“It was a substantial-looking farm. In the stables, over the top of the open doors, one could see great cart-horses quietly feeding from new racks. Right along the outbuildings extended a large dunghill, from which manure liquid oozed, while amidst fowls and turkeys, five or six peacocks, a luxury in Chauchois farmyards, were foraging on the top of it.”

I went out tonight to the garage, a blue plastic 40 gallon garbage can in hand, empty from the road where the Waste Management corporation had left it. As I walked by the shade beds, bathed by the breeze in the scent of mock orange, I thought there were worse things than being alive on a sunny evening in June. I came out from beneath the shrubs and the trees into the graveled parking area before the garage and there high above the tobacco shed the moon was tethered, just another element of the view, and not close or particularly accessible, but mine at that moment, as much mine as the shed and the parking lot, the walnut or the pines, as much mine as the Philadelphus coronarius that shades the drive and soaks the June air with a scent that is almost psychedelic.