To the person who first wrote H.A.G.S. in my yearbook a lifetime ago: Thanks a lot. I’ve taken that mandate to heart ever since, dedicating myself year after year to having the greatest summer I can imagine. And with that comes a bit of anxiety: Have I crossed a single activity off my summer bucket…
Flower pots, they are not. But Stephen Procter’s large stoneware garden vessels, some as tall as five feet and incorporating 250 pounds of clay, are nevertheless functional pottery — even without the soil and the plants. In the clay world, he said, there’s always talk about functional versus nonfunctional pottery, attempting to draw a line…
But there are rewards for treating grapes as more — as an ingredient, something with multiple shades of flavor and the capacity to transform. Roast them in the oven until the skins pucker and split and the flesh grows slouchy, verging on collapse. What was once a high, reedy pitch of sweetness takes on body…
