Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

This afternoon, cattitude and I went for a walk in our usual bit at the north end of Inwood Hill Park, around the soccer field, mostly looking for violets. We found two violets, a bit of purple clover, white and pink lady's thumbs, some remnant jewelweed, and a dandelion.

We also found that a piece of retaining wall had collapsed, along the hillside near the south edge of the soccer field: from the looks of it, rain and runoff had been wearing away the mortar for quite a while, and about half of the wall was lying in pieces in the drainage ditch below where it had been standing. There's some wall left, with no obvious damage (it's still basically vertical), but I expect and hope that the Parks Department will inspect it, confirm or refute that fast analysis, and figure out what to do with the pieces of broken wall. (I'm guessing they'll decide that a retaining wall is still a good idea there, and either repair it or build a new one; I have no idea how long such things take, however, in part because I don't know if three or four meters of stone wall less than a meter high have to be treated as a capital expense, or can be handled financially as routine maintenance.)