17 October 2022 — These cranky days, even a mini-miracle is a major miracle and I’ll say thank you and hold it tight. Viewed that way, my walk centred around the St. George Community Library is to be celebrated.

My plan: drop off three books as donations to the “St. George Community Library” — in quotes, because if you now expect bricks & mortar, you are out of luck. As a 2012 Globe and Mail article explains, it’s a couple of planks street-side on East 10th near St. George, here in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, with a bit of tarp over top and the invitation to lend or borrow, give or receive.

I’ve received more than once, time to give.

En route, I angle through Dude Chilling Park, where I notice the leaves now flaring red…

and the tents down the pathway between the park and the adjacent school, proclaiming that the local farmers’ market is in session.

I visit the market, and find myself mesmerized by the pavement beneath my feet. It is brightly painted, a reminder that normally this cut-through serves schoolchildren. I stand there, giggling at some of the juxtapositions between permanent paint and temporary market signage.

There’s the hopscotch tucked behind today’s sorbet bars…

the chubby hand grabbing for those wonderfully multilingual eggs…

the blue-cap guy roaring approval for “absolutely NO pesticides” in the squash…

and all those teeth eager to sink into local frozen berries.

Mind you, some signage is temporary, and purpose-written for today’s visitors.

Off I go. I have books to donate.

On up to East 10th, left-turn east onto East 10th & on past St. George.. But before I get to the library shelving, I stop at the corner display. I think of it as the Gratitude Display, not that it has that official name, but there it always is, prompting us to be grateful for something seasonal and providing the materials needed to write up our response & peg it to the line.

With Thanksgiving just past and Hallowe’en almost here, the theme is obvious and the message silhouettes are pumpkin-shaped. The lines are bowed with suggestions; here is my favourite.

And so, enjoying the concept of mini-miracles, I walk on.

First to donate my books (a mini-miracle right there, that this two-plank “library” still thrives, at least a decade after its founding); then to visit the curious garden a few doors farther down the street.

Another noun deserving quote marks: this “garden” consists of a tub balanced on the nude legs/hips lower half of a mannequin, filled with assorted succulents and a collection of tiny naked plastic babies escaping from one container or another, the container varying with whatever whim currently strikes the gardener’s fancy.

I look to see what’s current.

Turquoise peasant clogs, is what. I think this is quite wonderful in a totally goofy “either you love it or you think it’s stupid” way. I also love the conker — the gleaming horse chestnut, still fresh and mahogany-bright, and so very seasonal.

I walk on, my mind now snagged on conkers and the game little boys played with them early in the last century (as recounted to me by my father). The game may be old memory, but the sound effects are right this minute: conkers are thudding down all around me from the trees towering over my head.

My mind moves on, from conkers back to that concept of mini-miracles. Thus encouraged to see them, I do see them, and I define them broadly.

For example, in the joke of these Monkey Puzzle branches tickling the armpits of a bungalow at East 10th & Prince Albert…

in the open embrace of this vintage home, all verandahs and balcony, at Prince Albert & East 19th…

and, right across the street, just past the volunteer-tended traffic circle garden (suffering the ban on watering), in the striking silhouette of St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church.

As I stand farther up Prince Albert, admiring the side view of the cross on the building and the cupola on the garage…

I can hear a congregation singing a hymn. Not in St. Nicholas, where children are now playing outside the church, but through the open doors of the Chinese Tabernacle Baptist Church one street farther south.

Another mini-miracle I’m happy to add to my day: peaceful diversity is always good news.

So I am perfectly content as I carry on south for a while, then finally loop my way back west-ish and north-ish. A short pause in Robson Park, with more autumnal conkers literally at my feet…

and I walk on home.