The Long Valley

The Salinas Valley lies under a grey flannel fog that closes it off from the sky, and in a garden fenced against the wind a woman kneels over her chrysanthemums, cutting them back with hands so good at growing things that the skill has nowhere to go but into flowers. A tinker with a mending wagon admires them, she gives him shoots packed in wet sand, and miles down the road she sees them thrown out in the dirt: he kept the pot.