PHILLY FLOWER CHATTER

People are always asking me: Hey, Jon Spruce, enjoying the weather?

It sure is pretty to think so.

In all actuality, this is my busy season, not much time to enjoy the weather.  This is the time of year when I need to rise up the ranks, get my name out there as a contender for champion tree-hunter.

Spring?  That’s when I can really make my bones.

And it all comes down to flowers.

Funny, isn’t it? 

Years and years of steady watching, months and months of mindful observations, miles and miles under my feet and on my car and yet my whole reputation rests on those bright, brief modified leaves we call flowers.

It’s almost too much for one set of eyes but, contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to do it alone.

Like the old folk song says, help is on the way.

And the best help this time of year?

That’d be the truckers.

That’s right.  The biggest help at this time of year is usually found high up in the cabs behind the big wheels of all those trucks making traffic here in the city.

I’m talking about Bakemark and Aramark, Samuels & Sons and J. Ambrogi, Cintas Uniforms and W.B. Mason, plus all the other gypsy pilots navigating the Philly grid and barreling down the highways.

Best set of eyes in the entire city.

There we go.

All set now.

This morning, I dug out my old short-wave radio and, using a bit of good old fashioned Yankee know-how, I added a state-of-the-arts wireless antenna, hooked it up to these new-fangled Bluetooth headphones…

…and then plugged in the two-way microphone.

Okay, all I got to do now is find the right station, adjust the squelch and speak clearly into the mike.

Jon Spruce is back on the CB.

Breaker, breaker, this is Jon Spruce over here in Phillytown.  Need some assistance, boys.  Who’s out there?

The next part is easy.

Just lean in and try to catch some chatter on the only free press left in the United States of America: the citizen’s band radio.

Spruce, you old scallywag.  Is that really you?

Shiver me timbers, that voice is a real blast from the past.  That’s Goldberg, my old co-pilot.  I didn’t know he was in town.

Alive and kicking, Spruce.  Surprised to hear you too.  I always pictured you still keeled over in El Paso.

El Paso?  Oh man, I spent a bad week there one night.  Goldberg always did have a long memory.

Hard to forget, Jonny boy.  What’s your emergency?

Need some flowers for the blog, chief.  What are you seeing out there?

You’re a lucky son of a gun, always have been, Spruce.  I just passed some willows blazing away in Penn Park by the river.

Willows?  Goldberg always did have a soft spot for willows but I don’t know.  I’ve already covered the willow.  I need flowers, not willows.

Quit your griping, Spruce, and get down to the river before it’s too late.  You’ll thank me later.

PHILLY FIRST BLOSSOM FRONT

Citybillies, it’s confession time.

The rumors are true.  I’ve sold out.

Jon Spruce has officially signed on the dotted line.

For two years now, I have meticulously and courageously hunted down and archived the kingdom of Philly trees but, behind the scenes, hidden from view, I’ve been bombarded and assaulted with endless requests for sponsorship.

Landscape crews and tree services, nurseries and greenhouses, fertilizer companies and seed catalogs, you name it.  Non-profits and charities, all good causes.  Philadelphia institutions like Aramark and Tastykake, Sunoco, Comcast, Action News and Lew Blum Towing, all knocking down my door.

All asking for a piece of the pie.

For the last two years, I’ve always had the same response.

Hold the gravy.

Until now.

I’ve finally found something that I can hang my hat on.

Citybillies, it’s hanami time and there’s no better way to spend it than participating in the Subaru™ Cherry Blossom Festival of Greater Philadelphia.

What is hanami?  It means flower viewing in Japanese and it refers to the annual blossoming of the cherry blossoms, the sakura.

This event is so anticipated that even the Japanese Meteorological Agency tracks and charts the sakura blooms throughout the whole island.

They call it the sakura zazen, loosely translated as the cherry blossom front.

According to the map, the sakura are currently flowering in the southern part of the island, blazing their way from Kagoshima through the old capital of Kyoto and, by the end of April, they will have reached the northern tip of the Aomori Prefecture, land of apples and wild horses.

Some people call it the pink tide.

I long to see it in person.

Hanami has been on the calendar for centuries now, observed and celebrated by emperors and farmers, royalty and peasants, city rats and country mice alike…

…immortalized throughout the ages by songsters, dancers, poets and painters, including the great 18th-century printmaker Katsushika Hokusai…

…who famously depicted the brief sakura in the foreground of Japan’s most exalted marvel…

…the ephemeral floating world of early spring balanced against the immovable permanence of Mount Fuji itself.

Now that’s my kind of yin-yang.

Here in Philadelphia, we’re less than one week away from our own hanami.

Hold on to your hats, citybillies, and get on up!  The sakura are marching, cherry blossoms about to set the city on fire. 

In anticipation of the event, I floated over to the Shofuso Japanese House…

…and then to the nearby cherry tree avenue that connects the House to the Mann Music Center.

I’m getting nervous.

Less than a week away from the big bash and the guest of honor is hardly making a peep.

Just my luck.

IN JUST-SPRING

It was just too nice a day to spend it cooped up in the office so I rigged up a quick little workplace, outside, in the shade of my favorite birch tree.

It was turning out to be a great day of work, with the sunshine lighting up my desk and the breeze dancing over my keyboard, lovely birdsong playing all morning long from the high, swinging treetops.

And, best of all, I was just about to close on one sweet-ass deal, putting the final touches on the big proposal that I’d been brokering for my boss all winter long.

I just love the feeling of a good deal going down.

I love everything about it.  I love riding the ebb and flow of a tight negotiation.  I like catching inside information.  I like wrangling over the details.  I like that pregnant pause in the action, waiting for the final approval, and I love getting things in writing. 

I love it when they start watering down their demands.

That’s how I know when to strike.

And I just love saying the word deal-breaker.

I took a break around ten o’clock, promising myself this would be my last cup of coffee for the day, and tried to catch some spring from the office window.

Wabun the Golden Eagle, Spirit Keeper of the East, was really here…wings spread wide, aloft in full flight.

I could see the callery pears already starting to burst with flowers.

There was also the ginkgo, just about to leaf out, two days after the rise of spring’s first new moon, just as I’d predicted.

Not that I’m the kind of guy who says I told you so.

And I really should catch up with the cherries.

All in good time, I told myself.  Once this deal goes down, I’ll have all the time in the world for tree-hunting.  I was jumping out of my skin…just one final approval away from the Big Bonanza.

The forecast? 

Nothing but blue skies ahead, one hundred percent chance of raining money…the longest, hottest summer ever…Jon Spruce finally living it up in Fat City, nothing but champagne and caviar, cruising around the city in my Cadillac, lighting my cigars with hundred dollar bills.

 

I got back behind the desk, back on the horn…and that’s when things starting going downhill.

 

I’m not really sure what happened.  Surprise demands, unforeseen commission rates, someone hit reply all and then some schlub in their Accounting Department turned out to have the ace in the hole.

After one short break, the whole deal went lopsided.

Meanwhile, I had my boss on the other line demanding the latest update, wondering what was taking so long.

 

I tried to get everybody back in the pool but they all had cold feet.  Just like that, they were unavailable or they were on another call.

And just like that…no deal, back to square one, back to counting pennies.

From riches, back to rags.

I don’t have the heart to summarize all the nitty-gritty details.  Rest assured, citybillies, it’s the same old story.

Heads, they win.  Tails, I lose.

PHILLY MOUNTAIN SPRING LOOKOUT JOURNAL

I woke up this morning after another one of those fitful nights.

Tossing and turning, I just could not settle into a steady state of sleep, I don’t know why.

Going to sleep was never that easy but getting up never used to be this hard.

Walking outside, I stopped dead in my tracks.

It’s freezing and I’m not surprised but I’m tired of it. 

Where is spring?  Where’s the show?

Where have all the flowers gone?

This isn’t the spring that’s advertised, not the spring I was expecting.  This is not the spring that’s promised.

I don’t know about you but I’m not taking it lying down anymore.  I’m tired of waiting around for spring, waiting around for flowers.  They’re out there.  I’m sure of it.

Forget the errands and ditch the plans…I’m going hunting for spring flowers.

I went back inside the cabin and laced up my boots.  This winter might be hanging on longer than expected but it’s got to be spring somewhere in this fair and filthy city.  I grabbed my field guides and I grabbed my hat.  Then, I punched some buttons on my iPhone and I downloaded some apps.

I got a Thermometer App and I got an Altimeter App.

That’s right.  I’m going to start this hunt at the highest heights.  I’m climbing straight to the top of Philly Mountain and I’m not going to stop until I get to the lowest low.

I’m going to scour this city top to bottom.

Somewhere along the line, I’m going to find some spring flowers.

One quick look around my apartment in case I was forgetting anything.

That’s right.  I’ll need my mountain lookout journal and a good pen.  Now just need to fill up the canteen with some cider and I’m set…on my way to the top of the city…up, up and away…

NATURE'S FIRST GREEN

For the last week or so, I’ve been keeping my senses alert for the earliest signs of spring.

In a lot of ways, spring is our most flamboyant season but I just know, somewhere out there, it’s making a subtle entrance.

Despite the cold chill and the last flurries, I know spring is happening, can feel it in my bones.

The race is on.  Spring.  Nature’s first green.

But I didn’t want to catch the kind of spring that makes the news. 

That kind of spring is easy to see, hard to overlook.  It’s a princess.  I wanted to find the kind of spring that doesn’t need to announce itself, the kind of spring that opens the windows for the rest of the season, the trigger that draws back the curtains and calls the rest of the kingdom to rise.

That was my hunt: spring’s modesty.

I wanted to find the meek spring before its gets too gaudy and too flashy.

It’ll take keen eyes, a quiet mind and small hands to notice its arrival but isn’t that always the case when it comes to noticing humility?

There are, of course, the big signs of spring, signs so big that they are beyond my four dimensions, signs that go unnoticed by my own feeble five senses.

Like the length of days.  Beginning on March 17th, the day is now equal parts sunlight and moonlight.  Check the almanac.  Sunrise at 6:52am, sunset at 6:53pm.

The twelve-hour day is back.

We’re seven days ahead of Daylight Savings Time, six days past the new moon, two days beyond the Ides of March and three days away from the vernal equinox.

According to the Medicine Wheel, we’re in the transitional phases between the Big Wind Moon and the Budding Trees Moon.

But look at that calendar.

This March spans five weeks, enough room to squeeze in just a few extra phases.  This is sometimes called the Full Worm Moon, a time when the ground softens and the worms begin turning the soil and crawling back into the sunlight which is, itself, a trigger for the birds to return. 

Up north in New England, they call it the Full Sap Moon because it’s the harvest time for maple syrup.  Go even further north, up there where the new angle of the sun now bounces off the everlasting ice, and they call it the Moon When Eyes Are Sore From Bright Snow.

But all that is just pie-in-the-sky mumbo jumbo.  What really matters?  The world is no longer pointed north.  East has arrived, spring should be here, last moon of winter.

Thank Wabun, last moon of winter.

Now, where you at, spring?

STREETSIDE SPRING

There are five common street trees that are reliably known for early spring flowering: maple, pear, cherry, dogwood, magnolia.

Thanks to all those bright lights and all that heavy traffic, plus all that body heat, the inner city grid is warmer compared to the still wild parts of the city.

So it isn’t hard to see spring’s arrival down here on the mean streets.

ARMY VS. NAVY

This weekend, here in Philadelphia, we partake in an old tradition…the annual Army versus Navy football game.

Here we go again.   

Since 1890, these two branches of the American military have duked it out over possession of the pigskin, fighting for yardage and first downs, charging to the red zones, punching past the goal lines, kicking it through the uprights…clashing like titans on the combat zones of a neutral football field.

The majority of these epic battles have taken place right here in Philadelphia.  In the early twentieth century, these games were hosted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field…then it was moved to the old JFK Stadium…and now?  The Lincoln Financial Field all the way down Broad Street in South Philly.

The U.S. Military Academy of West Point versus the U.S. Naval Academy of Annapolis…the Army Black Knights versus the Navy Midshipmen…after 112 meetings on the football gridiron, the record stands in Navy’s favor…56 wins, 49 losses and 7 ties.

But who’s got the better trees?

In the competitive, collegiate spirit of this yearly contest, Jon Spruce goes a-hunting…Army vs. Navy, tree-style…which branch of the military here in Philadelphia has the greatest trees and the wildest wilds…huddle up and blow the whistle...line up and kick off…knock ‘em down but keep it clean…hike, hike...who will win this contest of the wilds…because if winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?

Let the games begin…are you ready for some trees?

WILLOW COUNTRY: THE COBBS CREEK WATERSHED

Philadelphia is currently coasting, in the most pleasant way, straight into a breezy and brisk autumn.  Tricky Coyote is making his long retreat into the woods and Brother Grizzly will soon take over the moons, one final burst of food and action before the long, sleepy winter.

The fall is all about movement, all about dropping.  You can hear it happening as you walk down the streets.  Acorns are falling.  The sky is falling, too, earlier and earlier.  Sycamore branches are breaking.  Chestnuts are splitting.  The leaves will soon drop.  The temperatures too.  Ducks and birds will fly away as others stop by on their marathon migration.  Same with the monarch butterfly.  Any day now, the burst of autumn colors will be lighting up the Philly treeline and this blog will be busy, busy, busy.

Flowers, fruits and then leaves…another spectacular show is only a few weeks away from its opening notes.

And yet, as it always does during this time of year, my thoughts and meanderings take a ruminative and macabre turn.

You see, two years ago, at around this time, I was stung by a yellow jacket while camping and, unaware that I was allergic, I soon went into anaphylactic shock and, soon after that, I was knocking on heaven’s door.

Three things saved my life.