This is a photo from June 2007 — before the garden’s last revision, in 2009, and before my friend Karen Kukil said, in late July of this year: This is a finished work of art. Thank you, Karen. The house is sold. The deal has closed. We’ve said our goodbyes, the salt from our tears washed away by the weekend’s rain.

Mary Oliver, again:

Goodbye, house.
Goodbye, sweet and beautiful house,
we shouted, and it shouted back,
goodbye to you, and lifted itself
down from the town, and set off
like a packet of clouds across
the harbor’s blue ring,
the tossing bell, the sandy point — and turned
lightly, wordlessly,
into the keep of the wind
where it floats still —
where it plunges and rises still
on the black and dreamy sea.