Everything  in turn in the garden.

How quickly have we forgotten

daffodils or snowdrops.

Tulips wiped out by one very hot day,

their seedpods clipped and discarded.

Out come the stars of the show even as lilac

has crumbled to a brown cone, unsightly but daring the gardener

to clip.  Let me alone or no blooms next year.

Here stand iris, furled with green sheaths

after a night rain ready to open, not quite ready…

and peony and pink rose.  Almost ready, but not quite.