Last evening, as dusk threaded in slowly, the 11-year-old and I played leisurely games of croquet, stepping around the blooming Siberian quills we planted late last fall. They flower in profusion over the lower leach field, whereas the other bulbs, in higher ground, are merely slender green leaves, with no apparent sign of flowering. Fitting?

That mimics a line I read early this morning from Katie Kitamura’s Separation.

Imagination, after all, costs nothing, it’s the living that is the harder part.