For the past few days I have been wandering around New York City. April is a great time to visit. Spring flowers and trees in blossom. Perfect temperature for walking from one end of Manhattan to the other.
Since a picture is worth 1000 words I will stick to photos instead of exposition. It will be a trilogy. Spring Flowers – Icons – People
Bryant Park
59th St and 5th Avenue
Central Park
In Central Park
Chrysler building from 42nd St
Empire State Buliding
It has been a treat this week to walk to work in summer sunshine past gardens filled with brightly coloured flowers. Sure is different from winter! I want to share some of these beauties with you.
I have been drawn to the vibrant colours of the early summer flowers and, like most photographers, can not resist capturing some of these images.
The lilies are in a garden just outside the historic Kingston Customs House buliding built in 1856 at the corner of Brock and King Streets.
The pansies are in a pot on my balcony – loving the weather.
This geranium is on a plant that I have in my living room window. It overlooks the lake and watches the Wolfe Island Ferry come and go. I have had this plant (or an offspring of it) for over five years and it currently has 61 buds and blooms on it. Like me, it is very happy to be living by the lake in Kingston.
And Kingston Market Square behind City Hall, of course.
As I headed home for lunch yesterday I had a carpe diem moment.
I am lucky to live a five minute walk to work through an old neighbourhood in Kingston. As spring has (gradually) unfolded I have enjoyed seeing bushes and trees and flower beds burst to life. It is really incredible that these same streets can be icy and cold and devoid of life in the winter months and then lush and green and fragrant in the spring.
I was startled by a cluster of great orange Oriental Poppies that were hanging over the edge of the sidewalk on Earl Street. I glanced at them as I walked by but continued on my way. They summoned up fond memories of similar flowers in my parents’ back garden 40 years ago. Twenty metres past the poppies I suddenly stopped. I realized that their beauty would be short-lived. Rain is forecast for the weekend. These stunning, delicate blossoms will likely lose many of their petals in the winds or rain or just with the passage of time. Their brilliance will be fleeting.
I returned to the flowers and stood for a moment to absorb their beauty and fragility and to recognize that this was one of those many delicious life moments that has to be savoured before it quickly passes, never to be relived like it was just then.
As I finished my walk home, I reminded myself to take notice of those moments more often.
Carpe diem is a phrase from a Latin poem by Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 BC – 8 BC), more widely known as Horace, that has become an aphorism. It is popularly translated as “seize the day”. Carpe is the second-person singular present active imperative of the Latin verb carpō, which literally means “You pick, pluck, pluck off, cull, crop, gather, to eat food, to serve, to want”, but Ovid used the word in the sense of, “enjoy, seize, use, make use of”.[1] It is related to the Greek verb (carpoomae) καρπόομαι, (I grab the fruit, profits, opportunity), (carpos) καρπός=fruit of tree, of effort, etc. Diem refers to “day”. Thus, a more accurate translation of “Carpe diem” would be “enjoy the day” or “pluck the day [when it is ripe]” Wikepedia
johnageddes 