Mrs. Clusius in a dusty housecoat and a thin gold chain, that desiccated visitor with sparse white hair tucked under a canary turban emblazoned with a rhinestone broach, that anemic blossom whose waxy stalk thrusts through the cedar mulch, through manured soil loosely packed around her mass of bulbs and glands wrapped in papery husk, seizes her husband's discolored hand, bidding him farewell, urging him to hobble over the path, into the warmth of the kitchen.

Mr. Clusius on the path in scuffed and holey penny loafers, polished as well as his arthritis permitted - his graying socks moist from the large feathering snowflakes melting on the cobblestones - steadies his gaze on his perennial wife, watching the snow building in the folds of her turban, the fiery streaks that spread up her chest and lick her soft chin - a fungal infection that lent value to her ancestors before the development of durable cultivars.