I grew up in a suburban development southwest of Chicago, a set of little identical ranch houses built on farmland, formerly prairie. My dad allocated each of us kids approximately two square feet of land behind the new garage, where we could grow something. I grew moss roses and nicotiana and four o’clocks. I also had a guide to wildflowers, organized by color, that I studied diligently. I collected specimens from the roadsides and culverts – chicory, butter-and-eggs, Queen Anne’s Lace – and pressed them in heavy books.

Fast forward 50 years, more or less, since those days in Illinois. Some things have changed a lot, and others haven’t changed that much. I have a little patch of land where I live in Hancock, Maine, and an even tinier patch on a lake in nearby Franklin. I have a career in technology, mostly behind me now. I’ve spent a lot of time writing, reading, listening to, and thinking about poetry, only to find myself moving away from words and toward visual arts at this late date. I still love plants, cultivated, wild, and in-between.

Ironic that this is a WordPress site. For me these days, words come slowly or not at all. And there is no heaviness here that lets me press things between these virtual pages. Nevertheless I see this site as a place to capture what I study and collect, a place I can share with others I meet along the road.