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.

There are plenty of garden tours to enliven the summer and provide sneak peeks behind the hedges, but few allow participants past the front door.

Each June, the Southampton Historical Museum gives its supporters that unique opportunity by offering a mix of historical and contemporary structures whose residents open their doors and floors to the curious eyes of their next-door and regional neighbors.

Now in its eighth year, the Southampton House Tour Insider’s View will offer sprawling oceanfront mansions and quaint village cottages, some on properties that date back to the 17th century and the early colonial days of the South Fork. Each residence can be relied upon to demonstrate the best in design and architecture from colonial chic to beach house modern.

Houses include the Post family homestead on South Main Street, which was the home of Richard Post, who came to Southampton in 1643. In 1873, Edwin Post presided over property that stretched to the South End Burial Ground. Infamous for his livestock that grazed on the hallowed site, he was sued by the villagers for this practice. In the late-19th century, his property became a sort of boarding house resort that could accommodate up to 50 people.

Another historic property on Foster Crossing holds a recent structure built in a shingle cottage style mimicking the late Victorian period of the traditional summer colony. The property boasts mature trees and a traditional style that seems historical, but provides the family with all of the comforts of a modern residence.

Breeze House has a mature rose garden, shade trees, and the sound of the nearby sea to recommend itself. The property has both natural charms — sunlight, high hedges, lawns, and gardens — and interior accommodations such as a gourmet kitchen, billiards room, movie theater, a pool house, and barn with its own kitchen and studio.

At the Murray family compound, on Wickapogue Pond and the ocean, Raspberry Cove’s recent renovation makes the most of its views of the water with a two-story living room and a waterside dining area. A chef’s kitchen and media room add luxury to the household. Its many bedrooms include a master with a balcony with water views.

On Herrick Road, a traditional village residence offers hearth and window seats in a late-19th-century dwelling updated for contemporary family life. The house is enhanced by both a professional decorator as well as the paintings of the artist-owner. Inside, there is a media center and wine cellar. Outside there are porches and balconies, both shielded by privet.

The late Francis Fleetwood, the Stanford White of the contemporary summer colony, designed a recently built house that combines the best of open contemporary floor plans with a crowd-pleasing traditional Hamptons cottage exterior. The sprawling manse includes nine bedrooms, each with a dressing room and bath with all of the expected public spaces such as an eat-in chef’s kitchen and assorted living and family areas. 

The tour will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. with a champagne reception catered by Sant’Ambroeus restaurant in Southampton at the Rogers Mansion from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Tickets are $95 in advance online or at the Rogers Mansion museum shop and $110 on the day of the tour.

Andrew Geller’s uninhibited, angular houses of the 1950s and 1960s were cut from a playful mold. He was known as “the architect of happiness,” having designed the prefabricated Leisurama houses marketed for middle-income families by Macy’s, which came fully furnished. For as little as $590 down and $73 a month — or somewhat more if you splurged — you could take your toothbrush, buy groceries, and enjoy the summer, even at Montauk, where some 200 were built. To his detractors, Geller was an outsider, but it was a concept he relished.

Alastair Gordon, the architectural historian and author who contributed  articles on design to The East Hampton Star and its supplements in the 1980s and ’90s, is a Geller aficionado. In his book “Beach Houses” he describes Geller’s work as “more in the spirit of pop culture than high culture, orbiting the refined culture of Architecture with a capital A.”

Many Geller houses on eastern Long Island have, like numerous Leisuramas, been remodeled beyond recognition, while others were torn down or swept away by the sea. His famous Pearlroth House in Westhampton — two diamond-shapes perched on end — has become a museum. But at least one house, high on a dune on Marine Boulevard in Amagansett, is still owned by the family for which it was built and stands true to its original form. 

Devotees of the Showtime hit series “The Affair” will be familiar with the house. The lead character, Alison Lockhart, lived there, although the script alleged the house was in Montauk. 

  Geller’s quixotic style is described in “Beach Houses,” which was written after Mr. Gordon joined the architect in his vintage yellow Mercedes on a hot July day about 15 years ago on a quest to see any that could still be found. An excerpt follows:

“It is the small, oddly shaped house that he designed for Leonard and Helen Frisbie back in 1958. It sits in its own kind of time warp, perched at the very top of the dune, like some weather-beaten artifact washed ashore in a storm. . . . It is a simple geometric shape: a sharply slanted roof with large windows overlooking the ocean and a small deck reaching over the ridge of the dune. It is the color of driftwood, with its cedar shakes curled back like fish scales, and the board-and-batten siding along the low-lying sidewalls. It is the most rudimentary sort of shelter, more like a campsite than a house — the beach house dream realized. The price, back in 1957, was less than $10,000. . . .”

“Inside, the house is spartan and conspicuously low tech. . . . You can even see openings in the ceiling where daylight shines through cracks in the old shingles. Most of the living happens on the outside, out on the broad sun deck or on the beach itself. Upstairs there are a few tiny bedrooms with bunk beds. A single indoor/outdoor shower serves the whole family. There is a simple wood flap along the kitchen counter that can be raised to become an extra table. Then there is the ingenious system of ladders that lead to the loft spaces and can be pulled up or down by a rudimentary system of pulleys and lead counterweights.”

In “The Affair,” the house was supposed to have burned down but in real life the Frisbie family still owns and enjoys it from June through September.

Matt Frisbie grew up in Sag Harbor but spent every summer at the oceanfront house with his family and grandparents, for whom the house was built.

“It was a simple concept,” Mr. Frisbie said. “You didn’t have to be wealthy to live on the ocean. It was inexpensive to build. There’s no heat, no insulation, no swimming pool, or media room. Just the basics.” 

While much of the Hamptons revs up for the season, the Frisbies scale back. “We go to bed slightly after dark, we play board games, collect shells, and swim five times a day,” he said, adding that it was his grandfather’s wish for the house to remain in the family. So far, so good. It is something the Frisbies hope for, too.

With reporting by Helen Rattray. Photographs courtesy of Big Magazine

The 1894 oil painting right, by Mary Nimmo Moran, is an imaginative rendering of a long garden she planted along the south border of the Moran House property on East Hampton’s Main Street, where she and her husband, the painter Thomas Moran, lived in the late 19th century. 

While the house is being restored as a museum by the Thomas Moran Trust, the Garden Club of East Hampton plans to recreate the border garden and has received an $18,000 matching grant to do so from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation.

In a press release, the club said it would be guided by the painting, which is in the collection of the East Hampton Historical Society, along with photographs in that collection and a contemporary painting of the border by Theodore Wores.

Mary Nimmo Moran is said to have been an accomplished gardener whose gardens here may have been inspired by American Impressionist paintings. Her husband taught her to make etchings and her landscape etchings became so highly praised that she was the first woman elected to the Society of Painter-Etchers of New York and the only woman among the original fellows of London’s Royal Society of Painter-Etchers.

From Kips Bay to Pasadena, designer show houses across the country afford opportunities for interior designers to display their talents while at the same time raising money for a wide range of charitable causes.

Every May, the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons stages its own show house, but with two differences. Notable designers draw not only from their own inventories but also from the wares of the ARF Thrift and Treasure Shop in Sagaponack to create unique rooms in the interior spaces of the thrift shop itself. Moreover, unlike traditional show houses, every item in the ARF show house is for sale.

This year’s event will kick off with a cocktail party on Saturday and open to the general public on Sunday and Monday. Nine designers have transformed seven rooms in the main building, a small barn on the property, and an outdoor space, each with a particular theme or point of view.

The participating designers are Rachael Ray Home, Cathy Kincaid, the textile designers Carolina Irving and Lisa Fine for John Rosselli, Richard Keith Langham, Tamara Fraser of Worth Interiors, Jeff Lincoln of Jeff Lincoln Interiors, Ann Pyne of McMillen Inc., Iris Zonlight of Blue Ocean Design, and Kathryn’s Flower Gardens, whose outdoor installation, “Companion Planting,” features plants that best suit a pet-lover’s garden.

Rachael Ray Home has taken over the barn and transformed it both inside and out. While Ms. Ray was not present for a preview on Saturday, two of her designers, Tim Cronenberger and Michael Murray, gave a tour of what was then a work in progress.

“Rachael is an upstate girl, and she’s got a city look and a country look,” said Mr. Murray. “We wanted to make it look kind of upstate but an upstate Hamptons thing.” 

“When I’m doing an interior I have to create a fictional character for it,” said Mr. Cronenberger. “I figure this is a 30-something woman who bought her first cottage in the Hamptons and got a lot of stuff given to her by her mother, who lives on the Upper East Side.”

The furniture, rugs, and beds are from Rachael Ray Home, but many of the accent pieces and accessories came from the thrift shop, as did a full-size canoe frame mounted over the doorway. “Rachael has a real connection to ARF and the North Shore Animal League,” said Mr. Murray. “She’s behind anything that’s a no-kill shelter.” 

Ms. Fraser chose a corner room inside the main building. “I wanted it to be very serene and monochromatic. It’s just beiges and grays and taupes. I wanted to keep it cool.” Much of the furniture and all the accessories came from the shop, including a new table, a daybed Ms. Fraser re-covered with new fabric, and the artwork.

“I haven’t done this event before,” she said. “I’m really excited.” While the main office of Worth Interiors is in Vail, Colo., the company has an office in New York City as well as one that opened two years ago on Main Street in Bridgehampton.

A particular challenge faced Ms. Zonlight: Hers is the smallest room and begs to be designed as a glassed-in porch. “In this case, I was thinking how I could raise as much money for ARF with such a small room. A couple of porch chairs wouldn’t work. I decided to make it a cozy little bedroom instead of a porch.”

Ms. Zonlight calls her room “Black and White Is the New Blue,” a reference to her firm’s name and the fact that every item in the room is black and white. She moved from Southampton to Sag Harbor in May. “I went to most of the vendors I work with there and asked if they would donate to ARF. Everybody was so kind, and I got a lot of great donations.”

Her dog, Jai, whom she adopted from ARF in January, seemed to enjoy the space as well. “After going to ARF, I decided I’m never going to buy another dog. There are so many beautiful ones there.”

On Saturday, an exclusive preview cocktail hour from 5 to 6 p.m. is priced at $250. Admission after 6 is $150. The show house is open Sunday and Monday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and a $10 donation has been suggested. Children will be admitted free.

By Cantor/Rabbi Debra Stein

Passover, like all Jewish holidays, floats around on the calendar. It’s never early or late, but always the same time on the Hebrew calendar, which follows a more lunar trajectory. Passover always occurs in the Hebrew month of Nissan, on the 14th. This year that will be the evening of April 10. It takes me over a month to prepare my house for Passover. I begin with closets, cleaning each one out and making sure there are no remnants of food in coat pockets or crumbs on the floors. The mandate is that your home be free of chametz, a Hebrew word that means leavened. We are forbidden to eat or have leavened food in our home during Passover. For more traditional Jews, the holiday lasts eight days; for reform Jews and Jews living in Israel, the holiday lasts for seven.

Many no longer go through all the trouble of setting their house for Passover. I suppose I get more liberal every year, but it still takes an enormous amount of time. So, why do I do it? Why do I throw my entire house and my family into upheaval for a holiday that lasts a week? If I were speaking to you face to face, I would throw up my hands and start singing the famous “Fiddler on the Roof” song “Tradition.” It’s what I’ve known my entire life. It is the tradition of my people and my family. I watched as my mother supervised her four children as we gently carried the Passover dishes down from the attic. I watched all of my aunts come up with creative places to store their Passover dishes every year. When my daughter was young, I followed suit so she would experience what I did as a child. 

If, however, I were to be honest with myself, I would say that I change the dishes because it gives me a sense of holiday, and it presents for me precious moments of nostalgia as I bring out my grandmother’s bone china, silverware, and her fine china, now chipped from over 100 years of use. I bring down bowls that have long since been relegated to the week of Passover. I look at the pots and pans and wonder how I ever could have purchased anything of such awful quality. Then I remember: The first time I got married I was 20 years old. I had no idea that a pot was anything other than a pot. I had no idea that there were different qualities. I didn’t understand then, as I do now, that there are different weights and types of pots and pans.

After cleaning out the closets throughout my house, I begin the grueling task of making sure my kitchen is kosher for Passover. Every cabinet gets emptied and lined with new paper. The refrigerator is emptied and lined, the ovens are cleaned, and drawers get emptied. I’ve loosened up on some of my own traditions, in that I now cover closets that contain foods that are not labeled kosher for Passover, and tape them closed so no one will open them during the holiday. I still remove all bread and bread products. If they are open, I throw them out and if they are sealed, I send them to the food pantries. When we were little, these foods were sold to our synagogue maintenance man, who would then sell them back to us after the holiday. On each family’s buy-back, he would make a small profit, and it became a yearly bonus from the congregants.

I love the Seder. The reading of the story, retelling the Exodus from Egypt, is the central part of the service. It becomes an engaging way to talk around the dinner table. I would imagine that for some families it is perhaps the only time everyone isn’t gathered around their various devices eating dinner while mesmerized by something they are watching or reading.

I love the songs of Passover and have such wonderful memories of family members singing the melodies they knew, and arguing about who had the “correct” melody. It was just last year that my 24-year-old nephew stood on a chair as if he were a toddler to sing the four questions. These questions make up the basis of the story, and are used to engage children in the Seder. In most Seders, they are sung or recited by the youngest child. When I was growing up, the first two questions were always sung by me, and the last two by my sister, who is just a year older than I am.

Another way we engage our children is to hide a piece of matzah, known as the afikomen, very loosely, a Greek word for dessert. It’s hidden very early in the Seder, and families cannot finish the Seder without everyone having a small piece of it. Children search for this piece of matzah during dinner because those who find it get a gift.

When I create a Seder, I make every effort to include some contemporary exoduses and identify the current struggles that force us to realize that slavery and abuse of other human beings continue. Last year, we had two Seder plates on the table. One was the traditional Seder plate, with the symbols that are familiar to most Jewish people: A shank bone, symbolizing the sacrifice made the night the ancient Hebrews fled Egypt. A roasted egg, symbolizing springtime and renewal. Parsley to symbolize the freshness of spring. Charoset, a mixture of apples, nuts, wine, and cinnamon that represents the mortar used by the Hebrew slaves to make bricks. Horseradish, which represents the bitterness of slavery. The other Seder plate had new symbols representing the current world situation. 

Many are familiar with the placing of an orange on a Seder plate. The often-told story is that it was first placed there when women were first ordained as rabbis. That is, as we say in Yiddish, a bubbe meitze, or, in English, a tall tale. The orange has been suggested as a way to symbolize mainly the need to understand that if we are unable to accept all people at our Seder table, we are not fulfilling the overarching belief of Passover.

Beginning last year, my second plate included items such as chocolate from the Jewish Fair Trade Project, as their literature states: “Not Just Kosher: Kosher and Just.” I placed a piece of this chocolate on my Seder plate to recognize that the foods we eat should come from responsible farming. Men and women nurturing our food should be free, and not in situations that can be considered a form of modern-day slavery or servitude.

An artichoke was placed to welcome those who are intermarried to our Seder. These days many Jewish families have a member who is not Jewish. We need to welcome all family members to our table on Passover. 

Olives are round so I placed them on my second Seder plate to symbolize my hopes for world peace. This came from a campaign that started a few years ago using olives as a call for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. 

A roasted beet is what vegetarians use on their Seder plate instead of a shank bone. So to welcome the vegetarian, we place one on our plate. 

Lastly, I placed a banana on my Seder plate. It was used to help remind all of us at the table of the young boy who drowned while attempting to find a better life than the one he knew in Syria. Aylan was the name of the child the world saw on the shores of Turkey, having drowned along with his brother Galip during his family’s exodus. They died along with their mother, leaving a devastated father to retell the story of how his boys loved bananas. How he took one home every night after work for his sons to share. 

This year, I will place a papaya or a mango on my plate to remind me of the undocumented who live in fear, and those who still need to flee their homelands to find safety.

For me one of the most beautiful parts of Judaism is that it is a religion that breathes. It grows as we grow, and takes on issues of importance by looking into our Torah and our sacred texts and applying ancient wisdom to contemporary issues. Judaism asks us to use the knowledge we have been given to guide our own conscience as it commands us to make our world a better place.

In Yiddish, we say a Zisn Pesach, a Sweet Passover. May sweetness and goodness and meaningful lives be part of each and every one of you.

Cantor/Rabbi Debra Stein has served the Jewish Center since the summer of 1982. Upon graduating from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, she assumed a full-­time position as the Jewish Center’s first cantor/educator. In 2015, she completed her studies and received her rabbinic ordination. While she is proud of her most recent accomplishment, she continues to find her passion serving as cantor of the Jewish Center. This summer marks her 35th year with the congregation.

The late Irwin Perton, who lived in East Hampton for many years, and in Boynton Beach, Fla., painted the images shown on this page, and others, for a Hagaddah he published and for which he wrote an essay on family memories. A copy is in Cantor/Rabbi Stein’s collection.

The images are, for the most part, self-explanatory. Top, an Egyptian hovers over a slave. A Seder table is at center, with three pieces of matzah, the afikomen, at bottom with centuries of Jewish people.

The eight-day Passover holiday, which occurs in the 14th day of Nissan on the Hebrew calendar, began on Monday this year.

From playhouses and knitting to a well-stocked pantry and the perfect crafts room, Durell Godfrey’s second coloring book, “Color Your Happy Home” (Harlequin, $15.99), written with Barbara Ann Kipfer, is a celebration of all things cozy, comforting, and . . . well, homey. Things like coloring on a cold winter afternoon while your daughter is home sick from school, or pulling out the markers at the coffee table while a blizzard rages outside. I admit it; I like to color, and it is for the legions of people like me, adults who are finding their way back to this simple, meditative pleasure that “Color Your Happy Home” is made. 

Ms. Godfrey, a contributing photographer for The East Hampton Star who worked for many years as an illustrator for Glamour magazine, made her first foray into the world of coloring books for adults two years ago with the publication of “Color Me Cluttered” (Penguin Random House). 

“When I did the first book, I had no relationship to the people who color,” she said last week. “I had no idea what my market was. I had no idea who colors.” 

This time around she knows her audience, sometimes on a first-name basis. She has met some in person and connected with many more via Facebook, where she has set up pages for each book and invited colorists to share their finished work. Some even post animated time-lapse videos showing their pictures taking shape. “People who share their colored pages with me have become pals, even though I’ve never met them,” Ms. Godfrey said. 

She reads reviews, writes thank-you notes to reviewers, and takes their critiques and those of die-hard colorists to heart, paying attention to what they like and what they do not, what excites them and what bothers them as they color. “This book is really catering to the colorists,” she said of “Color Your Happy Home.” 

“Color Me Cluttered,” which was published in late 2015, only had drawings. Ms. Godfrey wanted her second book to be a little different, “a coloring book you could read.” Ms. Kipfer, the author of “14,000 Things to Be Happy About,” a best-seller listing all manner of things that make you smile, came to mind because Ms. Godfrey “felt that her lists and the phrases would work very well as a meditation along with the coloring book.”

Ms. Kipfer had been a fan of Ms. Godfrey’s back when she was at Glamour. When she was working on “14,000 Things,” she asked Ms. Godfrey to send her portfolio to her publisher, hoping she might illustrate the book. “I didn’t get the job, but she continued to be a fan and we stayed in touch a little bit,” Ms. Godfrey said. 

In reaching out to her, Ms. Godfrey gained not only a collaborator, but her agent, who found the publisher and negotiated the contract. “It was lucky on 100 different levels,” Ms. Godfrey said. “They gave me two months from the time I signed the contract to deliver the work.” 

The drawings drove the text. “Each time I finished a drawing, I would send it by email to Barbara so she could be doing it along with me. . . . Because she’s used to short phrases, the final product is just perfect with her text.”

For a page titled “Summer,” Ms. Kipfer’s list includes “dancing in the rain, sunglasses and T-shirts, having a hammock or porch swing, the hot breath of a summer wind, fragrant fresh flowers, chilled soup, camping out, seasonal fruits and vegetables, the cacophony of meadows and marshes . . . 87 shades of green.” Ms. Godfrey’s accompanying drawing is of a wicker chaise lounge on a porch overlooking the ocean, with the Montauk Lighthouse in the distance. There’s a pitcher of lemonade, a book left open on the floor, a cat curled up on the lounge, and another peeking over its edge. 

If you look close enough, every page is a story, told the way each reader wants to tell it. “I try to have a different door that you can approach each drawing with,” Ms. Godfrey said. She tells a story to herself as she draws, and if you ask, there is usually much more to it than can be seen on the page. “There are little things going on that when you get into the picture I think you notice.” In a drawing titled “Evening,” you can just imagine how the night will unfold: two martinis on the coffee table, crackers and a cheese board, wood in a fireplace ready to be lighted, a throw blanket tossed over the arm of a couch. 

As a photographer, Ms. Durell calls herself a hunter-gatherer, which is how she is described in the shopping guides she frequently does for The Star. (One of them is in these pages.) She will “collect” dozens of images of, say, stained glass windows in churches, birdhouses, cupolas, or dogs in cars. That impulse and her individual way of seeing can be seen repeated on the pages of “Color Your Happy Home.” 

“I knew some things that I wanted to include and I mentally walked around a house and an apartment figuring out what I hadn’t drawn in the first book,” Ms. Godfrey said. “I wanted cityscapes, exteriors and interiors, easy and hard, and I wanted to amuse the colorer.”

She completed the drawings for the book last March and is now on the hunt for her next project. 

Maria Matthiessen of Sag Harbor found herself in a pickle that will probably be familiar to many grandparents: She had not planned to adopt pets, but her granddaughter, Ava, finagled her into it. Two cats, to be precise, from the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons. And that is when the trouble started.

Tangawezi, her new ginger-colored companion, and Prudence, a delicate calico, were young and determined to explore — not only the interior of Ms. Matthiessen’s immaculate little house, where she settled after the death of her husband, Peter Matthiessen, but its backyard.

And so an outdoor cat playhouse was born, and the word “catarium” coined. 

Ms. Matthiessen hired Richard Dunphy of Kiwi Construction in East Hampton to design and carry out the idea, which had been hatched by Ngaere Macray, a good friend. He built a multi-tiered, fenced-in, partially covered, and safe indoor-outdoor environment for the cats, which they reach through a flap door in the house’s study. This allows Tangawezi and Prudence to come and go as they please. 

Attached to the side of an outdoor shower, the catarium is about four feet wide, six feet long, and six feet high. Its floor is covered with cedar chips, and the cats can jump between its levels and the play spaces along its sides. 

“The truth is, I’m too old to have two cats, probably. They’re a lot of work,” Ms. Matthiessen said after showing the catarium to a visitor recently. “This makes it easier for me with these two. They spend quite a bit of time out there. They’ve calmed down quite a bit, and they’re not so destructive in the house.” 

The construction of the catarium has not only enhanced the cats’ lives, but had a beneficial side effect. Cat owners know all too well the, well, inconvenience associated with a litter box, and the odor is multiplied by the number of cats using it. In this case, the litter box for Ms. Matthiessen’s cats is outdoors. “Inside, it was so smelly I couldn’t stand it,” she said.

Tangawezi, whose Swahili name means ginger, and Prudence developed an affinity for the catarium within a day of its installation in early September, though they had to be coaxed through the flap door initially.

For Ms. Matthiessen, who had adopted other cats and dogs over the years, the catarium was a big solution in a small house.

“After being in a cage at ARF, you would have thought being in a house would be enough for them,” she said, “but it wasn’t.”

Tom Dakin considers himself an ordinary gardener, but for more than 30 years the part-time North Haven resident has cultivated an extraordinary tropical flower — the canna lily.

Canna lilies are bold perennials native to Mexico and they are not often planted here, even as annuals. Mr. Dakin, who taught himself to garden over the years, loves their brilliance and has managed to keep the same plants alive year after year. And, as if they were his own offspring, the cannas move with him as he changes residences — five times in the last eight years alone.

Mr. Dakin uproots the cannas when the summer sun begins to yield to the autumn chill, and he nourishes them indoors with heat and moisture during the winter and early spring. He takes them outside each year when the time is right.

“I had this investment in the cannas. . . . I wasn’t willing to just let the roots die,” he said from North Haven recently. “It’s a little bit of a menial task that takes half of a day to pull everything up. I kind of bed them down in peat moss in whatever kinds of containers I have available. I was able to keep them going, so they’re still with me.”

This summer, eight groups of lilies dotted an already distinctive wetland landscape behind the waterfront North Haven house Mr. Dakin shares with his partner, Susan Dusenberry. The landscape itself was the creative work of the late garden designer Jack deLashmet. Not wanting to disrupt the layout, Mr. Dakin spread the lilies in pots rather than plant them.

Some of the canna lilies grew to heights of five and six feet or even taller this year, indeed, taller than Mr. Dakin himself. They burst into fiery orange, intense crimson, and sweet pink, surrounded by thick clusters of broad leaves, reminiscent of banana leaves, in shades of emerald green, yellow-green, or violet. 

Canna lilies bloom later than most other flowers here, so they “add something after the initial rush of salvia or roses have run their course,” Mr. Dakin said. Internet-based guides say they thrive in hot, humid weather and full sunlight. They are supposed to be deer resistant, and they attract hummingbirds and pollinators. 

Contrary to the name, though, the canna is not really a lily. It belongs to a species that includes ginger and bananas, and some, or at least parts of some, are edible. Furthermore, its “blossom” is not really a blossom; it is a stamen.

 They “add a bit of color to the garden. I relate to it by appreciating the color in the tableau and the palette of what exists here. It’s part of the bigger picture; the setting here is beautiful,” Mr. Dakin said.

Canna lilies first caught Mr. Dakin’s eye when, as a New Yorker, he spent weekends at his house on North Main Street in East Hampton. He taught himself a thing or two about gardening, and would browse the flower catalogs in search of something special.

“Things grow, and year on year, when you have perennials, they take up more space and you have to keep working with that dynamic in order to balance things. It’s a constant process,” he said.

Mr. Dakin unloaded most of his furnishings when he and Ms. Dusenberry decided to move in together several years ago. Save for some chairs that had been in his family a long time and personal mementos, his mature cannas are now his oldest possessions.

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.

I asked the foreman, who was from the Wright and Company construction firm in Bridgehampton, who the architect was, and he replied, “A woman from the city, Deborah Berke.”

 I didn’t think much of the ruckus next door as I had become considerably construction-numb as an architect. After the foundation was poured, however, I began to realize that what was being built was not a Shingle Style traditional or typical East Hampton beach folly. It was modern. And it was quite small by South Fork standards. 

Now mind you, this was well before the recent resurgence in modern houses had gained traction here. Many architects with a modern aesthetic were sitting idly in their offices, sketching ideas or working on competitions to keep their brains from deteriorating.

As the house next door progressed, I saw the volumes begin to take shape. The forms were firmly rooted in the landscape and very clearly defined. No applied trick facades. No flashy details. No exotic materials. Just shapes and shadows with a backdrop of local lush green. There was a beautiful modesty to this little house, which left me perpetually intrigued.

 At the time, I was moonlighting by doing drawings of a behemoth gambrel-roofed estate designed by a local architect. The detailing was elaborate, and as I drew corbels, coffers, and arches, I could see the construction progress next door from my window. 

I learned it was a “city” architect’s house. Interesting and ºout of the box‚ I thought. Eventually‚ I noticed a wall without a roof and an opening in it. Unusual, I thought; it made me think of Chinese architecture. A walled garden in East Hampton! 

One evening at sunset I entered the house and wandered around. (Yes, I trespassed, but for academic reasons.) The windows had gone in and light poured into the house at perfect angles. The space felt light and flexible. The details were so restrained. The house was thoughtful and gentle in the transitions from space to space. Effortless. 

Some architecture can appear clever or trendy in its modernism, but this architecture seemed honest, not trying too hard to be anything other than a calm and serene beach escape for a family. Ever since, I have followed Deborah Berke’s work enthusiastically. Her firm, Deborah Berke Partners, has persevered with a philosophy of honesty in both materials and design throughout the years. 

At a time when the East End modern design scene has reached a zenith of flash, high-end materials, and glitz, Ms. Berke is the real deal. Her exciting new position as the dean of the Yale School of Architecture is confirmation of her unwavering talent, consistency, and skill. 

Deborah Berke’s “House Rules: An Architect’s Guide to Modern Life,” a $45, fully illustrated book published by Rizzoli in July, is a clear and thoughtful explanation of her philosophy, which both design veterans and laypeople can easily grasp and put to use.

It is refreshing to find a design book with clear steps and insights into a particular architect’s process. The captions for the photos are helpful poetic summaries of the firm’s basic concepts, and the images explain those concepts in a straightforward way, which also is helpful. 

The book includes an essay about Fishers Island by Rick Moody, a novelist, and an afterword by Marc Leff, who has been with the Berke firm since 1993. In addition, an index identifies the houses where most of the photos were taken by their street names or locales, Georgica and Sagaponack among them.

Designing and building houses is a complex process and Ms. Berke’s book demystifies the architect’s process, while transforming it into a hands-on, methodical series of choices. She articulates eight guiding principles, and the book is organized around them.

According to Ms. Berke, “Make a virtue of economic necessity. Good design doesn’t cost more; expensive materials do.” And, “Movement into and through a house accelerates and collects, like a stream with eddies.” Many thoughts and useful ideas from this wonderfully readable book have stayed with me, as I hope many will with you.

Erica Broberg Smith is a practicing architect in East Hampton and New York. She also owns the Hampton Gather, a new antiques and salvage shop on Newtown Lane in East Hampton.