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A quarter mile in the other direction, pink bellflowers and the conclusion of fragrant sweet peas grow in neat rows behind the rental home of Sophie Thompson.

This time of year, the valley shimmers with clumps of orange jewelweed and sapphire bellflowers that shoot up from a blanket of moss so soft you could lie down and sleep for a thousand years.

But that was changing: He pointed to butter-and-eggs, oxeye daisies, bellflowers, tufted vetch, hemp nettle, spotted jewelweed, creeping Charlie, common tansy, orange hawkweed.

Plants such as American bellflowers will take up the nitrogen from the dead cicadas, and herbivorous mammals and insects will selectively feed on the higher-nitrogen fertilized leaves, he adds.

Her aesthetic, which she describes as “minimalist maximalism,” is informed by everything from English botanical gardens to classical mythology and the seasonal flora of London — Siberian bellflower in late spring, magnolia and dogwood in summer.