For all my minimalist tendencies, I do get carried away when it comes to fresh flowers in the house in summer.

We’d hiked up the foothill slope, between the gap in the rock rim, and down the back sway into the grassy bottom of the small valley that hugged the mountainside. It was evening. It was summer.

Back to pencil and paper. Back to revisions. Back to another early morning, sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea, looking out toward my garden space, reimagining.

Since mid July, there’s been wave upon wave of brilliant orange and red. The poppies just won’t stop.

Since early spring, I’ve been wanting to show you this. How the wild violas have found a place between the flagstones on the terrace.

It’s just beginning to lighten into a cloud-covered, gently snowing day. I’m watching a small bunch of deer playfully skitter

Spring’s eyelids are beginning to flutter in her sleep. Just over two weeks from now, the calendar says she’ll arrive

There would be Tansy, Queen Anne’s Lace, and fern of some kind. Beyond that, the wildflower market in northern Idaho would surprise me when I arrived.

Sunday, I planted seeds. There, beside the creek (in which Nellie was wading, wading, wading) I spread out the seed packets, bags of starter mix, seed trays, and the handful of wooden markers I’d found in my potting bench drawer.