I was walking in the Carroll Gardens, a Brooklyn neighborhood, on the early afternoon of April 23, 2024. The very seasonal aesthetics of a car parked along the sidewalk caught my attention and prompted me to take a few photographs:
I approved of the cherry blossom and branch aesthetic against the white car doors. But the aesthetic quality of the car was not the only reason it caught my attention. Carroll Gardens has a series of residential blocks with impressive trees – one of which I featured in a Christmas post. 4th Street between Henry and Court is particularly impressive. Three days before I came across the car, the number of cherry blossom trees along the block caught my attention. I took the time to take a few photos and after some hacky efforts to adjust them for publication, I present them for your Brooklyn viewing pleasure.
Cherry blossoms are known for being ephemeral, a quality played on in the title of one of my favorite movies. As of the date of the publication of the instant article (April 29, 2024), the 4th Street sidewalk is covered with fallen cherry blossom petals as the pink flowers give way to green leaves. There are still a decent number of cherry blossoms hanging on, but soon they will fully give way until they spring again in April 2025, for as the 1891 Century Dictionary put it in one of its characteristically eloquent word usage examples, the trees leaf in May.