“We're planting a butterfly garden,” she says.How will the bees feel about this? Buzzing in the thatches of purple spear salvia, singularly focused, they won't pay mind to the construction in the next door lot. And the hummingbirds? They have the honeysuckle trumpets and sugar water hanging from the eaves.

“I only want to eat flowers,” she says, easing her long body onto the grass and nibbling a nasturtium she plucked from the tumble between her garden and mine behind the quaint old homes neither of us own. She is usually not so whimsical; I pay attention.

“I don’t have the moxie for it,” she says when I tell her that on frozen days I go to the women-only baths to soak naked in the pools.