Susan spent a lovely late summer Sunday on the deck with her dog and the Sunday papers including the sections she's been hoarding since July. At three o'clock guests started appearing in the backyard of the neighbor behind Susan filling the air with party sounds like hummus, ...she was in jail,... and who's wine is this? 

Susan's property is wide but not very deep, so the backyard neighbors are practically on top of each other but that isn't an issue because no one treads on the privacy of the other. A few years back when Susan's son embedded his lacrosse ball into the siding of this neighbor's house, the neighbor requested in a most congenial way that it be fixed & the husband went over and did just that.

The hostess provided introductions and a quick who-knows-who. Susan liked eavesdropping on the party, she even got up to make herself some hummus and a cocktail in order to better pretend she was a part of it.
Someone was laughing the way Susan does when she drinks.
Someone else was very keen on determining which of the appetizers was hot.
Another had brought their kid.
Susan got a little jealous when she heard 'Everything is from the farm' and 'I used the Riesling to marinate the shrimp'

The afternoon became very breezy, periodically beaning Susan's deck with an acorn.  Lucy the pitbull had been disassembling the woodpile for weeks and now there were two foot logs all over the yard. The sun inched west illuminating a series of silvery spider webs and the purpley-pink sedum that Susan had transplanted to the dead space of a tree trunk was in full bloom, autumn was coming.

Soon there were too many guests for Susan to follow specific conversations, they melded into one happy murmur punctuated by laughter, the kid crying and the fantastically delicious smell of food being barbecued.

Susan had her own stuff to do so she packed up and went inside.