A Fall Day in the Park

The last day of October, or Halloween as some celebrate it, was a cloudless sunny day.  Having to catch up on some work, I headed in to town on the Red Line, deciding to get off at Charles to walk down the namesake street and through Boston's Public Garden.  

Any day or season, the Public Garden is most photogenic, with many vistas contrasting the urban fabric with the horticultural variety that is this park.  The Garden marks the transition from glacially-deposited drumlin called Beacon Hill to the filled land we call the Back Bay.  The park and the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, which share the same east-west axis of symmetry, reflect European urban design in contrast to the rather random layout of that part of Boston built on solid land.

The park is centered on a main lagoon, crossed by a decorative pedestrian bridge.  Spring through early fall, the famous swan boats take tourists on a lap around the lagoon, often followed by a small armada of ducks, hopeful for tasty tidbits tossed their way by children and even adults.

Today's walk through the park made the going to work on Saturday a not-so-bad experience.

A view of a lawn in the Public Garden

A view of the Hancock Tower and the Taj behind the park and lagoon

The spire of the original Hancock Tower and its new sister are reflected in the lagoon

A view down Newbury Street, and the spire of the Church of the Covenant

Color along the banks of the lagoon

A cloudless bright blue sky reflected in the lagoon.

Saturday in the Park in a Snowless Winter

Often by Christmas or New Year, here in New England, we would have snow on the ground, or at least frozen ponds.  However, this Christmas was relatively warm, having followed weeks of warm yet cloudless days. No snow or frozen ponds. Finally, on Christmas afternoon, the sun came out.  We took a brisk walk by Pleasure Bay.   

Today, though Saturday, I was heading to my office.  If I get off the train at Charles Street, I have the opportunity to pass through the park on my way.   In the morning sun, the Public Garden proved quite photogenic, even with bare trees, no snow, and an unfrozen lagoon.

That is perhaps the most wonderful aspect of this park - that it remains beautiful in any season!  Here are some photos of a Saturday in the Park, on a snowless winter's day.

Entering the park from Charles Street

The bare willows, weeping gracefully

Duck taking the ramp up to the island in the lagoon

Looking over the lagoon

The Budding Out

Boston's Public Garden

Spring is my favorite of the seasons.  We have the beauty of rebirth to ac-company the warmer days and the end of that season of frigidness and the all-too-many forms of frozen precipitation.

While many consider it a season, but for the observer of the signs in nature, spring consists of many subseasons.   One of the first subseasons is the "Almost Spring" with the first signs of crocuses blooming and  the sign of buds on the limbs of trees and bushes.

Forsythia flowers transition to
green buds.  The forest  prepares
for The Budding Out

Right now we're come to "The Budding Out."  This is a short 2 to 3-week subseason.  Yet it is the most transformative subseason of the entire Spring.  In these few weeks, bare limbs become enveloped in the new greens of spring. 

Once The Budding Out has transpired, we're just about ready for summer.  Lawns need mowing.  There is shade on those days when the temperature gets up there.  There is no question any more:  spring has come!

The wonderful colors of the budding out:  the delicate yellows and deep red buds.

Forsythia flowering amid the early buds, in a field of bare branches.  It is The Budding Out.

Color in the Late of Autumn

November in New England is the Late of Autumn, when the residual colors of fall linger a bit more, and are gone before month's end. This year, the early autumn was rather subdued. None of the usual brilliant colors of past years, such as in my Autumn Hues posts from 2009 (Part 1 and Part 2).

This year, it seems that the colors peaked during the Late of Autumn.

Below: Colors in the canopy of the mature street trees in my neighborhood:

Below: The colors are at their peak in the little forest in the city around the corner:


Below: Three glimpses at the late autumn colors in Boston's Public Garden:

Evening on the Verge of Spring

March 18, 2011

When finally the snows of winter had left us by late March, the barren ground was once again visible. Beginning the day after Christmas, we the white blanket piled up week by week in snows that never seemed to end.

March 18th, in the still bitterly cold evening, I caught this view in Boston's Public Garden. In the foreground is dry lagoon. The afterglow of sunset is visible down the axis of Newbury Street, puncuated by the tower of the Church of the Covenant.

Spring officially is officially here in 3 days. But the real rebirth of spring is a few week away, after we endure yet another April Fool's Day snow!

Late Fall Foliage in Boston's Public Garden

The Public Garden never fails me! Four seasons a year, it is always photogenic. I am so lucky, working a couple of blocks from this historic park. Many a lunch time I find an excuse to stroll through its pathways, and take a few photos.

Last week started out cold and rainy and feeling like winter was trying to break into the city and hold us in its chilly grip. But, by the end of the week, the sun returned and temperatures rose. After a morning meeting that ended too late on Friday, I took a spin around the park, capturing the beauty of the late fall foliage.

Byways in the Fall

One of my favorite contexts to view the bright colors of the fall foliage is in the linear context of byways, be they pathways, streets, or highways. Following are a few of the views I captured early during that period when the early hints of color mix with summer greens.

Below: Returning home from New York in early October, just a touch of fall colors tinge the wooded hillsides along Interstate 84 in Connecticut
Below: A mix of fall color lines the pathway in the urban wilds near Belle Isle Marsh in Winthrop.
Below: Early colors in the mature canopy along the pathways of Boston's Public Garden.

Below: Sun streaking through the foliage above a country lane in the midst of urban Cambridge.

Below: A fall view along a path on the campus of Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts

Urban Evening

It is evening when my workday is finally over and I can leave my environmentally controlled office (visually isolated from the world outside) and enter the urban environment of this great city where I am employed. Many days, I'm rushing home and take everything for granted. Other evenings, when I have some time, I stroll, taking in the scenes as though I was a tourist here for the first time.

Here are some evening photos. All but the park were taken just last Thursday.

Above left: The classic Boston Back Bay skyline reflecting into the Charles River, as seen from the Massachusetts Avenue (Harvard) Bridge. The tower on the left in the Hancock and on the right it's the Prudential (the results of a rivalry for tallest building in Boston between these two insurance companies in the 1960s). To the left of the Hancock tower is the old Hancock tower with its lit single spire.

Below: A view across the lagoon at the Public Garden as the shadows of evening fall.



Below: Up close, the Hancock tower's glass facade reflects its plaza and the buildings around it.

Below: A view down St. James Avenue, with the Hancock tower to the right.



Below: The evening setting sun backlights clouds over the Boston Public Library and the Old South Church.

Newly Fallen Snow

Nothing is as pure and beautiful as newly fallen snow. I can just sit and watch the gentle flakes fall, turning everything -- lawns, trees, streets, sidewalks, houses, cars, lawns, and even the trash in the gutter. Especially in the city, the transformation can be most dramatic.

After our winter drought, we had a little bit of snow again in the Boston area.

Below: Snow falling in the halo of a street light and covering steets, sidewalks, cars, and the roofs of houses.

Below: close-up of falling snow covering the branches of a tree.

Below: The next morning, snow covered tree limbs contrast with a bright blue sky.

Below: Snow covered lawns in the Public Garden complete the winter sceen of a Back Bay skyline.