She called me up and said 'You need come down to the Summer House right now. There's a Nor-Easter that'll spoil the beach plums if they don't get picked'. Whenever Harriet called I went.

By the time I arrived, the wind was blowing enough to throw the rain and sand so hard it hit you from below. It was loud too - in that cacophony of waves and seagulls fighting over the scallops and crabs washed up - tangled in the seaweed. Her bent-over husband and son were already on the bluff - decked out in their foul-weather gear and doing their best to gather the plums off the wind-torn trees. It was a bumper crop that summer and Harriet was not about to lose it. She was in the kitchen, readying to make jelly and promised me a couple extra jars for having to harvest in the storm.

Harriet was a proper woman - full of grace and Yankee sensibility. She came from a by-gone era when hospitality was...
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