I study the petunias. Some vibrant pink and others royal purple, but more, the difference in their growth and style. Bushy or leggy, to pinch or not to pinch in order to encourage growth?
The salvias are more alert and receptive. Snipping back the main stalk after flowering, down to the telltale spurt of facing sets of new leaf, I am rewarded shortly thereafter with a many-stemmed flowering crown.
When do we know where to cut to enable the branching out of story? To elicit from a single-minded plot the possibilities that will end in many blooms?
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology