Transient

Another summer slips away.  For the past few days, the setting sun streams directly through our dining room window, as it does with each equinox.

This autumn came swifty and stealthily, on the heels of a blessedly temperate summer here in Victoria - heaven knows what the next summer will be like.  Part of this autumn ambush is due to the lateness of the Labour Day long weekend, as late as it can be, with classes not beginning until the second week of September.

 

This probably explains what I encountered chalk drawings ringing the corner of Hilda and Chester.

Chalk drawings are not unusual in this neighbourhood.  The kids in our building occasionally illustrate the lower parking lot, and some pint-sized resident artists further up Chester frequently pastel the pavement between rains.

However, I suspected visiting children are responsible for this latest batch, brightening their grandparents' sidewalks with a final parting blast of estival festival etchings.

Apparently this mob has vintage video game fans in its membership.  Perhaps a parent? (Or even a grandparent?)

As I turn the corner, I realised that an attempt has been made to cover the entire block down to Oscar Street.  Someone taken two pieces of chalk and created a snail trail to connect a cluster of images near the far corner. 

By the following morning, the couple who live near the end of the block had once again been watering the sidewalk, in their continuing attempt to refresh the ancient plane trees. The southern images had washed away, but the rest remain, albeit a bit faded and trodden upon.

For now.

Hello young lovers

"Oh get a room," I think crossly.

Love's Young Dream, hogging the Second Best Table at the coffeehouse -- a cute blond girl with a tousle-haired boy, clad in similar hoodies, huddled together at the same side of the large table, which they're using mainly for elbow-support and little else, as they compare cell-phone screens, leaning into each other and giggling.

"I think they're rather sweet," says The Famous Writer, who frequents the cafe at the same time I do most mornings.

Yeah, they're bloody adorable.  I recognise the hallmarks of a new semester romance.  I suspect they're postsecondary, judging by how late it's getting.  They probably have a 9:30 class.

It's not like I don't remember what it's like:  the losing track of time, the unawareness of other humans in the vicinity.  They could be doing this at a smaller table, preferably outside.
 

TFW knows I prefer the table he has, and graciously notifies me when it is free. I tell him that this table feels like a safe harbour, just like the last months of the year feel like a safe harbour to me.

TFW takes this as a cue to recite: "Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulne--"

"Oh gawd!" I cry.  "My husband intones that at me every damn October!"

TFW retreats smartly.  

"Keats was a genius," I call after him, futilely.

Afterwards, I set out on foot, having just missed the bus, which was, of course, five minutes early, as the returning bus rolls by, being, of course, five minutes late.  It's fine, I have plenty of time, and the morning is cool and pleasant.

The horse chestnut trees that line Cook Street are festooned with light green baubles.  From a distance, you'd think the leaves were sun-dappled, but it's an overcast day.  Close up, the spiky fruit looks mace-like and menacing.  Within a week or two, they will begin to plummet: hard knocks to the head; the glossy brown chestnuts encased within the prickly projectiles will be like marbles underfoot, rolling, slippery..  

Rather like falling in love.

Sign of the times

I learned what Lime Bikes were when I started using YouTube to virtually ride on London buses last year. The streets were swarming with bikes, many of them with bright green carrier baskets. I quizzed elder daughter about them, and she explained that they were rented e-bikes. You pick them up at a designated spot, and drop them off at the racks closest to where you want to go.

A few weeks ago, it was announced that the City of Victoria had entered into a contract with Lime, and with dizzying speed, neon green racks have spread throughout the city, not without some controversy.  Lime operates out of San Francisco, and it's an impolitic time for an American company to set up in a Canadian city.

Increasingly, though, I've been noticing more of these bicycles, moving with alarming speed through our neighbourhood. Some riders sport the trademark bright green bike helmets, which are required by law here. (Bike helmets, that is -- not necessarily green ones.)

The other evening, I spotted a new station on Linden Avenue on one of my regular strolls.  From a distance, I could see a fellow standing by the small cluster of racks and e-bikes, fiddling with his phone, because you need an app to access the service.  He hopped on, bare-headed, and had disappeared down the hill, as I approached the sign. 

I saw someone had left a sticker, and crossed the street to read it.

Well, as I said, there has been quite a bit of contention about this, particularly as some areas on the edges of Greater Victoria have Canadian bike rental companies, which means you have to switch your bike when you reach some municipal borders.

And the timing was indeed unfortunate.

I walked out this evening.  The sticker had been removed.

Update - September 14th, 2026:  The sticker is back.  This may turn out to be a microcosm of the trade war...

Standing in the shadow

 

Photo by Canadian photographer Andrew Yee in Toronto

I told the Resident Fan Boy I'd scout ahead for a view of the partial lunar eclipse, seeing as we'd gone up prematurely the night before. 

Out on the roof before 9 pm, unmistakeable, the shadowy red/black orb with a gleaming white-gold top.

I texted: "YES!", seconds before our hall neighbour suddenly appeared in the bright rectangle of the doorway.

"Can you see the eclipse?" she inquired.

I gestured excitedly to the south-east, just beyond her viewpoint.  "Are you kidding? Just come and see!"

(To be fair, it seems most people aren't sure about their compass directions.)

As she texted and phoned her parents, the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter arrived, and I guided them a little further along the fenced walkway, where there was a gap between two trees.  Younger daughter gasped.

About half a dozen people turned up, with their phones alight, alas, but they soon turned them off.

As the western horizon darkened, the stars pierced the indigo sky overhead. Younger daughter murmured, "I'm looking for Orion."

"Oh, that's a winter constellation; you don't see him in the summer."  I pointed to the north-east.  "See that 'W'?  That's Cassiopeia."  I turned to the high west.  "And that's the Big Dipper.  Can you see the handle?"

We waited for the peak of the eclipse, the stars multiplying and burning brighter. Then the RFB and younger daughter, shivering a bit in their summer tops, withdrew. 

Wrapped in my fleece jacket, I leaned on the narrow walkway's rather rickety railing, gazing eastward at the shadow of our planet across the moon, and listening idly to the small mob of relatively youthful friends mis-identifying the constellations.

Suggestive sidewalk

I was shaking off the grogginess of the afternoon by strolling over to Demeter's building to pick up the mail.

When I noticed the instructions on the sidewalk.

I'm very suggestible.

So I jumped, tiptoed, swerved, popped, and balanced. 

 Within reason. 

 For no reason.

Owl through the morning

It was younger daughter who spotted the owl, clinging to the edge of a gable roof of one of the older, more gingerbready houses on Vancouver Street.

It took the Resident Fan Boy a bit of searching to realise that she wasn't referring to a carved owl, but a very real one, grasping a baby squirrel, which, I hope, was dead.  (I wasn't there.)

The owl was being loudly harassed by a quartet of crows, intent on seizing its prized bit of protein, one or two getting close enough to get in a vicious peck.

"Oh, is that still going on?" inquired a passing couple.  "This has been going on since four this morning!"

As younger daughter and the RFB gazed, the owl finally had enough and vanished in a flurry of feathers.

It was way past its bedtime.

It came just the same

Early this morning, I headed down to the coffee shop under branches of cherry and plum blossoms now past their prime. The petals have descended overnight leaving a ring across the grass and pavement resembling heavenly bodies hurled outward from a celestial big bang.

Spring has nearly finished arriving.  The lilacs are blooming on the corner of our street.  The plane trees, always a bit behind, are finally leafing out.  Outside our window, an ancient tree, that looks for all the world like a profile of a lady's head with upswept hair, has attracted the local urban deer.  I watched a doe, black nose upturned in anticipation, balance on her hind legs to nip off the blossoms.  This week, the fallen flowers carpet the ground, where the fawns can feast on four legs.

Returning from a recent reluctant shopping foray, I strode down the hill on Linden Avenue, and remembered I hadn't bothered to search out the magnolias.  Across the street, two blooms still clung on for dear life.

In so many ways, I almost missed spring this year.  A small part of me believed it might not come.  How can spring come, now that Demeter is no more?

But I don't, despite all appearances, exist within a Greek myth.  

Not even a Greek tragedy.

More like a human comedy.

Make that a tragicomedy.

On nodding terms

 

Strange where misery can lead you.

In this case, it led me to the north-east corner of Linden and Oscar, where I never go, normally.

I had barrelled out into the September evening, furious at the Resident Fan Boy, and fleeing my feelings.  I considered heading east on Fairfield Road, currently being stripped and dug for resurfacing, gawd knows when.

However the blurred indigo of the Olympic Mountains drew me to turn my toes south at the last minute, and I started down Linden Avenue on the unaccustomed east side.  And I stopped.

It was a telephone pole, ringed with wooden plaques and pieces of paper, some bearing platitudes, some inscribed with poetry. I revolved around it, reading in the last rays of the sun disappearing behind James Bay.

It was a "Kindness Corner", inviting people to add their own messages, or take a picture.

Among the missives was a quote attributed to the late Joan Didion: "We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be."

The person I used to be? I thought, turning westward.  I think she was nicer, really.  Certainly more clueless.  It's easy to be nice, when you're clueless.

A fawn strolled diagonally across the street, some yards ahead of me.  I turned north, where the early evening light hit the sides of the limbs of the ancient plane trees, and thought:  It's September.  I live here.

Six years ago, we moved into this neighbourhood and reclaimed it.  The younger, clueless, nicer me left here years ago.  I don't think I can reclaim her.  But I can re-read my journals and walk these streets, and nod in her direction.

He's not a man, he's a reading machine...

In an era when books are routinely used to train artificial intelligence, usually without the author's permission,  it was a little unsettling to see this sign outside of my local bookshop this morning.

 

Waiting in the wings

 While "dead-heading" the plants on Demeter's balcony yesterday morning, I couldn't bear to clip this blossom quite yet.  It looked for all the world like a falling angel, supported, however briefly, by four cherubs.

(Yes, there are four.)

If I take the wings of morning

Someone is catching up behind me; I can see his long early-morning shadow overtaking mine.

He's waving his arms above his head, presumably to catch the attention of a friend not quite within hailing distance.  He's done this before, always in this section of the block, and I've never caught sight of whomever he's greeting.

He makes my shadow look as if it has sprouted grey ghostly wings.

Flushed with triumph

 

This amused me.

Camera-shy

 

Yesterday's urban wildlife encounter reminds me of an incident last fall, when I was on my way to set up breakfast for Demeter.

It's a short walk, and I caught the eye of a very young buck deer having a nosh in the plantations of a neighbouring apartment building.

"Don't worry," I told him.  "I'm not coming anywhere near you."

I'm pretty sure he didn't understand me, but he didn't challenge me, so I continued to the corner where I usually cross.  I got held up by what I call "funeral corteges", long lines of cars heading down Fairfield Road after being held up themselves by traffic signals further east.

While I waited, a young woman in grey sweats barrelled across the road from the other side, seemingly undeterred by the cars bearing down on her.  She was clutching her phone, and evidently intent on filming four or five deer that had now joined the buck, including a couple of young fawns.

I called to her, from where I stood:  "They have young with them; they might charge you!"  There have been reports of people being hurt by frightened urban deer over the years since they started appearing in Victoria, about twenty years ago; some dogs have had to be euthanised.

The woman, predictably, ignored me, gesturing uselessly as one deer came alarmingly close to her, although I don't think she understood the danger, then stretching out her arms to the sides, and pleading with them not to bolt -- as they were doing.

Did she really think they understood her words and gestures?  Did she believe she was in a Disney film?

A doe fled across the busy street, leaving her fawn behind, which eventually ventured after her.

None of them were run down -- including the clueless woman, still brandishing her phone, still calling after them to stay, to come back.

Breaking breakfast

In the midst of a stressful time, I skipped my usual route to the coffee shop, which takes me down a two-block arch of plane trees, and instead, took the narrow stairs to the basement level of our building, which, via a grim hall, takes me to the lower parking lot, where I strode into the full morning sunshine, crossed the street -- and stopped in my tracks.

Ahead of me (much farther ahead than it appears in this image), stood a young doe with the tiniest fawn I've ever seen.

I know enough about urban wildlife to never approach an animal with young, especially deer, which have been known to charge.  She may look like Faline, but those hoofs are sharp.

After taking my snaps, I took a generous half-circle path around the pair, keeping my distance and walking at a moderate pace.  The little fellow bolted into the bushes anyway, and Mum, after a lengthy wary stare, turned and followed her offspring.

It was only when I examined my shots on the phone while sipping my mocha that I realised I'd interrupted breakfast.

Going for Late Baroque

Gotta love this Rococo hopscotch that was meandering around the corner from us, courtesy of the young sidewalk artists residing on Chester Avenue.

Caught it before the spring rains washed it away.

Things change

It was my first attempt to run down to the shops on an errand, when I spotted the two neighbourhood boys strolling up my street, clad in almost identical black teeshirts with roomy black trousers billowing out from their long legs.

I've seen them several times over the past year; one of them lives in an apartment building around the corner, and I've seen his pal at the ancient glass entry door in the morning, before they head out to middle school.  (I've also seen them hogging the courtesy seats on buses and scattering ice cream packets on the sidewalk, but, heck, thirteen is thirteen.)

That's the thing.  They don't look thirteen this late summer afternoon.  They've shot up a couple of inches, and their shoulders have broadened.  High school for them, this year, I think.

Then I discovered I'd left my wallet behind, doubled back, and decided to seek a cooler way into the village.  The sun was just bordering on uncomfortably warm, but the shadows were deliciously pleasant, with a light breeze wafting up from the strait.

So I nipped around another corner, and skidded to a halt.

For years, the City of Victoria has covered the utility boxes with historical photos of the surrounding area: landmarks -- such as hospitals and schools -- shown as they were decades before, and houses that are no longer there.

This is startling different, and the reason for it is what had been there before:

That's Joseph Trutch, the first Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia, and on at least one list of "The Ten Worst Canadians in History", for his reprehensible policies toward indigenous peoples.

I had an inkling that the former utility cover wouldn't last long, so snapped this photo in 2022.  

That was the spring that Trutch Street changed its name.  The original idea, I believe, was to rechristen it "Truth Street", but then it emerged that the Lekwungen word for "truth" is "Su'it".

It's pronounced something like "SAY-it".  For over a year, the voice prompt on the #7 bus dutifully announced it, until a few months ago, when the name of the bus stop was changed to "Fairfield and Chester".  To be fair, that's the closest cross street to the actual stop.

Blossoming

Oh, I love younger daughter's watercolour paintings.

I know I'm her mother.  They're just so lush, and light years ahead of anything I can manage.

Younger daughter's art lessons ended yesterday, for another summer.  She's been taking them with the same teacher for the past dozen years, with a few exceptions for logistics and pandemics. 

As she left, she embraced her teacher.  The Resident Fan Boy told me the teacher seemed a little surprised, but that younger daughter scoffed, on the way to the bus stop:  "I always give her a hug when lessons are over!"

It's a rare thing just the same.

Just like her paintings.

The deer canter

Stepping out into the cool of early(ish) morning, I reach the sidewalk, and a trio of deer dash across Fairfield Road, their hooves hammering the pavement.

This is the first time I've seen our usually laidback urban deer running.  

They're fast.

They bound.  They bounce off the grass, and over shrubbery.  I turn, to see them vanish into the bushes that encircle the east end of our building.

Another cluster of clattering rings out behind me.  I wheel around, and a fourth deer sails by me, only a foot or so between us.

I never see what has spooked them.

Ankle-biter express (write of passage number fifty-five)

 "Oh, no-no-no-no-no...."  I breathed, gazing in horror out the bus window.  Two days in a row, I'd escorted Demeter to medical appointments, the latter being a dental appointment that lasted over an hour.

We'd been thrilled to just catch a bus bound for home, securing courtesy seats with a gap to keep Demeter's walker out of the aisle on a relatively uncrowded bus for a late weekday afternoon.  

Not quite this bad

The bus turned up the incline on Burdett Avenue, and lined up at the stop outside the Starbucks were two dozen seven-year-olds in day-camp teeshirts and yellow vests, intending to return to the community centre with a grand total of three supervisors.  In the grand summer tradition, exactly one supervisor went to the back of the bus with the youngsters, while the other two stayed at the front of bus, calling directions while the kids hung ineffectually from the dangling loops intended for adult standees, and clutched at Demeter's walker.  

I caught the eye of one of the minders and said, firmly:  "My mother has a walker.  She will be getting out at Cook and Fairfield."

"Cook and Fairfield," the minder repeated, a little dazedly.

Looking with some despair at the aisle, a sea of little yellow vests, I rang the bell just after the Vancouver stop and raised my voice:  "Lady with a walker getting out at Fairfield and Cook!"

I could hear the message being passed to the front, where at least half a dozen adults, who had been unfortunate enough (or foolish enough) to board behind the ankle-biters, were crammed beyond the yellow safety line.  The driver called her acknowledgement and about a dozen people of varying sizes poured out on to the sidewalk to allow us out.

As I helped Demeter step down backwards, I heard the driver yell:  "NO!  You cannot get on!  These people are all getting back in!  This bus is FULL!"  She smiled reassuringly at us, and I thanked everyone.

This was an improvement on the day before, when a couple (old enough to know better) leapt ahead of us like a pair of gazelles, and claimed two courtesy seats, leaving only enough room for Demeter to sit and clutch her walker close.

I'll bet they were American. 

Tree lines

The heat wave of earlier in the week has receded into a lovely, temperate summer morning.

At the end of the block ahead of me, I see a tall elderly gentleman holding a green garden hose and directing the spray around the base of an ancient tree on the other side of the sidewalk from his house.

As I get closer, I call cheerily:  "Are you giving the plane trees a chance?"

He pauses, and seems to turn in slow motion.  "The trees all down this street are stressed."

"I know.  There have been pieces of bark dropping in chunks for months."

He shrugs.  It seems to take an age.

"Since I'm out here, it's something I can do..."

On my way back from the coffeehouse, a young woman brushes by me.  She's wearing a tan like something she has slipped over her head before donning her carefully coordinated clothes.  She probably started to dress about the same time the old fellow started his spraying.