A True Story from Home April is young, and I’m in my garden as often as I can be. Today, I have company. My nephew, Bennett, is kneeling in the zucchini patch beside a Red Ryder wheelbarrow. He asked if he could help, so he’s weeding the clover that crept up in early March, tossing … Continue reading A Garden in Babylon
I watched one afternoon in October to see my neighbor’s chainsaw whir and whine and whistle clean through the trunk of his tree, and I felt the wrongness of it, as he stood on a ladder to dismantle it limb-by-limb. “I was putting off knowing it. All that day there had been a crashing in … Continue reading Upon the Death of a Bradford Pear
For Papa Jay on his 88th Birthday, Labor Day 2023 You told me “Eight thirty or so,” but of course, you meant eight, And I knew you’d been up a long time before then Because I ran by at dawn And saw the old hurricane lamp was on in the kitchen And the storm doors … Continue reading Eight Thirty or So
There's a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted, and in March, I do a little of both. Winter is on its last leg, and I’ve been repairing, repotting, replanting, and rethinking the best ways to keep deer out of the garden this year. I realize there was a lot … Continue reading A Time to Plant
I was surprised to meet Larry and Betty on my run yesterday, walking with their sticks down into the trees on Edgewood. Last winter, they hired me to fetch their mail and water their houseplants while they flew with the geese southward. Mrs. Betty is a gardener who does her best work in springtime, hedging … Continue reading Bunnies & Birds
Ours is an old neighborhood. Old trees. Old houses. Old people, whose one surety in life is the six o’clock news. Wheel of Fortune comes on at seven. Postseason baseball airs after that, and since the Cardinals aren’t in the hunt, folks drift off in their recliners till the grandfather clock gongs 10. Daylight Savings … Continue reading Prime Time
On Saturday, I did three things respectively: I planted a fall crop of bibb lettuce and kale; I wrestled chicken wire to build a fence around the box; and then I wiped sweat from my neck and dared the squirrels and deer to have a go at it. For good measure, I also took clippings … Continue reading Dead Wood
Probably the most impassioned thing I ever wrote was an essay called Two-And-A-Half Acres on Edgewood Road. I was eighteen, and for the first time, I’d tried writing about the place I knew best and the people I’d shared it with. I wrote from a hotel room at night, rain blearing the windows and brake … Continue reading The Climbing Tree
Take a left at the end of our driveway, and you’re headed downhill, over the railroad tresses, then up to where Edgewood Road meets the Old Highway. You’ll follow Krinning’s fence, which is so old the trees have grown up through its wires — but before you start up the hill, there’s a place where … Continue reading On Walking
Tom and his wife both came to last month’s neighborhood board meeting, which is always a rehearsal of restrictions and property lines. Tom, of course, wore big overalls over his hoodie. When the meeting was over, I asked his wife about her new greenhouse, and she showed me pictures of plants climbing the windows, which … Continue reading Fence Lines
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