And it snowed.

Last week, the boaters around these parts were enclosing their decks for winter.   When you live aboard in a marina all winter that deck space becomes useful, and it's probably best to keep winter winds from sweeping across your various openings wherever possible.

This Fall has been really mild, hence the boaters just now getting around to the winter wraps.  I saw the Mists of Avalon had a particularly intricate job done, complete with skylights.

And today I saw the first snow on the ground  There didn't seem to be any south of Lakeshore/Gardiner Express, but up on King, next to the St. James Cathedral, the park still had some when I went through around 9 this morning.

This time we're serious, guys.

Over the course of the last couple years, the traffic routing on the street I live on has seen some changes.  One of the major changes is that the bike lane was removed from the street and, instead, a dedicated bike and jogging path was built along the southern side of the road.  It really looks very nice and (if I were a bikist) I'd much prefer the new trail since it puts a decent distance between cars and bikes.

One of the problems has been that there are spots where this wasn't completely possible due to the narrowness of the space south of the road against the waterfront.  For the bulk of the new trail, it's unbroken, but here, at close to its extreme western end (along this street), there's a spot where there is a three-way traffic intersection and a three-way intersection of sidewalks, too, and the bike path has to cross that.  

They started signalling this with large, reflective blue patches marking "End of Trail" on either side of the problem area — that is, get off your bike, this spot is too crowded and dangerous to be ridden through.

It's actually become far too dangerous to walk through.  And that's due to the dedicated bikers, helmets, spandex, and all, zipping through the spot like it's a time trial, who will actually ding their bells at you and shout if you dare to be walking through this area.  So, about three weeks in, this sign went up at either end of the gap;

That didn't work (at all that I've ever seen).  Next, after another month, they put large, thick, yellow strips at the trouble spot.  Again, no progress.

This week, they added wording to the big blue end-of-path markers:

Coming out of the crosswalk (in the photo above) I was still nearly clobbered by a speeding bike and its rider yesterday.  

I don't understand why cyclists think it's OK to be so dangerous in a congested area full of pedestrians — and not only to speed through there with no regard for pedestrian safety, but to shout at and ring bells at the pedestrians as if the pedestrians are the ones in the wrong.  We've yet to see anything like this, but I think it's only a matter of time.

Winter Vegetables

I was on the northern side of the garden today, and saw some large planters flanking a walkway, and the winter veggies are out and doing well.

The smaller planters are quite pretty:

Autumn is truly here, though -- the leaves are getting thick on the ground: