Some revelations come unannounced – no trumpets, no drums. A small window opens, and in the instant before it closes again, you see where things are headed. This was not that kind of revelation. This one had trumpets. And a trombone. It was last July. The tail end of a hot day. My wife and I were having a drink on our porch, listening to a parade passing through town, which is how I prefer my parades: distant, with a drink in my hand. We didn’t know what was being celebra

Last week, my daughter, Maya, and I spent a still, November morning putting the garden to bed. It’s an annual ritual for us – last year I did it with my son. Sometime between the pumpkins and the turkey, after the frost-bit tomato plants and limp pea vines have been pulled and the garden cleared, we lay down a thick, two-inch blanket of compost: three seasons’ worth of rotting kitchen scraps, grass clippings, leaf mulch and sawdust turned into rich, fragrant soil the color