First Day of Spring

We couldn't have had a better first day of Spring than today. It probably got as high as 72 or 73, sunny, mild, blue sky, really a great day. What I notice, always, as the weather begins to change is the extremes you see. Today when I was out, I saw everything from shorts, tank top and flip flops to a woman in her 50s with a leather coat and gloves on.

I notice this the first day of fall when it gets cold, but you still only need a sweater and you see people rushing the season with hat and gloves and woolen coats and you wonder how cold they are going to get as the season progresses if they are that cold now.

I had a mini moral dilemma today. When I came back from errands, I was just sitting on the steps of my building enjoying the late afternoon when two young men came over. One was carrying what looked like (at least to me) a mandolin in a case and they stopped at my steps, he opened the case and I saw bills and change so he clearly had been playing for money somewhere and he took his housekeys out of the mandolin case.

When I finally got up to go inside, I noticed a quarter on the steps which must have fallen out of the mandolin case. I didn't know this fellow's name or even if he lives in my building and the thought of taping up a quarter for the anonymous mandolin player seemed like overkill. So I kept if for myself!

I want to take a photo of this building across the street from me -- beautiful old twin brownstones -- the kind of building that somehow didn't get torn down to put up faceless, post-war apartment buildings and going up the whole height of the building -- three floors is... well, now it's brown/gray branches, but in a few weeks -- maybe more, it will be a gorgeous purple wisteria bush that makes the entire front of the building bloom in purple flowers. It only lasts about a week, but I love the look of it so I want to be able to provide a before and after. Despite two days of warm weather, my block is still clearly in post-winter mode.

Even Central Park --when I was going through yesterday, I thought at least the forsythia would be in bloom, but nothing yet.