Herbarium: Cobra Lily

You’d think nothing could unseat nasturtium, then one upstart beats another out of house and home and here we are: knee-deep in blades; waist-high in arched, flat-hooded flower sprays. Still awash in orange. Gone, the saucer-fat leaves, the petalled embellishments for bread and cheese. But early sweetness earns its keep: fierce hummingbirds descend for these keen mouths. Before spring springs. Disarming us until the longer light sets in.

Herbarium: Agapanthus ‘Mood Indigo’

Moodiest of blues, I salvaged you. My weathered spade. Your tuberous roots. Nectar rich, deciduous, emerald in leaf and stalk—untroubled monarch of the quasi-scruffy lilies of the Nile, your inky lot like jewels beside the lawn. Forgive the petty crime and tattered plastic pot, the spate of severings: you from your colony, me from my childhood grounds, one era from another, my mother from her home. And you hadn’t finished flowering. Winter was swift, too warm. The year was long.