New York Spring: Bergen Street Pears

Pyrus calleryana. They of the notoriously weak crotches. Hush, it's true. And what is a weak crotch between understanding and tolerant friends who for 2 weeks in spring share such effusive beauty?

February.

Yesterday. By Sunday I think they'll have popped.

Today? Rain.

It's true they are opening all over the city, and my eye is on the three at the corner of the Bowery and Stanton Streets. That block, dominated on the one hand by the uplifting architecture of the Projects, and by the Soviet-like Deathstar on the other, is quite transformed by the presence of those three, white-painted trees, as well as by a mature collection of burgundy-bloomed Crataegus (hawthorn) on the Christie Street side.