This short length of fence has been a crumbling mismatch for most of the nearly three decades I’ve been in this house, but it was a small enough section that it didn’t succumb to wind and decay; it was left alone, while we eventually replaced all of the other fences around the property, in three projects with three different neighbor-homeowners. Also, not much of it, or the unsightly utility yard next door, showed when my huge osmanthus bush/tree was still there.

This week, yay! Its replacement is completed, with the trusty workers fitting it in between rain storms and showers. They did get dripped on a bit even so. One of them is my garden helper Alejandro. The new fence is taller than the old, and of unfinished redwood to match all the other fences on the property.

It’s only cloudy and breezy today. I thought I would take a walk, then I thought I would read and drink tea, then I wandered out in the back garden, but only briefly, because it wasn’t welcoming, somehow…? How odd. But I was there long enough to see an iris just opened. This dwarf species has never been very impressive — until this one. Maybe one has to see them newborn, after a downpour but not having been poured upon.

Tomorrow the sun is likely to shine on the beautiful things that brighten the landscape on their own today.