31 March 2026 – Good grief, I sound like an infomercial. But what’s a girl to do? There I was, after posting Old & New, minding my own business, waiting for a #99 at Ontario & Broadway.

Just across the corner, I see this:

What?? I investigate.

A whole new, and agreeably perplexing, category for Old & New.

Very old stop sign, its official cap long gone, plus, up there on top, a very new burst of mystery greenery.

Nothing special about either the stop sign or the greenery, except the combination of the two.

What knocked the official top-of-sign off the sign? What then deposited enough city grit & grime in the sign pole to form a growing medium? How long did it take? What then (wind, bird, Act of God) deposited mystery seeds — plink!!! — so precisely into that growing medium? When did that happen?

We’ll never know, and it doesn’t matter.

We can just take it as it comes. A mystery gift from the city, to us.