Windblown
Under the lilac, whose plum-colored blooms had long since fallen away, the grass fell long in a single direction, set by the storm a week before. The shrub leaned in a new way toward the ornamental pond, now full of leaves that would never be strained.
In the coming years, we would often take trouble to walk a different way through the garden, not daring to look in the thickening algae, which now held the scent of Manhattan sidewalks in summer, unable to stop ourselves from thinking how easy it would be to set the top of the lawn chair back in an upright position.
It would take another owner of the house to redesign the space.