More on: Susan Neville

Throughout the winter, Dr. Iske obsessively polished their furniture with oil. He had studied plant biology in college before going on to med school, and when he saw varnished wood, he saw the tree it had come from.

IN LATE OCTOBER I started painting the trim around the outside of the windows white. I finished the east and south sides of the house and moved my ladder to the west. The red leaves were falling from the sugar maple and the buckeyes from the buckeye tree, and the squirrels were making their strangely…