Warm sunlight slanting through the French doors onto the oak kitchen table lit up the morning after autumn’s first light frost blackened the tips of impatiens leaves, with remaining flowers still unscathed. I knew it was coming and was unwilling to let them all go, so the tallest and best stems had been cut for a bouquet the night before. They filled a tall glass vase glowing in that sunlit patch. Pansies lifted their faces from under the remains of impatiens on the deck, to be rewarded with a treat of blood meal scratched into the soil, fertilizer for winter growth. Another flat of mixed pansies will fill a few empty spaces and be tucked into edges of the brick path leading to my studio to raise my morning spirits and delight visitors to my annual open studio days.

The house, perhaps as

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