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 trodded upon.

For now.