In the 1950s and ’60s, pressing a button on an intercom to talk to someone in a different part of your house was considered a technological score. Now, nearly every imaginable household device can be controlled remotely, whether you don’t feel like getting off the couch or are halfway around the world. The average homeowner is in control, thanks to the advent of smart home technology. 

Temperature, lighting, window blinds, audio/visual equipment, and security systems can all be controlled and customized. And smart home technology is practically a given in new, high-end houses on the South Fork, where many are second homes and owners want to be, and sometimes need to be, in control from afar. 

According to SmartHomeUSA, which tests equipment and tools from the industry’s leading manufacturers, a smart home uses appliances, lighting, heating, air-conditioning, TVs, camera systems, and more, that are capable of communicating with each other as well as controlled remotely. “A Smart Home is one that provides its homeowners comfort, security, energy efficiency, and conveniences at all times, regardless of whether anyone is home,” the firm’s learning center says.

Chris Brody, the owner of South­ampton-based Crescendo Designs, which programs and installs automation controls for custom audio and video installations and lighting, said smart home technology had become “pretty standard.” He estimated that just 10 years ago, only 5 percent of residences incorporated similar technology. 

Nearly every component of a new house these days — from the thermostat to the garage door — can be controlled through a mobile device or smart speaker. While some may opt to retrofit older houses with gadgets like the Nest thermostat, wiring a house as a smart home takes careful planning and design. 

Punit Chugh of Aman Developers, a high-end building company based in Bridgehampton, estimates that 95 to 97 percent of his clients these days want to incorporate some kind of smart home technology. 

“Home automation is becoming one of the most important criteria” for building, and buying, a house, he said. Mechanical devices, lighting, and security are among the top three areas people want remote access to, he said. “Once we have all of this put together, from the snap of a finger, all that they can control. That’s quite powerful.” 

His clients, many of them second-home owners, want control from afar. “An hour or two before [they arrive] they can raise the temperature in their house,” Mr. Chugh said. 

Residential security systems can include high-definition surveillance, useful not only to stave off burglars but to monitor the comings and goings of workers and visitors: No need to question whether the landscaper showed up or the pool was closed for the season. 

Smart home technology becomes more beneficial when it’s automated, 

Mr. Brody said. You can hit a single button upon arriving home and certain lights go on and the temperature adjusts. When you leave, you hit a button and the lights go off, the heat turns down, and the music from the stereo in your bedroom and the television in your living room all turn off. 

“You could also use sensors,” Mr. Brody said. “I have a motion sensor at the gate,” he said of his own house. A camera is activated by it and all the outdoor lights automatically go on. “Once you have the system there’s so many scenarios to what it can do,” he said. “You can just trigger so many different variables based on events that have happened.” 

Home automation may sound complicated, but many devices actually simplify certain activities. Before residents leave for a weekend away, they can hit a button or use a service like Alexa to turn the lights off and thermostats up or down depending on the season. Some houses, Mr. Brody said, “are so big that just to walk around the house to adjust thermostats would take time.” 

“It just makes you life a little bit easier,” he said. “Once you live with it, you can’t live without it.” 

Almost everyone is interested in this technology these days, Mr. Chugh said. Obtaining it just depends on the budget. “The sky’s the limit,” he said. The more personalized the program, the more expensive. 

With budgets that can range from $200,000 to $300,000, it is no wonder that Mr. Brody said it is best to get plans for automation made in early in the design phase of a new house. “Once you hire the architect, you should be getting an A/V company to get involved in the design.” 

“We interface with every single trade in the house — electrical, plumber, pool,” he said. “Rack rooms,” control centers for all the technology, need to be planned, and for aesthetic reasons, placement is key. Even speakers can be spackled into walls match the lighting, he said. 

Smart home technology also helps increase energy efficiency, which new state and town building codes recognize as more important the larger the house. Heating and cooling can be broken up into different zones so that each is controlled separately by a thermostat. Data lines and control panels need to be worked in early, as well. 

Crescendo Design also creates home networks for constant Wi-Fi connectivity so that people can walk around their house using the same device and it jumps between access points without interruption. “People live on their phones and iPads,” he said. “You don’t just go to Best Buy and cover a 10,000-square-foot house.” 

Even some offices utilize smart home technology. Mr. Chugh’s office is a showroom for the AV Design Group of Southampton. “Today, I feel like I couldn’t live without it,” he said. The person last to leave forgot to set the security system? No need to go back. You just log in to the app and set it from the phone. “It’s fantastic,” he said.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Blackberries are one of the great culinary joys of late summer. They ripen at a time when most other berries are finishing, and though they tend to be a little sour when eaten fresh, they have fantastic flavor as well as a rich dark purple color when cooked. They are also great in that they are relatively easy to pick, since the berries are large and sturdy, with a central core that makes them far less fragile than raspberries.

For most of the year blackberries are expensive to buy in shops, but during August they are essentially free for the taking, growing wild in empty lots and in hedgerows, if only you know where to look.

For many years I didn’t bother to grow blackberries in my garden. I simply walked down the street to an empty lot where wild blackberries grew everywhere and picked as many as I liked. Or else I would stop my car on the way home from the beach to pick some by the side of the road. Once home, I would use them for jams, cobblers, and pies, or else just have them plain with some sugar and cream.

While many people still pick wild blackberries here, the places where they grow are fast disappearing. Most of my favorite wild blackberry spots in Bridgehampton have vanished in the past decade, replaced by grand new homes. So when a good friend pricked her thumb on a blackberry thorn a few years ago and got a serious infection, and then spent several weeks on antibiotics, I began to reconsider my forays into the wild, particularly since, apart from being more difficult to find these days, blackberries leave us foragers open not only to scratches from thorns, but also to chiggers, ticks, poison ivy, and (worst of all) tick-borne diseases.

Shortly afterward I sent away for some plants. Today, with very little effort, I have a highly productive trellis of thornless blackberries in my garden, one that begins fruiting at the end of July and continues until late August, with plenty of spare berries to share with appreciative birds.

Here’s the good news about growing blackberries: They are very, very easy. So long as they have sun, good soil, and sufficient water, they seem to grow just about anywhere on the East End, and within a year or two, if given all they need, they will multiply, with each new cane producing prodigious amounts of fruit.

Better yet, many (though not all) of the commercially available cultivars are thornless. Cultivated blackberries now come in two kinds — floricane, which fruits in midsummer, and primocane, in autumn, meaning that if you buy some of each, you can extend your blackberry season well into the fall. (But I have to admit that I have only summer-bearing blackberries on my trellis — a very dependable thornless variety called Chester — because blackberries seem so much a part of summer to me I am much less motivated to want them during the autumn.) 

Lynch’s Garden Center in Southampton can special order thornless blackberries for those in search of them; they can also be purchased easily and inexpensively by mail, for example from Nourse Farms in Whately, Mass., which offers a broad selection of both floricane and primocane varieties: www.noursefarms.com/category/blackberry-plants/.

There is also some bad news about growing blackberries in your garden. First off, they are not very pretty. While they can easily be trellised or formed into an ornamental hedge, they are essentially top-heavy, scraggly-looking canes that grow tall (usually more than six feet) and then flop over unless given proper support. Second, they will soon spread (via their strong root systems) in all possible directions. 

So, unlike a blueberry bush (or a gooseberry or red currant bush), they are going to need to be kept firmly in line. My answer to this problem has been to move my blackberries (and my raspberries, which have a similar but less vigorous growth habit) to a relatively hidden area of my garden where their natural untidiness and tendency to sprawl about is simply not a problem. 

To keep your blackberry plants orderly, healthy, and highly productive, plant them in rows approximately three feet apart, and set up post-and-wire trellises for them, using a six-foot T-post at each end of the row and securing the canes using two or three levels of 14-gauge wire. (Or simply buy a trellis kit, which comes with crossbars for the wire, for example the trellis offered by agfabric.com: www.agfabric.com/product_show.asp?pid=28.) 

You will also need to control their weedy growth at the soil level, which is most simply done by pulling up any canes that sprout up too far from the trellis, and then either replanting them elsewhere, giving them to friends (I recently gave some to that old friend of mine with the infected thumb), or else composting them. If you really want to limit the spread of the plants, consider sinking a root barrier (also known as a rhizome barrier) into the earth about a foot from the planting on either side of the row.

If you are lucky enough to have access to large quantities of blackberries, they make an excellent jam. Rich in antioxidants and low in calories, they are also full of health benefits (and many people put them into smoothies for this reason alone). 

They also combine beautifully with stone fruits, either in a compote, a crumble, or a pie. But if you want to make an easy and impressive dessert, try this simple all-blackberry crumble. It is small enough to be made in a toaster oven, which is a nice way of keeping your kitchen cool during the hottest days of summer.

Click for recipe

Justin Spring is a writer whose most recent book, “Secret Historian,” was a finalist for the National Book Award. He divides his time between Bridgehampton and New York.