Cherry blossoms (and some other stuff)

[sabotabby]

Almost no one I know goes to see the cherry blossoms in High Park anymore, because it's hella crowded and how can you schedule your time around basically two days, which may or may not fall on a weekend. I haven't seen them in years. The fact that there is a Sakura Watch website should tell you how obsessive we get in this city about our magical little window where the most beautiful possible plant is at its prettiest.

But ioplokon is new here and has never gone so we had to go, basically, and we were big-brained smart people who went early, before the mobs really hit the park.

I also have a new camera lens and I'm going to make it everyone's problem, basically. The result is that, even excluding the pictures of the two of us since this is a public post, I had to massively whittle down my shots to avoid overwhelming y'all.

Comments

[springheel_jack]

I'm at the age now where almost everything everyone experiences triggers in me a memory of a similar or apparently relevant experience or set of circumstances which I have an urge to report, as a way of being interested. But I feel lately that this is generally unwanted and seen as a way of hijacking the conversation.

Anyway, that said, here's my related experience:

Some years ago, the city of Nashville had a nice long avenue of Yoshino cherry trees along the waterfront. It's a popular tree here; J's dad had a hand in introducing them. But then the city cut down a bunch of the trees to make way for the temporary constructions for the NFL draft. I think the first year it was held here.

I - and many others who weren't even all that excited about the NFL draft - were pretty upset the city had agreed to that; the trees were one of the most beautiful amenities on the waterfront downtown, when they bloomed. The city said they would replant them. I wonder if they ever did? I don't know.

[sabotabby]

That's not irrelevant, but it's absolutely horrible. I mean, I get a sense of visceral anxiety over The Cherry Orchard, where you never even see the trees because it's a play; you'd think there'd be an inherent thing where people consider why they would want to chop down cherry trees.