Yesterday I drove to the old part of town, to a D.C. I seldom visit, where the houses are stately and imposing and the yards settled and calm. I was struck, as I often am, by how various neighborhoods and landscapes create different moods.

How wide open and exposed is the world of the outer suburbs, how on the edge of things. I think about the medieval town, walled and protected, houses clinging together for survival. And I see in our wide yards a sort of bravado.

Openness has its appeal, but so does the fenced yard, the closed gate, the hedged garden. There is something in here precious enough to protect — to make you long to be inside.