These flowers don't want to be watered, they want to be firewatered...

When I asked Verona resident Floyd Cardoz how his life had changed in the 36 hours after he emerged victorious in season three of Bravo’s Top Chef Masters last week, he said half-jokingly, “I’ve suddenly become a ‘personality.’ I now have many more followers on Facebook.”

A broken fence, where rain courses through, begins to dry out...

Behind a strip mall, an odd structure seemingly dedicated to cleanliness falls into disrepair...

At a newly renovated car wash in Verona, this tableau of American values...

On this Independence Day, as every day, the Stars and Stripes may turn up anywhere, even in nooks and crannies.

Windshield wipers were challenged throughout the day Monday, as were umbrellas, galoshes and all the rest of the stay-dry paraphrenalia.

From behind the wheel of my car, traffic looked like this...

Forsythia are in bloom. A stubborn plant, it heralds spring in its brassy garish way, flourishing where people want it, where they never wanted it, where no one remembers it even exists.

Pitted against neglect and decay, as here, it mocks our indifference to what we have left behind.