Friends —
I spent yesterday on my knees in the side yard. Chickweed has made a green rug beside the rain barrel, plantain is fat and tender along the gravel path, and my old comfrey patch has erupted into a green fountain. Three of the most useful plants I grow, looking up at me at once — and between them they handle most of what a summer throws at a body: itches, stings, bites, splinters, bruises, the ankle that rolled on the garden steps. This week is less an almanac and more a first-aid drawer.