Friday, March 22, 2013

The earliest spring flowers


The brown and crispy Ocean Avenue entrance to Prospect Park, the one I used for that year of cleaning litter in the woods, reached by the Q train,  revealed these tiny white flowers like small butterflies resting on the arched branches of the winter honeysuckle shrubs. Why are sprays of it not sold at flower stores? I'd buy  a bunch and roll around in the sweet lemon scent for nights on end.


Back at Borough Hall, across the street from the post office, where an hour before I had come close to implosion, I rose to the early cold evening and found the winter cherry beginning to bloom again, after its tentative December fling.


Nearby, outside the fortified court buildings, the Cornelian cherry had broken bud. As I turned from taking its picture with my cheap telephoto I came face to face with a cop, scrutinising me. Flowers, I lisped... He smiled vacantly. A benign expression reserved for the half cracked and unpredictable.


Who is the man that breaks into loud and raspy voiced song, channeled from his earpieces, no doubt, as he cycles fast past our block at 3am in the morning? It's been happening for a week. I don't hear him coming or going, so I take it personally. To aggravate my leaping into wakefulness, I only catch a few seconds of the song and lie for minutes trying to place it.

I am dying to water him. Should I lie in wait, shivering in the dark?

It is very provocative.

Related Posts:

Central Park Spring, 31 March 2009
Battery Park, 26 March 2011

7 comments:

  1. Ha! Ha! Ha! At 3 AM in th morning? YES! Please water him!!! :-)

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  2. Yes, water him. Do it not only for yourself but also your neighbors, known and unknown, who are no doubt trying to sleep as well. Do it with a small alcoholic libation in your hand (previously placed bedside) that you can sip to lull you back to sleep, as you savour the disruption now moving in his direction, instead of yours.

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  3. Is the honeysuckle Lonicera fragrantissima?

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  4. You are so far ahead of us to the north west of you. I cannot wait to see the honeysuckle, a plant from my youth in PA.

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  5. Doesn't the winter honeysuckle smell divine! In Georgia, it blooms mid to late January and is done by now. Winter honeysuckle and Lenten Rose get me through the winter!

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  6. I used to live near where you live now. The singing biker used to pass near our apartment and wake us up. Bet it's the same guy! We didn't live high up enough to water him, but would have loved to!!!

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