Cooler fall weather brings out the walker in me, not the exercise walker so much as the get-to-my-appointments-and-errands-walker. In the past few weeks I discovered that things changed over the summer while I was cocooned in my air-conditioned car.

On my way to meet a friend at City Hall, I stopped outside to take in the new twin guardian lions — also known as Fu Dogs — (really?) gifts from Taiwan sister city Hualien. Weighing in at thirty-six hundred pounds each, the marble dogs are in little danger of leaving City Hall any time soon, whether by their own efforts or anyone else’s.

Another day I walked along NE Sixth to join friends for dinner.  I did a double-take and pulled out my phone to snap a picture of an unexpected piece of fabric draped between the lampposts that line this narrow street. It’s a two hundred-foot-long crocheted panel called a fiber river.  Artist Mandy Greer involved the greater community in this project by hosting crochet workshops for people who wanted to contribute. Apparently it’s been here since late July, but like I said, I’ve not strolled around town for several months.

I got a photo of the final astonishing sight, when returning books to the library. As the new parking garbage took shape, my husband and I pegged it as a graffiti magnet. What tagger could deny himself the pleasure of marking its immense concrete exterior surface as his own? Instead, the walls of the parking garage are no longer a canvas of dead concrete but a living garden of grasses and leaves.

I appreciate living in a changing environment, but like most people who’ve lived in the same place for a long time, I want to be comfortable with the changes, in some sense to approve of them. Now there’s an example of a strong control streak or is it freak?  Happily for now, I can say that these changes are fine with me.