I’m covered with long scabbed scratches from pruning my raspberry jungle the other day. Earlier, I dug up the wildly proliferating baby evening primrose and replanted them here and there. Both raspberry canes and primrose send out lateral roots: beware.

A bunch of phlox I dug up sit in a bucket by the sidewalk: FREE PHLOX. Same with some tiger lilies. On my porch table are eight pots of inch plant I rooted a few weeks ago. (Want one?)

It’s foolish to let raspberries and peonies and lilies and black-eyed Susans and primrose run rampant in your garden, crowding out both each other and any glimpse of ground, but I am helpless before their beauty.

Tree, by Jane Hirshfield

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books —

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.​ 

Click here for more information about Jane Hirshfield. Today’s poem first appeared in Given Sugar, Given Salt, published in 2001.  

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My podcast: Words by Winter