Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

A Tree Does Not Bloom in Brooklyn
Friday, January 5, 2007

One of my favorite parts of cherry blossom season in Japan, during the many years I lived there, was learning all the different words the Japanese have to describe minute differences in cherry blossom season. There's a word for the time when just the buds are out, a word for seeing them in sunset, a word for having a picnic under them, a word for taking a stroll beneath them, a word for when the petals coming raining down at the end. For all I know, there's a word for when the blossoms come out early, in the snow.

Maybe now we need a new word: Cherry blossoms have become the canary in the mine for global warming. Whenever we have a burst of springlike weather in mid-winter, as we've been having in New York, the ultimate expression of this odd turnabout is that the cherry blossoms are blooming early. I keep reading, for example, reports that the cherry blossoms are blooming in Brooklyn. Most recently on Drudge, at this hour.

Well, it certainly is unseasonably warm here, as it was last year. We're expecting weather in the high 60's on Saturday. But I live across the street from a cherry blossom tree, which bloomed last year on my daughters' birthday, April 15th. For the record: It is not blooming now, nor is it close.

Labels: Media, Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 11:42 AM
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