Happy Veterans Day to everyone. If you are, ever were, or ever plan on being, in our nation’s accomplished military, please accept my humble civilian thanks for your service to this civilization, to this nation, to my family. If you are currently serving overseas, or are putting yourself in harm’s way, may your name return answered with every roll call. Blessings and utmost safety to you. We are grateful for

On the southwest corner of my front yard stands a double-forked black walnut tree. Its height of some forty-feet is ample enough to cast a belly shadow across the front porch of the house in the peak of summer. For that I am exceedingly grateful. By early October however, if not sooner, it becomes a skeleton of its formerly buoyant self. Its alternate compound leaves will have, by-and-large, fallen to