My great grandfather was a New York lawyer who used to go hunting on the Eastern end of Long Island. The story goes that he was hunting around Georgica Pond and shot a goose. It landed on a hill overlooking the pond, and he decided to build his house there. My grandmother and my mother both grew up in the city but summered in East Hampton. My mother married a Virginian, so I grew up in Richmond, but we always spent part of the summer in the house in East Hampton.

The photo is of my daughter and me in my mother's house next door.

In about 1970 my parents built another house on the water right next door to our house. In 1987 my husband and I took over the old house. We lived overseas, and I spent the summers in East Hampton, so my children have also ended up spending childhood summers in this house. There are paths through the 'maze' at the bottom of the hill, and they loved running through the woods to Grandma's house in the early morning.

We love it here. My children, now all in their 20's and 30's, bring their friends down now for long weekends. They'll pack a lunch and take a combination of sailboats, canoe and paddle board to the practically deserted ocean beach at the end of the pond and make a day of it. I have breakfast on the front porch, looking out at my perennial garden and making plans for it. In the evening we sit on the roofless end of the porch, looking up at the stars and out over the pond. It is heaven on earth.