Before the harvest. Labor Day, Bishop, California

This is the sweetest corn I have ever tasted, these are the fattest carrots I have seen in years. What season brings this to us, hardly a harvest? For I have known harvests as bales of hay stacked by the barn, the wheat falling to threshers, the corn, radishes, pumpkins in their bins, the fruit in a flurry of selling and canning. And this - simply the carrot's weight in the palm, the sweet taste of ripe kernels warming the mouth in this unnamed season, this spell of delight.