5 September 2018 – August tumbles into September and, click-clack, fall is back.

“Back” is the word. Families back from holidays, children back in school, cultural seasons back in action.

“Gone” is also the word. Summer pleasures — click-clack — disappear.

“The piano is gone!” cries the little girl, obviously a regular visitor to Spyglass Place on False Creek. She stops dancing around the deck chairs long enough to peer over a chair back at the empty space …

where, all summer long, the brightly painted piano invited us to sit down and make music.

Summer colour begins to disappear as well, partly accelerated by drought, but also just the normal exhaustion of end-of-summer.

Yet even as grass, leaves and flowers wilt and fade, other colours explode into life.

The stream running through Hinge Park into False Creek, for example, is now a solid carpet of emerald green. All that pond weed, at its bravura best, after a full summer of unimpeded growth.

Good news for the ducks. They may have to paddle a little harder, to push their way through the greenery, but feeding now takes no effort at all. No diving needed: they lower their heads to water level, open their beaks, and let the nutrients flow in.

Meanwhile, we humans now find ourselves seeking, not rejecting, the sunny side of the street.

Click-clack …