UD woke up early today (she always wakes up early) and wandered into the office – a messy space, full of books. She glanced out the windows at her front garden to see what sort of day it was (overcast) and gradually realized that her split rail fence, one section of which had long ago fallen to the ground (under the weight of a massive snow storm), had been rebuilt!

Right after that snow storm, UD had dragged the fallen rails into her woods and hadn’t replaced them. They were an end piece, and Les UDs thought the fence looked okay without its last section.

A year ago, my neighbor, Caroline, asked if she could have the rails for her new garden design, and UD said take them.

And now that section of the split rail fence had been restored! The new wood was almost yellow next to the weathered gray of the rest of the fence. It had been expertly installed.

Who had done it? When? Why did I only notice it this morning?

Because Les UDs had come home late last night. Both had had long days on campus; and then, when Mr UD picked me up at Grosvenor metro, I proposed that we continue down the Rockville Pike and have dinner at the place we call Ninja Loser (few people go there and UD can never remember its actual name), so we spent a couple of hours eating their spectacular avocado salad and shrimp tempura rolls.

By the time we got back to Garrett Park, it was too dark to notice the new rails.

But here they were, mysteriously ablaze on the end of my old fence…

Mr UD went out to the driveway to get the New York Times and he scrutinized the thing.

“Who replaced it?” he asked.

“Well,” said UD, “here are some possibilities. An anonymous samaritan. A company delivering rails to someone else in town that found itself with a few extra. An act of God.”

“Nothing persuasive there.”

“No, look, here’s the deal. I think. The town did it. The town’s crew did it. They do all sorts of sprucing-up jobs around town, and they eventually noticed our less-than-complete split rail fence. It’s our Garrett Park taxes at work.”

“That’s probably it. But there’s a bit of complexity here…”

“Yes. That land is owned by the town, not by us. The town owns a bunch of feet of land in front of every house. We paid for the fence, but it’s really the town’s, since it sits on land that belongs to Garrett Park. So the town has the right to do whatever it wants with the fence, I guess. Even fix it.”