This used to be prairie and woods, then farm fields. Now it’s a suburb, though that’s just a word that means “looks exactly like urban to me.” There’s a cost to this, prices to pay for surveying and surviving the gray horizons. In exchange for the not-arduous task of letting dandelions grow in the back yard, I get brilliant honeybees and loud, big as a thumb joint bumblebees. The dancing monarchs and swallowtails that brighten the front like sunbeams cost maybe twenty bucks of butterfly weed and bush at the nursery, some fresh dirt, and brief daily waterings. Oh, and I got my hands dirty and my heart clean, like being a child again, or at prayer. But the biggest return on investment, if you just have to quantify, is four cups of seed a day bringing me finches and sparrows, robins and grackles, red wings and mourning dove couples, all singing with wondrous and varied voices.