I believed hydrangeas purpled from pennies stuck in the ground at their feet— But science says it's the amount of acidity or aluminum in the soil. On this coast, we're sinking at least three feet lower, buckling in the middle like an overcrowded shelf. Too much water or too little. Thirst of leaf and bloom overlapping on every tongue. Lithologies exhuming shells of every composition— glacial stones in a farmer's field, the bodies of two dead bees on my threshold.