“To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, / One clover, and a bee. / And revery. / The revery alone will do, / If bees are few.” — Emily Dickinson
We’re not ones to curate perfection on Snob Hill. Nature has its own aesthetic, and frankly, we find it far more compelling than anything we could plan. That’s why we were both amused and amazed when a volunteer sunflower recently sprang up in one of the least likely spots imaginable—a patch of dry, unimpressive earth that we hadn’t so much as looked at twice. Yet here it is: tall, determined, and just today, blooming with a sunny, audacious face that seems to say, “I’m here, and I meant to be.”
This season has brought another unexpected gift: bees. While we had planned to purchase two packages, life on Snob Hill had other plans. One colony arrived via swarm trap—buzzing in and making themselves right at home. The second simply showed up and settled into one of our empty hives as if they had RSVP’d to a party we didn’t know we were hosting. Now, both colonies are thriving. Like the volunteer plants, the bees seem drawn to this place. And like us, they’ve decided to stay.
It’s not the first time this hill has surprised us. Each year, morning glories crop up like old friends, weaving themselves around our more “intentional” plants and adding their own flair to the garden party. We’ve never had the heart—or the nerve—to stop them.
This season, a plucky little cherry tomato plant has joined the mix—growing precariously from the side of one of our composters, as if it simply couldn’t resist the challenge. It’s now locked in a gentle battle with an ambitious young morning glory, the two of them twisting and reaching around each other in a slow-motion scramble for sun and space. We’re staying out of it. Whatever will be, will vine.
Our favorite tale of garden tenacity, though, has to be the pumpkin we came to call Princess Pumpkin. She arrived via a renegade vine that slipped through the front fence, across the patio, and onto our wrought iron table—where she proceeded to drop a single fruit in the very center, like a centerpiece chosen by nature herself. We watched her grow from a curious orb to a proper pumpkin, flat and elegant, as though she were born knowing how to pose.
Not everyone embraces such randomness. Some prefer tidiness and symmetry and plants that stay politely where they’re put. We get it. But here on Snob Hill, we find joy in the wild surprises—the volunteers, the scramblers, the uninvited guests who make themselves right at home.
“Wildflowers don’t care where they grow.”
— Dolly Parton
Here’s to the sunflowers that bloom where they shouldn’t, the tomatoes that tangle with poets, the bees that choose us, and every Princess Pumpkin waiting to be discovered.