In the Perennial Garden

Blisters, thorns, insect bites and sunburn are almost discernible in the lines of poetry that relate a life of engagement with the land and water of coastal Savannah. Ann Sheils, and many generations of her family, have lived a life informed by the perennial garden that is the world. Ann was given her first boat and motor at 12, and before that learned camellia grafting from her grandfather—activities that transformed her appreciation of both the real world and the insubstantial one that underlies it, and that taught the need for a “compromised flowering.”