Toodling along Central Saanich Road last week, I spied a couple of white plastic lawn chairs at the opposite ends of a bus stop.
They faced slightly away from each other, as though they had just had a tiff and were no longer on speaking terms.
I came back later and there they were again, though this time they snuggled side by side, arms touching. Friends again.
Up the street was another lawn chair at a bus stop. Then another, then another - patio furniture, spreading like zucchini, all the way to the end of Tanner Road.
That's where I found George Gifford, working on a vehicle in his driveway.
He not only has a bus stop and chair at the edge of his yard, but has added a beach umbrella under which waiting passengers may shelter from the sun or rain.
Gifford thinks it was a local pensioner who began plunking plastic chairs at the stops, there for whoever needs to take a load off.
God bless whoever it was, because he or she started something that others picked up. Chairs have sprouted at bus pullouts here and there on the Saanich Peninsula. You can also find them in Metchosin, on Salt Spring and in other semi-rural reaches where elaborate bus shelters aren't a spending priority for local governments.
This isn't just a local phenomenon.
Tokyo transit stops have long featured a hodge-podge of household furniture upon which to sit. An unknown decorator recently fitted out a Calgary shelter not just with seating, but also a table, books and fresh-cut flowers.
Closer to home, bus stop chairs have been popping up on the Sunshine Coast since the 1990s, and are now so much a part of the Sechelt scene that they are depicted on souvenir T-shirts.
But the charming quirkiness of the practice - let's call it guerrilla decency - seems particularly appropriate to the Victoria area, where a little bit of cheerful eccentricity is always cherished, and occasionally elected.
Mostly, you just have to like the kindness of those who would ease the burden of strangers.
Every day, Oak Bay's Doris McKechnie carries a pair of plastic chairs to the boulevard outside her Hampshire Road home.
"These chairs are for people to rest awhile," reads a sign taped to one.
"Please don't take them away."
McKechnie began putting out her chairs 15 years ago after watching the old folks huff and puff up the rise from Oak Bay Lodge en route to the village.
"They used to sit on the stone wall and rest."
Helping them just seemed natural to McKechnie, a retired nurse raised in small-town Wawanesa, Man.
"I always get a kick out of seeing somebody in the chairs."
Besides, she knows how it feels to have weary bones.
"On Easter Sunday, I had my 100th birthday."
It would be nice to say that McKechnie's kindness is always reciprocated.
But then, it would also be nice to say that I need a new comb. Alas, neither statement would be true.
"I've had 11 chairs and one bench stolen," McKechnie says.
Lately, it is the neighbours, not McKechnie, who have taken to replacing the purloined furniture.
Likewise, the bus stop chairs of the Saanich Peninsula don't always last.
Friday night drunks boot them into the street now and then, Gifford says.
He picks up the pieces when they get vandalized, or when they simply grow brittle and break.
Across from one of the Peninsula bus stops - West Saanich Road, green lawn chair - is a flower stand where payment goes in an honour box. That's an indication of a civilized community.
Unfortunately, above the flower stand is a sign reading, "Due to theft this area is now under video surveillance" - an indication that lovely as it might be, the Peninsula is not some utopian Walden Pond. But then, where is?
Even Mayberry needed a sheriff.
That's what's special about the flower sellers, McKechnie and the bus stop commandos.
They keep replanting goodwill, even knowing that the slugs will get into the garden now and then.
They should take a bow, then have a seat.
