I feel like I must have visited my garden and these woods before.

But when I look up from digging in this hot shower of summer, I barely recognize where I am.

The brown-eyed Susans and the domes of wild phlox are taller than I am, walls of green flashing with electrified yellow and lavender neon. The giant ragweed makes dark corridors down to the stream, and the pipevine smothers the leaning pergola of shrubs and trees beneath.

I feel certain this was exactly where I was in early February when the trees plainly framed a view of the river and the fields beyond, and my eyes could walk a straight line for a half a mile without a leaf or flower to distract me. I must have been right here again in March, when the butterweed and egg-blue plantain emerged like a wet painting from the brown ground. And in May, when the last of the bare oaks unrolled their shade, and the vines in soft curls began their tall assault.

My friends say, “Come with us to the beach,” or to the high mountains, or some new old place in Europe where the tourists rave. You’ve seen enough of where you are.

But these aren’t just new seasons in Alabama. Each month is so full of changes, I’m always living in a place I’ve never visited before.