Earth Day

Spring hit differently this year.

New York City plunged to 3°F (-16°C) this winter and stayed below 20°F for 16 consecutive days. The roughest winter I’ve experienced here in 20 years. By February, I wasn’t sure I remembered what green looked like.

Then the crocuses appeared in Fort Greene Park. Then the magnolias exploded all over Clinton Hill. Then the Brooklyn Botanic Garden came alive with cherry blossoms, peach and plum trees, and a tree I had never noticed before, the Eastern Redbud, which has now become my favorite (picture). Deep pink flowers blooming directly from the branches, no leaves yet, like the tree couldn’t wait.

After a winter that cold, you don’t take any of it for granted. I just looked and felt lucky.

Ten days ago, NASA astronaut Christina Koch returned from flying around the moon on the Artemis II mission. Looking back at Earth from out there, she said: “Earth was just this lifeboat hanging undisturbingly in the universe.”

From a street in Brooklyn, standing by a Redbud in bloom, I felt exactly that.