All summer long, I missed it.

You’d think that, given the size and beauty of the old sycamores that line 1600 East, I’d have looked up once. Nope.

It wasn’t until this fall, when my dear friend who lives on that block mentioned that she wasn’t getting the leaf avalanche she expected, that I craned my neck and checked them out. The leaves are crabbed, bark is scaling off the trunks and every sycamore on the block just looks exhausted.

So, after rooting around on the Internet, I called Salt Lake City’s Urban Forestry division to get the scoop.

Turns out the sycamores — properly known as London plane trees — have been whopped by a “perfect storm” of maladies, says urban forester Bill Rutherford.

This year’s cold, wet spring contributed to anthracnose, a fungus that causes dark, sunken lesions on leaves and stems. Then came powdery mildew, a fungus that creates white spots on leaves; then aphids, or sap eaters, plant bugs that damage foliage; and finally sycamore scale, tiny insects that chew holes through leaves and bark.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it happen” in all his years of tree-caring, Rutherford said.

But all is not lost. Urban Forestry is seeking city money to spray the sycamores, which make up less than 3 percent of the city forest, next spring.

In the meantime, Rutherford said, residents can help a lot by maintaining “careful sanitation” — raking up leaves, twigs and branches and carefully disposing of them to help eliminate the spores that infect the trees.

This could take all winter. Sycamores have the unusual characteristic of shedding leaves a little later than other trees, and then shedding all through the winter, Rutherford says.

Pointedly, he does not want people to think, as he put it, “the sky is falling. I wouldn’t want to leave that impression. These big trees have gone through the process before.”

The thing about these sycamores, which rise from the street’s parkways, is that they endure, and change, in a neighborhood whose demographic has evolved over the years, as it does everywhere.

When my family lived nearby, the sidewalks were largely occupied by couples pushing strollers or herding tricycles, more often than not with a golden retriever in tow. Not so much anymore.

Same in my neighborhood, to which we moved 20 years ago, but the elementary school across the street provides the little-kid chorus of shrieks and laughter that for some reason lightens the heart.

But back to the sycamores. The fact that I missed the obvious for a whole season got me thinking: What else have I missed? What subtle, or obvious, signs of change are out there?

The answer may lie in a story told to me by a college roommate who dreamed of conducting an orchestra one day. She was crouched over her score, hand and baton above her head, when her professor told her: Look at the orchestra. Expand your vision.