Introducing my latest book: ‘Murder Brushed with Gold’

When I retired 15 years ago, I thought I’d try my hand at writing a mystery.  It took six months, and it taught me the difference between ‘thinking about doing something’ and actually doing it. That book, ‘A Murder in the Garden Club’ turned out to be very popular and, even better, gave me a cast of interesting and likeable characters whom I could incorporate into subsequent stories.

No suburban sprawl in Hardington

What I didn’t realize back then was one of my most important ‘characters’ was the book’s locale: Hardington, Massachusetts.  In other parts of the country, Hardington seems idyllic (except for all those murders): a small New England town, yet just a short commute to Boston. It’s a town without big-box stores or strip malls. It is surrounded by open space and has a near-four-century-long history. It’s the anthesis of the typical big-city suburb, where you know you’ve crossed municipal boundaries only because there’s another Home Depot.

Hardington and Medfield
are both southwest of Boston

Hardington is a lightly fictionalized version of the town my wife and I have called home (off and on) since 1980: Medfield, Massachusetts.  Medfield has just a handful of traffic lights and no streets wider than two lanes, yet it is just 17 miles from the center of Boston. It has about 13,000 residents scattered over 15 square miles. More than half the town’s land is off limits to development.

For ‘Murder Brushed with Gold’, I mined two nuggets of Medfield’s history.  First, for several years in the late 1800s, the town had a small artist’s colony focused on impressionist, plein air painting.  No less a figure than Isabella Stewart Gardner touted Medfield as having vistas comparable to Monet’s Giverny.  And, second, in 2006, AOL (then, a powerhouse internet service provider) tried to get permission from a judge to dig up a yard in Medfield. Why? Because the company believed a young internet spammer had buried millions of dollars of gold bars in his parents’ lawn. (There is some stuff you can’t make up.)

The roadside cottage still exists

I freely admit a soft spot for art.  It figures prominently in ‘Deadly Deeds’ and ‘A Murder at the Flower Show’. For my new book, I re-created that colony in the summer of 1889 and populated it with a mix of real and fictional artists. One of the real people is Dennis Miller Bunker, a gifted artist who died tragically young. One of his enduring paintings, which resides in the National Gallery of Art, is of a humble roadside cottage in Medfield.  I had a fictional artist, Alan Churchill Lawrence, paint a first version of it.

'The Pool, Medfield' by
Dennis Miller Bunker (1889)

Every good story needs a ‘heavy’, and mine is another fictional artist: Edward Merrill Cosgrove. He is already famous, powerful and wealthy with an oceanfront estate in Maine, yet he deigns to pay a visit to Hardington for reasons that become clear as the book progresses. 

After three days, though, two men appear at the boardinghouse’s door seeking an audience with Cosgrove. They do not get it. An agitated Cosgrove disappears for a day and, late that evening, Lawrence witnesses what he believes is the burial of the two men by Cosgrove and an accomplice behind the cottage Lawrence painted just a few days earlier.

'Gray Day on the Charles' by
John Leslie Breck (1889)

Lawrence knows Cosgrove is not a man to be crossed, yet he must be brought to justice. Lawrence adds a conspicuous spot of color to the painting and sends it off, along with pages from his journal, to his agent in Boston with instructions to find a way to get the material into the hands of the police.

Skip ahead 132 years. Liz Phillips (the amateur sleuth in the series) is accompanying her good friend, antiques dealer Roland Evans-Jones, to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts where, in exchange for having his painting cleaned, he is lending Alan Churchill Lawrence’s ‘Wayside Cottage’ for an upcoming MFA exhibition on New England plein air art colonies.  In MFA’s conservation studio and in the presence of the curator mounting the exhibit, the painting is taken out of its frame for the first time.  Out pops Lawrence’s journal, together with a plea by Lawrence to his art dealer for his help.

Isabella Stewart Gardner
as painted by Sargent

The curator immediately recognizes the journal as a powerful, historical artifact.  Cosgrove’s standing as the ‘Father of American Impressionism’ could be shaken to its foundation. She immediately sends PDFs of the journal to researchers for their comment.  Liz Phillips suggests digging up the site identified in the painting (the building still stands, little changed, from the time it was immortalized). Volunteers are recruited.  Detective John Flynn (the series’ other protagonist) gets involved to coordinate things. Hardington’s police chief even invites the media to record what is found.

Which, or course, is when all hell breaks loose. The heirs of Edward Merrill Cosgrove say the journal is a sensational forgery created by a publicity-seeking ‘used furniture dealer’. They demand the painting and journal be turned over to their experts for scrutiny.  And then, those volunteers at the wayside cottage sink their shovels down into the soil behind the wayside cottage… and strike something very unexpected.

Oh, and you’re only about a quarter way through the book.

How it all started

If you’ve not read the five ‘Hardington’ mysteries that precede this, you’ll find ‘Murder Brushed with Gold’ a satisfying stand-alone read with lots of humor, twists and turns; along with plot points turning on art, museum politics, robocalls, fractional jets, and some other things that would be spoilers to mention.

If you’ve kept up with the series, you’ll finally get Roland Evans-Jones’ back story, meet Liz’s daughter, Detective John Flynn’s wife, and get another helping of Felicity Snipes. And, for those who have been rooting for two lost souls to admit their attraction for one another… well, let’s say there’s some of that, too.

You can purchase print or Kindle copies of ‘Murder Brushed with Gold’ through Amazon, or print copies directly from the author at https://the-hardington-press.square.site/, or by contacting me directly. You can read the first chapters at www.TheHardingtonPress.com.

Heart Attack Snow

This post was supposed to be titled, ‘Winter Wonderland’. It was envisioned as a full-throated, self-congratulatory, thousand-word essay about being environmentally conscious even as you deal with the reality of snow-swept New England winter landscapes.

Medfield was supposed to be squarely in the 'jackpot zone'

Instead, I’m reduced to distantly remembering I used to gladly pay a dime at my local 7-11 on hot days to slurp a cupful of the stuff I’m now shoveling; except, back then, it was enhanced by a squirt of sickly-sweet fruit syrup.

We had been promised this snow
for three days

You see, we had a nor’easter last evening and today.  The same winter storm (they have names now, this one was Octavia) that drenched California and fouled travel across the Midwest, re-formed itself as a low-pressure system off the East Coast and dumped a foot and a half of snow on unsuspecting Queens.  Octavia then sets its sights on New England.  As late as 5 p.m., as flakes were starting to fall at the Connecticut-Massachusetts border, the National Weather Service still showed Medfield as squarely in the center of the ‘jackpot’ zone of 12” to 18” of snow.

Abigail jumping at snowflakes

I am ready for that kind of a snowfall.  For somebody who did not see snow until he was twenty years old, I have adapted rather well to the notion that precipitation can come frozen.  I topped off the gas in our snow blower, positioned it at the front of the garage door, and settled in for an evening of the kind of satisfied anticipation that comes with being well-prepared.  The snow arrived along with gale-force winds, turning trees into works of art.  Our ten-month-old, Florida-born cat, Abigail, jumped excitedly at the snowflakes falling on the outside of the living room window, unable to comprehend what was going on outside.

At about 9 p.m., Betty tilted her head and said, “that sounds like rain.”

“Nonsense,” I replied, with the confidence of someone who believes an army of forecasters armed with the infallible European Weather Model cannot possibly get things even a little wrong.

But I, too, heard the tinkling sound of raindrops against the windows.  I went to the Weather Channel website and saw the three-hour 'up-until-now' loop of solid snow overwhelming southern New England; getting darker blue by the second.  But I also saw something disturbing: the rain-snow line that was supposed to be solidly anchored on Cape Cod was, instead, stealthily advancing ever further into the mainland.

I tapped the ‘future’ button.  Sure enough, we were turning green. The loop showed Medfield had nothing but rain in its future. Somewhere, 30,000 feet over our heads, the gremlins controlling the storm's steering currents had decided to have a joke at my expense. Except, to me, it wasn’t going to be one bit funny.

No asphalt, just a stone driveway

At this point, you are probably wondering to yourself, What’s the big deal? Be happy it isn’t all that snow!

The first problem is, our property isn’t equipped to deal with wet, heavy snow.

Six years ago, when we were planning our ‘dream retirement house’, we went all-in on creating a home that would be one with nature.  No grass lawn, no invasive plants or trees, and nothing that would cause excess water to roll off our property and into the town’s storm drains. To meet that last requirement, we eschewed the idea of your standard asphalt driveway in favor of one made of crushed stone, held in place by decorative granite curbing. Rain water, rather than rolling down the gentle slope of the driveway to the street, would instead pass through the stone and soak into the subsoil, recharging the reservoir of moisture for our garden.

I mounted our snow 
blower on skis

And, if it snowed, I was ready: I retro-fitted a pair of Rossignol skis onto our hardy snow blower so the maw of the machine coasted half an inch above the driveway and sidewalk surface.  It is, if I can allow myself a moment of immodesty, a stroke of genius. I may even patent it one of these days.

The second problem is, there hasn’t been a snow blower made that can deal with water-soaked snow.  Put any model out on a driveway, fire it up, and watch as the icy residue dribbles out of the blower like an 18-month-old disgorging unwanted Gerber’s Squash Delight. 

An asphalt driveway can be
scraped clean in minutes

A homeowner with an asphalt driveway can pick up the phone, call some Guy with a Snow Plow on His Pickup Truck, and pay whatever extortion is demanded. I don’t have that option: a conventional snow plow will simply take off a cubic yard or two of crushed stone along with the snow, and deposit it either out on the street or in our perennial beds. (And don’t give me that ‘Oh, the snow plow operator can keep the blade up a couple of inches’ stuff. The Guy with a Snow Plow on His Pickup Truck has a laser-like focus on the goal of being in and out of your driveway in three minutes, with his pockets stuffed with enough cash to take the family to Disney World.)

The snow was water-soaked

This morning at 6:30 a.m., I went outside in drizzling rain to survey the scene.  The gremlins controlling the steering currents were slapping their knees with laughter.  While safely-inland Wilmington, Massachusetts recorded twenty inches of white, powdery snow; Medfield had six inches of snow permeated with at least an inch of water.  

A gift from the town

And, of course, down at the intersection of the driveway and the street, the Medfield Highway Department had thoughtfully deposited a ten-foot-wide, three-foot deep, and two-foot-high plug of pure ice. All of it had to be moved... by hand.

We call it ‘heart attack snow’.  Every shovelful weighs about thirty pounds. You move it for an hour and then your right arm goes numb. Cue the EMTs.

Betty took the sidewalk and an area immediately in front of the garage.  I first removed the plug of ice and then started up the 90-foot-long driveway, being careful to leave a skim of ice/snow on top of the

The finished driveway, a crust of snow

crushed rock. Two hours later, we had a clean sidewalk and a wide-enough passage that we can get our cars out into the world if needed.

As Kermit the Frog once reminded us, ‘It isn’t easy being green’. 

I would add it is definitely hard work sometimes.  And maybe even good exercise.

The Cat Chronicles

 Day 15

This is the day, in what was supposed to be my new home for life, my humans went over the edge – around the bend – off the deep end with no life preserver.

My humans planted a tree in the house!

They planted a tree in the house.  No kidding.  A gigantic, touch-the-ceiling monster. It’s so tall I don’t think I could climb to the top of it even with a flying leap. Of course, it would be an interesting experiment…

They brought it into the house while I was sleeping. I smelled it before I saw it. And, when I did, I admit I freaked out.  I ran, I hid, and I took another nap. Later in the day, I went to see if it was still there.  It might have been a bad dream.

There's cold white stuff outside

Nope.  Still there.  Don’t ask me what kind of a tree it is.  I’m a Florida cat. I know six kinds of palm trees. I can tell you the difference between a jacaranda and a royal poinciana, and I’m only eight months old.  But I’m not in Florida anymore, and it isn’t just that three-hour plane ride.  There’s this white stuff all over the ground, and it’s cold (I put my nose against a window; a mistake I won’t make twice).

Day 16

This morning, they put lights on it!

This morning, my humans went even further over the edge.  They put lights all over the tree.  Hundreds of them! Give me one good reason why a tree needs lights.  It isn’t going anywhere and it’s not exactly a navigation hazard.  My two humans are going to be carted off to the loony bin and no one is going to feed me.  But putting on lights wasn’t the end of their lunatic behavior: they disappeared downstairs (I had no idea this place had a ‘downstairs’! But now I do…) and they came up with giant plastic bins that smelled… old.  They opened them and I smelled years of stuff.

Being just eight months old, I’m still getting the hang of this time thing.  I talked it over with some of the other cats in that hotel they had me in when I first came up from Florida.  They explained to me first you’re a kitten and then you’re a cat.  You’re a cat for, like, twenty years, with your muzzle growing whiter each year, and then

your time is up.  I asked how long humans lived and no one had a clue.  Assuming we all live the same number of years, I’m guessing (based on my male human’s gray hair) my humans are around 15 years old, which means in five years I’ve got to find some different humans to be my staff.  Except this pair is going to be in an institution just as soon as some other human gets a load of the tree they’ve planted in the house.

Oh, and after lunch, they started taking all this old stuff out of the boxes and putting it on the tree.  And, I don’t mean just throwing it on the tree.  There must have been six hundred gizmos in those two bins, and every one of them had to go in one certain place.  They even got all misty-eyed when they pulled out stuff.  I’m still getting the hang of human-speak, but they’re all

weepy and reminding each other about where they were when they got each of those gizmos (Harrod’s? Is that a human? A city?) Egypt? Amsterdam? What’s that?

The interesting thing is, every object they put on the tree smells different. I smell different times and places, but they’ve all been together for different lengths of time – as though my humans collected this stuff and saved it just to put on the tree.  How weird is that?

Day 17

This morning, they let me into the room where they keep the tree.  I think I finally get it.  For the first time, I got to really smell the gizmos (my humans call them ‘ornaments’). I smelled three things.  The first is where they came from, which I’ll probably never sort out.  The second thing is that they’ve been on lots of other trees before this one. I smelled a few ornaments that had the scent of more than fifty different trees.  So, this isn’t the first tree my humans have brought into this home.  I figure they bring in new ones – what? – once a year, maybe?

They finally thought they had thrown
enough gizmos on the tree

The third thing was the real eye-opener.  I’m not the first cat to have laid a paw on these ornaments.  Some of the ornaments have been sniffed at by one cat; and some by as many as three. (The three-cat ornaments are really, really old.)

I’ve got a lot to ponder here.  Maybe they haven’t gone completely around the bend.  Maybe this is one more kind of stupid human trick. Whatever it is, I’ll keep an open mind.  As long as the food keeps coming.

Abigail’s Resurrection

For twelve excruciating hours on Sunday, I believed I had contributed to the horrifying demise of an innocent creature with which my wife and I had only recently been entrusted. Because this is a Christmas-time story, I will say, up front, that this tale has a happy ending.

Betty and Brandy
circa 1980

My wife, Betty, is a cat person.  When I first met her in 1974, she was the guardian of Brandy, who had been born in her college apartment closet.  In order to date Betty, I had to have Brandy’s approval.  To marry Betty, I had to adopt her cat. Brandy lived a long life, following us from upstate New York, to Chicago, to Brooklyn, and to Massachusetts; never complaining about our seeming impermanence.

Alfie, circa 1993

Brandy succumbed to cancer at the age of 18 and, after a suitable period of mourning – and now living in Stamford, Connecticut – we adopted a seven-year-old shelter cat whom we named Alfred Lord Tennisanyone, for his ability to expertly bat small objects.  Alfie obligingly followed us to Virginia and back to Massachusetts. His specialty was finding odd places to hide.  When we moved into a temporary apartment in Alexandria, he promptly went walkabout and took an elevator to the lobby.  He charmed everyone he met, and his affection could be purchased by the highest bidder, preferably in the form of food. He developed pancreatitis at 16.

T.R., circa 2002

After another period of mourning, we adopted another shelter cat, this one from New Hampshire.  Though he was almost certainly a Red Sox fan, T.R. (Tabby la Rasa) was a one-of-a-kind homebody who cheerfully followed Betty around the house, laid at her feet, and slept at the foot of our bed, snoring like a sailor.  He lived to the ripe old age of 21 and even adorns the cover of one of my books.

That's T.R.!

After T.R.’s death, we elected to be a pet-free household for a period of time. Our travel schedules for both business and pleasure were hectic, and we reasoned a cat should not know his or her sitter better than Mom and Dad. After three years, though, I sensed we were both ready for another furry face in our family.  We would adopt a cat for Christmas.

That was when I discovered the rules had changed.  The Medfield Animal Shelter, which once had daily visiting hours for animals and humans to assess one another, now required an online application process including references.  Fortunately, one of our long-time members of the Community Garden is a foster parent for ‘hard-to-place’ animals, and could speak well of our prior stewardship.

Moreover, the supply-demand equation for adoptions had changed.  In Massachusetts, even feral animals are routinely spayed and neutered, then re-released into the wild.  As a result, there are few local animals available.  Instead, adoptable cats and dogs come from other regions.

Abigail Adams

Last Wednesday, our application having been vetted, we were invited to meet three cats.  All were from Florida; two had required just-completed major surgery.  We had our heart set on a domestic shorthair and there was an eight-month-old female tuxedo who peered at us with that ‘please take me home with you’ kind of look that melted your heart.  ‘Zoe’ has been born in April and surrendered to a shelter in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida.  She had lived with a foster family for a few months but, as we were told, there is no demand for shelter cats in south Florida but there is a continuing supply because pets are not routinely neutered. Thus, Zoe and her companions were put on a plane and flown to New England.

After a half-hour introduction, we said, ‘we’ll take her’.  She came home that same afternoon.

I suggested naming her Abigail Adams; both to honor an illustrious Founding Mother and because one of my favorite characters in my books, Liz Phillips, has a cat named Abigail.  As everyone who reads the series already thinks Liz is Betty’s crime-solving alter ego, I figured we might as well bow to public pressure. Betty agreed. We had our 'Cat Who Came for Christmas', albeit a few weeks early.

Abigail came to our house as a frightened and disoriented animal.  A week earlier, she had been in a Miami-area apartment with a foster family and, likely, other cats (though the notes from the foster parents stated clearly this cat would be happiest as a lone animal in an all-adult household).  Then, she was on a plane, and likely not in Business Class.  Next, she was in a shelter in a (large) cage.  Abigail was understandably skittish, quick to bite or scratch, and constantly on the lookout for hiding places.  On her first full day with us, we spent two hours ferreting her out of closets; once memorably burying herself in a box of ribbons.

By Saturday, though, she seemed to have acclimated herself to her new surroundings.  She lay under a table while we watch a movie; she even made a foray into our bedroom after we retired, before determining that was 'too much too soon' on the familiarity scale.

Sunday morning, she was not in her sleeping tent (an Amazon box with cut-outs for seeing the surrounding terrain).  Abigail was found hiding in a closet and, once discovered, took off like a shot. I had promised to fetch breakfast from a favorite bakery in Wellesley.  Betty went out to the end of the driveway to bring in the newspapers.  When I called to say I was on my way home, Betty told me she had not seen Abigail since that lone encounter at 6:40 a.m.

The sink unit

We searched what we had come to think of as her ‘usual hiding places’ without success. We began to wonder if Abigail had somehow slipped out of the house when I went to the bakery and Betty gathered the newspapers. After breakfast, we did a more thorough search.  No cat.  We walked around outside – we had a Nor’easter on Saturday and there was a crust of snow on the ground and temperatures in the low 30’s.  No cat.

We then did a room-by-room search, taking apart cushions and tipping up every piece of furniture.  We truly scoured the house.  No cat.  I theorized Abigail might be hiding in the garage (what self-respecting, Miami-born cat would venture out into the snow?). Betty checked the basement, even though we were both certain the basement door was closed. No cat.

Cat's-eye view of the sink

As the afternoon wore on and the temperature began to fall, we made two more extensive circuits of our property, looking for where a cat might shelter. At twilight and exhausted, we took a nap.  Half an hour into the nap, I was awakened by what I was convinced was mewing and, running into our living room, was convinced I saw Abigail huddled outside at the door to our screened porch.  Fifteen minutes of frantic searching yielded no confirmation. I must have been dreaming.

We looked at one another and, for the first time, began to accept the terrifying reality that Abigail was lost.  She had insufficient fur or body fat to survive a New England night, and would be easy prey for the multiple carnivores that live in the conservation land behind our home. Our only hope was someone found her on the street, took her in, and would phone the animal shelter in the morning.

Feeling horrible and guilty for our neglect, neither of us felt like having dinner.  We read the newspapers and then books.  Around 8 p.m., sitting in our living room, we heard a noise; a ‘thump’ sound.  We looked at one another, and investigated every place we had previously looked. Still no cat. Maybe it was snow coming off the roof.

A 5"-deep cave

We returned to the sofa. Ten minutes later, another thump.  This was definitely from inside the house, and likely from our small upstairs which consists of two modest bedroom/offices and a small bathroom.  We re-inspected every space.  Then, on a hunch, Betty opened a small tightly-closed and never-used drawer under a sink. There, inside, was a trapped cat.  It had somehow launched itself into the drawer from underneath the sink through a hole a few inches on a side.

Last night, Abigail was officially invited to sleep on a blanket at the foot of our bed.  She declined, of course. For all we know, she was highly annoyed it took us so long to suss out her hiding place.  Over time, perhaps, she will come to understand humans neither possess supersensitive noses nor are mind readers.  But I’m not counting on a thank-you.

To Zoom or Not to Zoom, That Is the Question

Eight months ago – which now can be thought of as the ‘Before Time’ – I wrote about attending a talk by horticulturalist Dan Jaffe held at a garden club in a neighboring town.  There, in front of 35 or 40 people, Dan put on a virtuoso performance under the most unimaginable of circumstances: he could not project his presentation onto a screen.  Rather than cancel  as would have been his right (the club had promised a compatible projector), Dan pivoted to a different strategy: he pared his visuals to a minimum and walked the room, holding his modest-sized laptop for groups to see. 

I truly enjoy presentations

I was reminded of that talk twice this week.  Wednesday evening, I again watched Dan (doing a different presentation) speaking to a group numbering more than 300.  The presentation was via Zoom, a computer program that had become our de facto tool for education in a time in which we cannot assemble in groups.

Dan’s topic that evening was about incorporating native plants into landscapes.  He has dazzling visuals for his presentations and he possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of his topic.  But his hour-long talk was marred by technical glitches beyond his control: video freezes and audio that was often hard to hear.  At one point, his audience got a tour of Dan’s home as he moved from an office/study to sit adjacent to his router in a different room.  Further, Dan's slides aren't especially compatible with a small computer screen (see the photo at right).  Most of his slides contain multiple images, which look fine when projected on a six- or eight-foot screen – but were difficult to absorb on a 14-inch monitor.  And, without a laser pointer, deciphering which cultivar he was discussing was sometimes problematic.  Also, in the February presentation, Dan was interrupted every few slides by questions from the audience, which added to everyone's understanding of the presentation, and had the added benefit of forcing Dan to slow down. On Wednesday evening, Dan fairly raced through his slides.  All in all, it wasn’t a disaster; just a disappointment. 

Many of Dan's slides incorporate
 multiple images - hard to see
on a small screen

I can feel for Dan Jaffe because, this week, I did my first Zoom presentation.  It was a fund-raising project for the Central Atlantic Region of National Garden Clubs.  Mine was the kick-off talk of a four-day, seven-speaker event that likely raised close to $10,000 for scholarships.

As much as I genuinely enjoy speaking to groups, I have turned down several dozen remote speaking opportunities since Covid-19 became part of our national language.  I did so because I did not think I could do justice to an audience.  Mine is not a set of canned presentations; a group of lectures that never need vary.  Rather, I continually ‘read’ my audience and adjust as I go.  As a result, no two audiences ever see and hear exactly the same talk. Also, my subject matter is tailored for a live audience.  It is intended as entertainment; to make people laugh (and laughter is infectious), and is ‘educational’ but certainly not 'education heavy'.

Zoom has become the de facto
tool for enabling meetings

In agreeing to do the presentation (the organizer was exceptionally persuasive), I knew I needed to re-think many of my visuals for ‘the small screen’.  I also would need to tailor the talk for an audience that would be viewing in Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland (among other states). I also rehearsed multiple times (including in a Zoom call with the conference organizer) and mastered (or so I thought) Zoom’s screen-sharing options.

Those requirements paled next to the elephant in the room: that I would be unable to see or hear my audience.  In my ‘dress rehearsal’ with the organizer, we were one-on-one and I could see and hear her reactions.  I could also see myself.  I knew if I were properly positioned within the camera’s frame and could judge whether my gestures were appropriate. I also had that wonderful crutch offered to all users of PowerPoint: a miniature image of my next slide alongside the current one. When you see a presenter doing effortless segues between topics, it’s because of that ‘preview’ pane on his or her laptop.

A speaker's best friend is the
preview pane (in the lower
right) showing the next slide

All of that disappeared when I presented at four in the afternoon this past Monday. I logged on half an hour early but quickly discovered the ‘dirty little secret’ of Zoom: unless you’re the host (as I had been in my rehearsals), you a) can’t see yourself, b) can’t see or hear your host or the audience, and c) don’t have access to that preview pane.  All I saw was my presentation and a small black rectangle with my name in it, where everyone else would see me speaking.  My audience, according to the Zoom counter visible to me at the bottom of the screen, was 133 strong.  Were they laughing, or were they going to the sideboard for another glass of wine?

I calmed down after a few slides and blew only one transition.  But, in my own estimation, I did a mediocre job.  I move around a fair amount and use hand gestures a great deal.  Because I could not see myself, I rigidly stayed in one position and minimized gestures.  I also went too fast (I know this because Betty kept holding up a sign that read SLOW DOWN!!!!).

Afterward, the organizer offered praise and said comments from attendees were uniformly positive.  I respectfully disagree.  I think I gave the audience less than half of what they deserved.  They got a well-rehearsed talk but there was no spontaneity because I couldn’t see or hear their reactions.  It was a two-dimensional talk that lacked depth and shading.

I enjoy connecting with my
audience (and, yes, selling
 books)

I realize I also failed in one other way:  When I present, I am invariably one of the first people to arrive (I even help set up chairs).  I speak to members as they come in.  I join conversations.  Sometimes, when it is a group with spouses, I even seed the husbands with the answers to arcane horticultural questions, then ask those questions before or during my presentation.  This pre-meeting chatter helps me to better understand my audience, with or without the mischief.

I haven't done a live, in-person presentation of any program since the first week of March - more than 40 presentations have been canceled.  While I miss those audiences, based on my Zoom experience, I'll wait out the pandemic and hope clubs remember me in 2021.

The Apple Antidote to a Covid Autumn

I turned down $50 for this mask

Between us, Betty and I own 14 face masks.  Four of them are of the blue surgical variety and two are wince-worthy, home-made efforts from patterns printed in The New York Times back in March.  Eight, though, were crafted from the best silk ties from my long-ago working days.  These masks were sewn by two home-sheltering college students and look quite professional.  I was even offered fifty dollars for one of them – an authorized replica of the cover of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s album – while standing in line at a bakery one recent Sunday morning (I turned down the deal).  

A sign of the times by the back door

The masks, which hang on a rack by the door into our garage, are a continuing, cautionary reminder of the reality that, seven months after we first recognized we had a pandemic on our hands, the out-of-doors are still a place where a dangerous disease lurks and chance encounters on a walk around the block – let alone in supermarkets – are inevitably awkward exercises in you-go-that-way-and-we’ll-go-this-way social distancing.  And, this is in Medfield, a town of 11,000 that had reported fewer than 50 Covid-19 cases as of the end of September.

Every garden has its way to
remind us to social distance

Even trips to gardens, with all their color, texture, and scents; are sobering reminders of the ‘new normal’.  We have enjoyed day-trip sojourns as far away as Maine and as close as the Massachusetts Horticultural Society’s Gardens at Elm Bank, but every trip has been an exercise in safety: masks must be worn at all times and hand-sanitizing stations are placed wherever you might be required or tempted to handle something. Even with timed tickets to limit crowds, garden paths are the scene of polite pas-de-deux to determine who will backpedal to the nearest cove to let the other party pass with a six-foot buffer.

Ripe Macoun apples

On the last day of September, however, Betty and I made our annual pilgrimage to Doe Orchards, a place un-scarred by the events of 2020.  Each year, when the Macoun apples are ripe, we make at least one near-hundred-mile round trip to this family-owned orchard located on a hilltop outside Route 495 in the rustic town of Harvard, Mass.  There, we fill a large bag with apples and, for quality control purposes, enjoy one or two along the way.  

I wore a mask for this
photo just to prove
it was taken in 2020

The orchard has 15 varieties of apples (each trunk is color-coded) on 60 acres, but we inevitably head directly for the Macouns, an apple with superb taste that is also ideal for cooking.  There were only five cars in the parking lot when we arrived so, as soon as we were out of sight of the farm stand, we shed our masks to enjoy a warm, early autumn day. It was a leisurely exercise: we inspected five trees before we picked our first apple.  I grew up knowing only Red Delicious apples that had withstood withering heat and oppressive humidity on their 600-mile trip from orchards in the mountains of North Carolina to supermarket shelves in tropical Miami.  Betty, on the other hand, grew up in upstate New York’s apple country and has sworn by Macouns for decades.  She inspects each candidate and takes only those that meet her high standard.

The bag will be empty in two weeks

We devoted more than an hour to filling our admittedly large bag and, in the time, saw just one lone, bag-toting picker pass down a path 50 feet distant.  When the winds were right, we also heard voices which turned to be orchard employees picking off ladders seven rows away.

We also just… wandered.  The orchard thoughtfully mows the aisles, so moving from one tree – or variety – is an easy task.  There are also vistas where you can take in the surrounding terrain.  In such a place, and with masks stowed in pockets, it is possible to forget about the world and its troubles for an hour or so.  We certainly did.

Our first Molly O'Neill apple
walnut cake of the season

The apples will become crisps, cobblers, snacks, and a special treat called the Molly O’Neill Upside-Down Apple Walnut Cake.  In a few short weeks, long before they have had an opportunity to soften or lose flavor, our bag of apples will be gone.  But, while they last, they will be a reminder of both a pre-mask path and the hope of a mask-free 2021.

A September Gardening Tale

Every year in August, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts sets aside one weekend when the state’s 6.25% sales tax is waived on purchases under $2,000.  The tax holiday was originally intended to help strapped parents lessen the cost of school materials for their children, and college students stock up on critical dorm items such a newer model expresso machine.

 Like all good ideas, though, the tax holiday quickly spiraled out of control and became the once-a-year opportunity to reduce the final price of 84-inch hi-def televisions, iPhone 11s, and Peloton exercise systems. Back-to-school backpacks have long receded in the rear-view mirror.

Pop quiz: On August 29, 2020, which of these items did Betty and Neal buy (hint: the title of this blog contains the consecutive letters g-a-r-d-e-n)?

a)     A CyberPowerPC gaming system to save $106.25 in sales tax

b)     A Fuji Sportif racing bike to save $61.69 in sales tax

c)     A Kitchen-Aid convection microwave to save $48.43 in sales tax

d)     Seven cubic yards of dark brown mulch to save $14.37 in sales tax

* * * * *

The mulch was delivered by Sam White & Sons on September 1, and piled neatly on the parking pad in front of our home.  We, of course, were on our way to the beach.

I should add a note about Mr. White’s business.  If the Harvard Business School was truly on the ball, they would send out a crack team of grad students to write a case study on Sam White & Sons, and then devote a full semester each year to learning the genius of his business model.  When you walk into the Sam White’s office, you see two credit card readers.  As we paid for our mulch, I started to insert my credit card in the one on the left.  “Use the other one,” I was instructed.  “What’s this one for?” I asked.  “That’s for incoming stuff,” was the reply.

Apple Computer has a trillion-dollar market valuation.  In its most recent quarter, it’s ‘cost of goods sold’ was about 62 cents for every dollar of revenue, meaning its ‘gross profit margin’ was about 38 cents per dollar of sales.  Sam White & Sons has no ‘cost of goods sold’.  In fact, it charges you to drop off the same stuff they will sell to me.  All they do is grind it up, sort it by size and color, and put a price on it.  If the company went public, I figure Sam White’s market valuation would be a couple of billion, easily.  Enough on the subject.

Our first act as gardeners
was to top our loam with mulch

The front of our property (the back is wetlands) is roughly half an acre and there is nary a blade of grass to be seen. It’s all plants: trees, shrubs, perennials, and annuals (well, there’s also a house and a driveway, so let’s call it 20,000 square feet of garden).  After five years, those plants – and especially the shrubs and perennials – have made it a fairly dense proposition.  Back in 2015, our first act as gardeners was to put down four or five inches of mulch atop 965 cubic yards of loam before we planted anything on the property. 

Five years later, our garden is quite dense

Mulch, however, breaks down over time into, well, soil.  By this summer, the remaining mulch was thin enough weeds grew through it.  We needed to do something.  The logical thing would be to call a garden service and tell them to come mulch our garden for us.

But there was much more to the project than just throwing down mulch.  Volunteer plants – and especially wandering perennials – had insinuated themselves into areas of the garden they didn’t belong.  Tiny but insistent weeds needed to be dug out; throwing mulch on them would only retard their inevitable appearance.  Shrubs needed to be thinned.  In short, this was the kind of eagle-eyed and meticulous work that could not be entrusted to an outsider. We had to do this project ourselves.

The mulch pile, roughly half gone

We started every morning at 6:30 and worked until the sun made gardening uncomfortable – always before noon.  And, we made good progress.  The pile dwindled each day.

But it was still there: out where everyone driving by could see it.  When a week passed and three cubic yards remained, we began pushing ourselves to finish what we had started.  Last Thursday we made a final, gallant effort to finish the job, and succeeded in at least making it look to nosy neighbors like we were done: all the mulch was now in the back of the garden and the parking pad was mulch-free.

We took care of lots of
garden maintenance

And, sometimes when you’re at the end of a job, you press too hard.  That’s what we both did.  On that last morning, Betty later acknowledged her back been bothering her (she has the eye and the horticultural knowledge to know what ought to be removed; my skills are weeding and making pretty edges with the mulch).  By mid-afternoon, Betty’s back was telling her she had abused it once too often.  By Friday morning, the act of getting out of bed was excruciating.

Five days and two trips to urgent care later, her back is feeling better.  The garden looks magnificent; not just because of the mulch, but because of the culling of surplus plants and the removal of six, 50-gallon bags of garden detritus.

There's no question about its beauty...

There is a lesson here, but I’m uncertain what it is.  On the one hand, Betty and I ought to have done the obvious thing and hired one of the six ‘garden maintenance’ firms in Medfield to do the spreading for us.  But had we done so we would have hovered over whomever we had hired at $15 an hour to ensure they were doing the job properly.  And, we would have inevitably become frustrated because hired hands never spy everything the gardener sees.  We would have been in the garden exactly as long as if we had done it ourselves and have paid other people handsomely in the process; but at least we wouldn’t have back spasms.

...and we're good on maintenance until spring

On the other hand, at 70 and 71, we’re getting to the age where both bicep-building and stoop gardening induces back pains.  Fortunately, Betty designed our garden to be ‘low maintenance’. Unfortunately, ‘low maintenance’ is still ‘some maintenance required’.  September’s mad dash to get a job done will carry us through to next spring.  By then, however, hundreds of birds will have deposited alien seeds (complete with fertilizer packets), around the garden. The wind will have brought in still more interlopers, and rhizomes will be rhizomes.  In short, the whole rodeo starts again in March.

Fortunately, nothing will be piled in our parking pad.