alexist

mmm, spring!

One of the advantages of living in 1950s Suburbia is that they planted a lot of trees, which are now mature. Flowering trees are especially popular-- dogwoods, crabapples, cherries, a few magnolias, etc. However, all these trees have one flaw: they tend to be low and spreading. Very nice for the middle of your front lawn (we have a crabapple there), but no good for lining the street. So in much of my neighborhood, and surrounding ones too, the streets are lined with callery pears. There are a few varieties, with slightly varying shapes (the most common here is a sort of very neat teardrop shape), but all of them have one thing in common. In the spring, they're covered with little white flowers. They're all in bloom right now. It's beautiful. All you can see on some streets are these enormous clouds of white.

In case you've never seen these, here's a photo: http://tinyurl.com/agiq

(They're actually native to Korea and China, but are one of the most popular ornamental trees in the temperate parts of the US. I don't know if they're planted in England too--quite a few plants have been brought back and forth, but the US has much wider variations in climate than the UK.)

Some of the other trees are in bloom too, and the leaves on the others are starting to come out properly. My street's a little bare though--we've got sycamores and they're still in bud. The only bad thing about my area is that all the original trees were chopped down. On the North Shore, the old trees were often left standing. They're mainly oak, so it's very nice. (Long Island is a little unusual here. Because it's the tip of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, and is surrounded by the water, the vegetation and climate are more like some places further south. If you look at a USDA zone map (lower numbers = colder climate), most of New Jersey is zone 6a or 6b, with a few bits of 7a in south Jersey. Then look up to Long Island-- you're back at 7a, except for a little patch in the middle of the island.

yes, I know this is all very random, but I'm interested in the random. And I like plants.

My mother was looking at real estate prices last night. She said she wants to move to Florida in a few years. I said no :) She was going on about how you can get a nicer house for less money and lower taxes. I told her she'd be leaving all 3 of us behind :)

I don't care how nice the houses are; they're still in Florida and as far as I'm concerned that's a No. I'm a chauvinist. New York or bust, baby. I can cope with Boston or Chicago. That's it. I despise people who move to the Sunbelt, to cities that were built after WWII, full of enormous freeways and no public transportation. Malls and palm trees are no substitute. I need the diversity, the loudness, the bad accent, the rudeness. The bitter wind in January and the steaming heat in July. I need rye bread, bagels, and Fox's U-Bet. This is home.