A private record of small observances — pressed between pages, held against light, read in the margins of other thoughts.
Each specimen retains the memory of the afternoon it was gathered — the particular slant of October light, the coolness of stone underfoot, a pause before folding it into the pages of whatever book was at hand.
The annotations accumulate over seasons, returning to earlier entries with revised understanding.
The color of dried foxglove petals after two years between pages approaches the exact shade of bruised twilight — a purple so deep it borders on black at the center.
cf. the way certain knowledge settles into the body — not remembered but recognized, the way a scent retrieves a decade.
Returned to this entry on a cold afternoon, finding it wiser than I had been when I wrote it.
Years of observation deposit a sediment of understanding — not systematic, not scientific in the formal sense, but honest in the way that patient attention always is.