A gentle wind blows and it snows cherry blossoms right now all over Atlanta. The large, fluffy trees with cotton-candy flowers dip their heavy arms willingly to passersby who just want to touch them or pluck a stem or two to stick in a little bud vase. They are beautiful and elegant and funny and sweet, all at once. And not only do thousands upon thousands of them blanket Atlanta but just two hours south of here, in antebellum-home-filled Macon, Georgia, 300,000 Yoshino cherry trees are blooming, just in time for the Cherry Blossom Festival this week.
It is Washington, D.C., however, that gets the glory because of the 3,000 cherry trees given as a gift from the Japanese to our nation's capital. In fact, cherry blossoms are so tightly associated with D.C. that the new Nationals Park baseball stadium (the first LEED-certified stadium in Major League Baseball, by the way) includes a stand of cherry blossoms that overlooks the field. (The Washington Nationals won their season opener the other night--against the Atlanta Braves. Congrats, but we have more cherry blossoms).
Other cities around the world boast a concentrated number of cherry blossom trees--Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Brooklyn, and other countries such as Germany and Bulgaria. But 300,000, folks, in Macon. 300,000. That's 100 times the number in D.C. Not to mention the thousands that are blooming all around Atlanta right now, probably at least twenty in my neighborhood alone.
The Yoshino cherry blossoms are almost pure white and they last for about a week, and then scatter gently as if the tree were a flower girl tossing its petals down the aisle. If the wind blows just right, it is not uncommon to be driving and have to put your windshield wipers on. If your car has a sunroof and you open it while driving, you'll be gifted with a seatful of blossoms by the time you get to your destination.
Yoshino cherry trees, called sakura in Japan, are a symbol of the ethereal nature of life. When I see the gutters and ground full of the delicate blossoms, I think of the Buddhist monks who spend months making sand mandalas only to pour them into the river as soon as they are completed so as not to get attached to them and to show how temporary they (and life) are.
And so, enjoy. Enjoy them now, in this moment, on this day. Because this day passes quickly.
But not before more than cherry blossoms connects Macon and Atlanta. Today, a convoy of 250 truckers will supposedly turn off their rigs on the side of the road between the two cities to protest rising diesel fuel prices. Some truckers are quoted in the newspaper as saying they don't think the effort will have an impact, that the truckers need to take their message to Washington.
Just follow the cherry blossoms, folks. Just follow the cherry blossoms.
6 comments:
Love your blossoms, Pattie!
And they're EDIBLE!
Cherry Blossom Menu
NO WAY! I'm running ouy of chickweed and I just said to my friend, Kelly, "I wonder what's next. God always provides."
That's what I'm talking about! :D
It's really amazing how many things are edible (though somewhat fewer actually taste good.) I remember the first time (inspired probably by Euell Gibbons) I tried the buds of a redbud tree. I was probably ten. They're DELICIOUS! Of course, they're also very, very small. But wouldn't they make a fun spring garnish on a salad or maybe a cheese plate?
Hmmm...they'll be in bud here soon. I may have to work on a foraging post for redbud buds.
I feel like we're on that show Survivor and we think we have nothing to eat and then we win Two Hours with the Native and he shows us all the edible food that's right in front of us.
I was in Japan during the cherry blossom festival back in 1979. The Japanese revere their beauty in a way that amazed me. Even in crowds of many, many tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of people, they could focus on the petals, the colours, the perfection of that annual, natural phenomenom.
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