Merilyn Simonds title: A New Leaf: Growing With My Garden
embellishment
What Survives

he garden buries its head in the earth. The delphinium tops die off, the hostas too, until the garden flattens to an open plain. The plants that can’t disappear altogether become skeletons, shedding their leaves to present naked limbs to the icy storms. In this, nature seems a perverse and unreliable guide. I bundle up.