The only item on my list today was:’Take a brisk walk’. It was a great day for walking: sunny, an edge of cool, and a brisk wind to make my walk brisker. The walking improved my circulation and my mood, and I discovered street after street of character houses. These are lovely old villas and bungalows dating from the early 1900s or earlier, but most probably 1930s and 1940s. Most were well cared for, but often their street appeal was diminished by the ubiquitous high fence, too much hard surfacing for parking, or a garage placed in front of a bay window or verandah. Occasionally, there was one where character and garden were both loved.

There were some sympathetically-designed new builds but also the rows of townhouses I look at with some despair. There is hardly room to squeeze along the fence beside them let alone have a garden.

Some have room for a small courtyard but large trees don’t seem to be a possibility, just low-maintenance, ‘developer’s planting’. Even the trees seem to know it – look at the way that one, saved from its former garden, is leaning away.

One street on my walk has older houses where the trees are welcome and create sculptural shapes in winter. A lower fence with small trees for screening looks great. One house has no front fence at all and a rope swing which must be inviting to passing children.

As I walked back along my street I paused to photograph a lovely, and well-loved, cottage. I like that they have taken over the berm, something I’m working on in front of my house. Opposite my place, is a dear little villa which looked fabulous when the old high fence was removed – but it’s been replaced with a new high fence. Such a shame. I was hoping for a little picket fence or a wrought iron one with planting behind, or box hedging.

Images not photographed, but which I carry in my head, are of a row of gumboots from tiny to large on a front porch, a long-haired alsatian dog on its rug on a sofa on the verandah of a brick bungalow, and the number of trampolines visible above the ubiquitous high fences – which makes the fences understandable, I guess, where there are children to keep safe. There was also plenty of evidence of the restoration and renovation of these lovely old homes.