A wind is moving the shrubs and tall trees around the red brick house swathed in English ivy and Virginia creeper. In the backyard are the gardens of flowers, vegetables, and fruit trees where much of the sisters’ table comes from in the summer. Tomatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, and many herbs lie under the sun, and surrounding the borders of their yard, cherry, pear and apple trees thrive. This morning amid this profusion of early autumn abundance Anna is transplanting a small tree. She is a dramatic contrast to her sibling, lacking in the taste and care for her appearance that her sister exhibits. Skinny but not frail, she wears her father’s old plaid hunting jacket, faded brown corduroy pants, and battered construction boots. Where other women might look as if they were about to attend a tea as they gardened, Anna looks like a gravedigger. She moved…
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