I had a fallen maple leaf in my hand not an hour ago, a glorious tattered mosaic of red, orange, and green. It conveys a a sense that I blinked and someone whisked July and August away while my eyes were closed. I’m not complaining–at least, I hope that’s not how it seems. Just noting that the past ten or so weeks, which have been crammed with lovely things and people, have as a result zoomed past me without brakes.
Summer in Vancouver can have the pace of a leisurely saunter along the Seawall. Sometimes the good weather comes in May, and stays and stays, through a warm September that segues into the beauty of a West Coast autumn, so gracefully you can’t say where the one ended and the other began. Other years, the demarcation is sharp: the kids go back to school and the air’s suddenly chilly. The trees drop bales of leaves all at once. There’s frost in the air and the raincoats come out. Either way, fall means counting golden orb spiders along the Grandview Cut, where they proliferate in the dozens upon dozens. It means seeing the roofs steam with thawing ice in the morning, and watching how the fallen leaves get rain-sodden and leave their imprints on the pavement. It means squash and turnips and beets and all the other harvest vegetables; it means stews and casseroles and comfort food.
But even as it scatters maple leaves at my feet, the weekend is showing us a lot of gold and sun, reminding me that summer’s riches aren’t spent quite yet:
