Why do I like this one so much? Sometimes it’s hard to answer that, but for this one it’s easy. These are native plants that became a pet commercial product; you see them in landscaping sections of big box stores around here de rigeur. But ours– that one is definitely not a Home Depot special (I prefer Lowe’s given patterns of donations made by the respective businesses, but it’s less poetic). This one is growing in an inopportune spot along a fenceline that runs where the driveway swerves to accommodate some oaks, further proof it wasn’t a curated planting but just something that, maybe 75 or 100 years ago, you might have just found growing wild, and wouldn’t have wondered whether it was put there by human hands.

