April Showers Bring Angel Flowers

If April showers bring May flowers, all of New York will be a botanical garden next month.

I don’t remember the last morning I walked down Madison Avenue on the way to work without my umbrella—or back up to Grand Central Station at day’s end, for that matter. We’ve had nothing but rain, rain, rain.

This morning I peeped up from under my umbrella at the very large planters that line the avenues of New York, sometimes as many as seven per block. Huge concrete planters, usually draped with vines, a thatch of wild grass or palm fronds stuck in the middle. I think it was a waft of perfume that made me raise my umbrella a bit and take my eyes off the puddles on the sidewalk in front of me:

The Madison Avenue planter stopped me cold.

Bouquets of hyacinths stood tall and proud in full purple bloom. Dozens of the fragrant flowers filled just one pot. I breathed in their sweet smell for a second. But no one who’s courteous lingers for long in the middle of the sidewalk on a busy avenue. Especially on a weekday morning. New Yorkers have things to do! Places to go! Meetings to attend! And New Yorkers can sometimes be impatient. I moved on.

The next pot I passed was a riot of happy yellow heads poking up amid skinny green leaves. Daffodils, my favorite!

Pot after pot, from 42nd Street all the way down to 34th Street, hyacinths and daffodils, hyacinths and daffodils. I wondered for a moment how they’d all happened to bloom at once, just to wish me a happy spring on a damp, chilly morning.

But of course it wasn’t chance at all. Some impatient angels had planted them already in bloom so that April showers brought me April flowers. Only in New York.