Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

Devising a vocabulary for gardening is like devising a vocabulary for sex. There are the correct Latin names, but most people invent euphemisms. Those who refer to plants by Latin name are considered more expert, if a little pedantic.

Symbolic of life, hair bolts from our head[s]. Like the earth, it can be harvested, but it will rise again. We can change its color and texture when the mood strikes us, but in time it will return to its original form, just as Nature will in time turn our precisely laid-out cities into a weed-way.

The further we distance ourselves from the spell of the present, explored by our senses, the harder it will be to understand and protect nature's precarious balance, let alone the balance of our own human nature.

Nature is more like a seesaw than a crystal, a never-ending conga line of bold moves and corrections.

Hurricane season brings a humbling reminder that, despite our technologies, most of nature remains unpredictable.