A small room inside a bay window. A single bed, a table and chair, and a sink. I could manage something larger, with more conveniences, but I could never match the view.

Snowdrops, crocuses, narcissus -- then everything else. (The first to emerge, the first to die.)

We delight in the sight of these bulb-based plants, but in death we have no words for them, no observations.

What of our floral world do we like best in dying? The maple leaf, Canada's most widely recognized symbol? The arbutus, a vine that carries aspects of its past deaths?