Though the Fig Tree Should Not Blossom

Spring in 2021 and 2022 brought hard and brutal frosts in late March. Overnight temperatures dropped near single digits and the mercury didn’t rise above freezing for consecutive days. These arctic blasts were unusually late, and all the magnolia trees had already gone to bud when they hit. The tender petals of their satin blossoms

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

My new (to me) pickup truck came equipped with a backup camera. A thick fisheye lens now bulges discretely from a perch just to the left of my tailgate latch and transposes a warped digital image to an index card-sized display screen where a man’s CD player used to be. I didn’t ask for the

Room Temperature

Recipes are not written for Sunday morning bakers in 19th-century colonials. “Room temperature,” in particular, is a description that has the appearance of objective uniformity, but really possesses none of the attributes that render directions clear, lucid, or helpful to a homeowner such as myself. It is not so much that I am unfamiliar with a space

Walking Home from a New Jersey Diner

The sights and sounds of a tow truck are among those few things in life that evoke almost the same feelings in almost everyone in almost every situation. The somber whirring of the cables, the sharp clang of the hooks and chains, and the slow lurch of the vehicle onto the flatbed are each slightly

In His Time

Every year I marvel more and more at how long it takes for the Aster and the Goldenrod to bloom. Think back to when you saw your first blossom of Spring. Maybe it was a Crocus against your house, or perhaps you spied Snowdrops in Central Park. But now, in the damp of an autumn

The Former Things That Have Passed Away

Interstate 80 stretches like a spine across the commonwealth’s equator. Just a few degrees north of Pennsylvania’s actual axis of latitudinal symmetry, the bituminous byway traces parallel paths of two- or three-lane highway across the white ash graveyards of our westerly neighbor. As is now standard across the federal interstate highway system, I-80’s exit numbers

The Unheralded Life Arc of a Scrap of Iron Ore

Behold! The unheralded life arc of a scrap of iron ore. No pomp, no circumstance. Handled by a hundred human hands, regarded by none.

Sassafras albidum

An Ode to the Sassafras

Fireflies in May

I was raking in the backyard last night at twilight, and the corner of my eye caught what I took to be a firefly…