We pay to have the scruffy yews replaced by red elf coreopsis and balloon flowers, the dwarf variety, each cutting selected for its sweet bee perfume, the whole fenced in by fuschia-bright phlox. It’s a good plan, well-researched and weed-tended, until the morning I spy a wild invader’s stalk, rising like a Trojan horse with spine so tall it quickly outpaces the lame domesticated roots, races upward, one foot, two, ten, each leap a succulent invitation to butter

"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact." William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream When Theseus says these words to Hippolyta in the play at his wedding, he is tolerating her reaction to the strange romantic doings of the human and ethereal spirits in the woods. I like to think the lines apply to all of us who find July a time to moon gaze at night, read entertaining novels in the afternoon