Autumn in New York

After several weeks of being crazy-busy with work, followed by a one-week, long-awaited vacation, I'm finally back at my desk and sane enough to start blogging again. It's surprising how much I've missed it and how much I've missed reading my favorite blogs--I have a lot of catching up to do.

So it seems that while I had my head buried in paperwork, summer ended. When the first day of autumn rolled around I found myself on a plane to New York (Manhattan, to be specific). NYC is a great place to be in the fall. Even though the autumn colors hadn't kicked in yet, there was an interesting patchwork of weather (heat, humidity, wind, some gorgeous blue skies, and a little rain) and a great autumn-y feeling in the air. And even though we spent much of the time indoors seeing a few Broadway shows and visiting some museums, I found there is a surprising amount of nature to be experienced in the city.

While New York may be a concrete jungle, it's not without greenery. Trees line the streets, large planters with lush foliage dot the sidewalks, and rooftop gardens are tucked away high atop the skyscrapers. In many ways, New York does a better job of incorporating trees and plants into the landscape than many suburbs do.

And then there is Central Park, a whopping man-made slice of nature and truly a magnificent respite from the full-on sensory overload of the city. We hardly scratched the surface exploring it and I expect it would take months to really cover all of it.

There are even connections to nature in the most surprising places, like this sculpture in the courtyard outside Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan. Called the Trinity Root, it was cast from pieces of the roots of a sycamore tree that stood outside St. Paul's Chapel and was destroyed on 9-11 in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. It's an amazing piece, stark and tangled, and it seemed like a most fitting memorial to the tree and everything else that was lost that day.

So now I'm back home, easing back into real life. Today I was back at my arboriculture class and tomorrow I'll be back in the garden. My friend Karen kept it watered for me while I was away, but there's a lot of weeding, pruning, and planting to do. I also have some tweaking in mind for this blog, beginning with this new look for the new season.

Happy Autumn, everyone!