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   Leo the pig ate my sunflower seedlings on Monday. It was my own fault, having left the flat, in which they had germinated and begun to reach for the air, at swine’s-eye level on the patio. Ellis, our 3-year-old junior farmer, and I had planted them about a week earlier and been watering them daily, waiting for the little green heads to peek out of the soil.

   Sunday afternoon, after having kept the kids cooped up in the house for the preceding 24 hours or more, it was time to get them out for some air. Lisa took our eldest off in one direction, and I loaded the other two into my truck for the drive from our house in Amagansett to Montauk.
    Our destination was the Montauk School playground, which is probably the best one around. A thick layer of ground-up tires covers the ground and provides an appropriate cushion for Ellis, our 3-year-old, who knows little in the way of physical fear.

   As our children get older, Lisa and I have found ourselves shifting into the chauffeuring mode of parenthood. The after-school hours, and increasingly week­­ends, are spent driving the kids from one obligation to another. There are dance lessons, rehearsals of different kinds, and sporting events that have taken us as far as Pennsylvania.

   One of the more frequent questions I get these days when talking to someone whom I have not been in touch with for some time is how the beach in front of our house survived the winter. Hurricane Sandy set the table, as it were, for the ordinary winter storms that followed, so it is reasonable for friends to wonder whether we, too, suffered badly.
    The answer is mixed, as it is along the whole South Fork shoreline. Sandy was not the end of the world, but it sure came close.