As higher education researchers, we bear a responsibility to tend to the current state of our research and to the outlook for its future in light of its various purposes, the politics that inform these purposes, and the practices they expose. In the ASHE 2023 Presidential Address, Dr. Ana M. Martínez-Alemán asks us to reflect on and consider--as poets would--the stories our research tells and the possibilities that our current research tapers. How do we tend to the established geographies of our research--the roses in the "front yard"--and investigate "rough and untended" research unknowns?