On impulse, after trying a nice Milton rose wine at dinner the night before, we dropped into Milton Vineyard, which had a cellar door in a lovely old wooden house on a little hill, overlooking
a massive gum tree and dam.
Most startling of all, for the survivors and rescue workers both, was the realization that the main dusty square was rooted so firmly by half a dozen
massive trees,
trees that had gone all but unnoticed in all those years, their shadows dingy with commerce, their branches cranked low with hanging wares, their droppings of mulberry collected and sold — until the bomb had loosened the green
gums of the
trees and sent down a shower of leaves, which Mr. Khurana kicked up on the ground as he tried to uncover the bodies of his two sons.