I’m sitting out here, watching the azaleas, and it’s a good display this year—the red ones, almost vermilion. Seventy-six years old and still, when I look at the dogwood, my mind drifts to soil composition, to root systems, to how it all INTERLOCKS. It’s an old habit, a phantom limb almost, the urge to sketch out a planting plan instead of running through depreciation schedules in my head. The books were always balanced, of course, every ledger line precise, but the satisfaction… that was never as deep as the satisfaction of seeing a new bed of hostas take hold, of watching something grow that *I* had designed. Practicality was the compass, always, and it pointed me true to a pension, but sometimes I wonder if I missed the map entirely.