Harbinger of Spring

Harbinger of Spring. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

As a child growing up in a sleepy suburb of Philadelphia in south Jersey, in the late '40s and early '50s, my parents had two forsythia bushes in our backyard.
Every Spring those two bushes would burst into a glorious cascade of yellow, signifying the onset of the season.
It got so I looked for it; the flowering of those two forsythia bushes heralding the coming of Spring.
Much later there were other indicators.
Driving bus was Ellison Park on Browncroft Boulevard; the budding out of the trees. —Down the hill and then back up.
This usually happened in May.
No longer were the trees grayish brown.
They became all green.
When we moved to West Bloomfield, I decided to plant forsythia bushes partially in memory of my parents.
One got backed over by a construction truck, and is still our worst one.
The others are pretty hearty, despite not much tending.
The biggest mistake is not much pruning.
All our forsythias are bursting with yellow.
Heralding Spring yet again, 60 years on......

• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY.
• “Ellison Park” is a large county park east of Rochester. “Browncroft Boulevard” skirted the north edge of it. Ellison Park was down in a defile, what used to be a river-bed. Browncroft Blvd. went down into this defile, and then back up out the other side.
• We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester. We used to live in Rochester, not far from Ellison Park.