When I was a boy the slopes leading down to the beach were covered in ice plant to hold down erosion. Wikipedia says there are “135 genera and about 1800 species [ … ] of dicotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as ice plants or carpet weeds.” I haven’t seen those slopes in years, or rather decades, but I recognize these as exactly the type I used to walk through on my way down to the sandy beach. Not pretty, always a bit forlorn, but highly effective. I found this patch in the front yard of a house on the way to dinner at the Vets Hall. It brought back so many memories that there isn’t time enough even to outline them. Ice plant was a part of summer for me. It grew only at the beach and nowhere else, though it must have grown in all sorts of places. When you’re young you tend to accept things as given more than later when you develop the capacity to pursue things. Ice plant was simply part of the beach, and the beach was part of summer, and summer lasted almost forever. And now there’s a patch of it in the front yard of a house not far from here, and I wonder if it means anything to anyone but me, because it seems to mean absolutely everything.