(Embiggen to really see. The picture was taken this morning.)

While so many trees are dropping their leaves and skinny-dipping their way towards winter, the California Coffeeberries are dressing themselves in sweet-smelling blooms, ready to provide: the bees and hummingbirds, for now, the berries to come, everything else. The density of the branches in the spring provides perfect cover for many a bird and nest. This, not the bird-poisoning-berry non-native Nandina, is what everyone should plant here. (It can survive down to -20F.)

I wrote that. Stopped a moment. Considered the thing. I put down the computer and slipped on the gardening shoes and walked outside where it was cold and dark and a bit wet from a storm and leaned into a flower cluster, and oh my word, took a deep breath.

I had been admiring it all day. But I had somehow forgotten to go and take in the whole of it.