grandmother’s collection of needlepoint-slogan pillows may be grandmother, but it is still fun to spot some old bit of her bedroom furniture or her favorite egg-beater at Hamptons prices at a summer antiques show.

A forest glade with a thick carpet of ferns, etched in dappled sunlight cast by the shade of trees, has been a recurring dream since I first saw the island bed by Hollis Forbes’s driveway in East Hampton.

There are certain plants that any gardener interested in eating well will want to have, and among them, strawberries top my list. Unlike most vegetables, which can take all summer to grow and need to be replanted each year, strawberries ripen from late spring through midsummer. Once established, they need minimal care. And they are particularly good plants for the casual or weekend gardener, since a well-planted strawberry bed will produce generously for years without much fuss. Strawberries are easy, happy plants, well adapted to our climate, thriving in full sun and free-draining soil — and we have plenty of both out here on the East End.

An hour before they are needed, wash, hull, and slice the strawberries into halves or quarters. Toss a quart of the sliced strawberries with a half a cup of sugar (or to taste), along with an ounce of kirsch (optional).

If you’ve been entranced by the bountiful crop of flowers on the kousa dogwoods this spring and have been tempted to add one to your garden, now is the time to act. Head right to your favorite garden center and pick one out while they are still in bloom — what you see is what you get, is what I was told years ago by a nurseryman.

This past winter appears to have been more difficult for hydrangeas than the winter of 2014, with its extended period of deep cold and a single cold snap in April that put paid to most of last summer’s flowers.

Six rooms designed and outfitted by top interior decorators at the Animal Rescue Fund’s Thrift and Treasure Shop in Sagaponack will be on display at a designer showhouse, cocktail party, and sale on Saturday that will benefit ARF’s work on behalf of animals.

Nancy Hollister, the co-owner and chef of Breadzilla (now in its 20th year!), is self-taught. She and her business partner and ex-husband, Brad Thompson, used to be marine biologists. They work side by side at Breadzilla, where he does the baking, and are the best of friends.

Well, it’s not a shoe box exactly. But Barbarajo Howard’s one-room Montauk condominium certainly is small — officially, 483 square feet, or 683 if you count the balcony deck that runs the entire width of her top-floor apartment in the 30-acre Rough Rider Landing development.

The diminutive white frame house on Union Street in Sag Harbor is known both as the 1693 house and the “five-times-moved house.” Judith Auchincloss, who purchased it in 2010 from the tennis pro Guillermo Vilas, described it to a recent visitor as “sort of magical.” A real estate broker in New York City who has been a longtime summer resident here, she owned a house in Bridgehampton until 2002.

All Durell Godfrey ever wanted in a career was an “art job,” one that would place her among the creative people she considered members of her “tribe.” That’s what she hoped for when she graduated in 1964 from Endicott College in Massachusetts, and that’s how it turned out.

Thanksgiving means turkey, stuffing, potatoes, cranberry relish, and 5K “trots,” and in East Hampton, it also means the joy of peeking into houses both grand and historical, courtesy of the East Hampton Historical Society.

Some people buy cookbooks for the recipes, some people buy them for the pictures or narrative. And some people buy them for all of those reasons and more. I used to collect regional cookbooks, but the massive quantity of cream of mushroom soup and spinach dip recipes became distressing so I sold them all at a yard sale.

Cookbook recipes

“Shines for All,” the motto of The East Hampton Star, goes back to the origins of this enterprise in the 19th century, when doing so was surely easier. The community some 130 years ago was quite homogeneous, comprised of farmers, fishermen, merchants, and a small group of professionals (along with a very small sprinkling of folks “from away” in fine weather).

You might say that this edition of The East Hampton Star HomeBook is dedicated to teardowns. 

No, not because any of the houses we are featuring are about to be demolished, or because any of them rose from the ashes of demolition, but because they have survived this 21st-century trend toward extinction.

So, here’s to houses worth saving!

Nestled among houses just north of Montauk Highway in a neighborhood known as Ludlow Greens in Bridgehampton is a covered wooden bridge, which creates a bucolic vista and surprises those who come across it for the first time.

The Madoo Conservancy in Saga­ponack will hold its annual garden sale and celebration, Much Ado About Madoo, this weekend. The festivities begin tomorrow with a benefit cocktail preview party from 6 to 8 p.m.

The Animal Rescue Fund Thrift and Treasure Shop will hold its annual Designer Showhouse and Sale, now an institution, this weekend, likely bringing relief to many who may have expected it to be held at what had been its traditional scheduling on Memorial Day weekend.

“Since the 1950s, American families have gotten smaller while homes have nearly doubled in size.”    —Yale University Architectural Team

With no apparent slowdown in the making of megamansions, a book has just come out that tempts us back to the days when small really was beautiful. It is “Alfred A. Scheffer’s Beach Hampton Houses, 1941 to 1965,” written by Robert Hefner, the East Hampton Village director of historic services.

In 1790 Sag Harbor was a bustling port and an important New York, well, almost-city.

Purple is the darnedest color. It attracts us like bees to a honeypot. But get it home and it is nearly impossible to find a spot where it fits in. 

After spending entirely too much time on this conundrum I’m coming to the conclusion that purple works well on a small scale or in a large park-like setting. But not in the smaller domestic properties in which most of us live and garden.

Eco-friendly gardens will be the focus of this year’s Garden as Art tour, an annual benefit for Guild Hall. The event begins on Saturday at 9 a.m. with a continental breakfast at Guild Hall and a panel discussion moderated by Edwina von Gal.

The subject of the talk will be similar in theme to the tour, i.e., landscape care that is chemical and pesticide free. Afterward there will be a book signing by the participants: Sean O’Neill, Stephen Orr, Eric Fleisher, Diane Lewis, and Paul Tukey.

The Southampton Historical Museum will hold its annual house tour on Saturday at houses throughout Southampton Village and beyond. Now in its fifth year, the tour will include several houses as well as St. Andrew’s Church of the Dunes, the Thomas Halsey Homestead, and the 1708 House inn, which will also serve refreshments.