Yesterday I traded in my drained previous digital camera for a brand new one. The brand new one is small and compact and perhaps much less technically strong than its predecessor, however its sensor hasn’t been worn out from a decade of use and I can strap it throughout my chest with out feeling like my again may break.
I spent my morning nose-deep within the new handbook, making an attempt to make clumsy sense of the symbols and abbreviations, and the early afternoon nose-deep within the flowery stuff of this Brooklyn neighborhood, making an attempt to do some small justice to the sweetness on show in sidewalk cracks and climbing alongside chainlink fences and stuffed into plastic tubs on the grocery retailer.
“Like that new tree pit?” A neighbor referred to as to me via the open window of the automotive he was parking and stretched throughout the passenger seat to wag his finger towards the sidewalk. “Maintain on, lemme park.” His tires rubbed towards the stone curb and he lower the engine with one wheel nonetheless hovering between avenue and sidewalk. “We simply put it in,” he stated as he rounded the automotive, tugging up his pants by the belt loops and increasing his hand for a shake. The person is tall, like my dad, and doubtless the identical age, with a voice that betrays a lifetime spent on this explicit spit of concrete-covered land. The brand new pit is certainly spectacular—a supersized model of a typical tree pit, noticeable for a recent layer of soppy mulch and for taking up 4 sidewalk squares the place others of its ilk take up one or two—however I’m preoccupied by its custodian. His good nature, his love of avenue timber, his agency handshake, his headlong leap into storytelling, all acquainted, however not from this place. We speak about roots needing area to develop, allowing, and canine, and pavers that transfer.
He mentions that he’s a grasp pruner and I’m positive then that my reminiscence hasn’t failed me. A dozen years in the past, on a distinct Brooklyn block, a mile away, I used to be taking an inexpensive pair of pruners to a Coral Ardisia threatening to overhaul the backyard outdoors my constructing. He got here strolling down the road with a large pair of loppers. I can’t say for sure if he lent a hand that day, or provided to, however I do bear in mind a dialog about crops and pruning and doing what we are able to to deal with locations. I ask for affirmation that he lived on that avenue, despite the fact that now I’m positive of it.
“Sure, that’s proper,” he says. “Fifty-four years.” After which, he remembers me, too. “And also you! You’re a pruner!” He squeezes my arm: “We’ve met earlier than.”
