Landscaping 101

"They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum and charged the people a dollar and a half just to see 'em." -- Joni Mitchell

I'm sitting in Rockefeller Center as I write this, and since my Palm TX can't latch onto NBC's wireless signal from this distance, I'm blogging in my little red Moleskine. (Remember the days when keeping a journal meant writing in an actual book with an actual pen and keeping your words private? Ha!) Saks sits on my left and Thirty Rock looms to my right, tourists and stressed commuters mingle in front of me. My ears resound with the bells of St. Patrick's Cathedral and my nose inhales fumes from the M4. ("Clean air bus" my ass.) If one place in this city could completely encapsulate the world's expectation of New York, this would probably be it.

You'll notice that, in the above description, I didn't mention what's behind me. You know what's behind me? A palm tree. A freaking palm tree, towering twenty feet high, its fronds shielding me from the little sunlight left in the day. It's in a marble container along with passion flowers, baobab-looking things, bromeliads, and a few plants with leaves the size of trashcan lids.

I feel like this deserves some sort of insightful comment, some wryly profound observation about the state of a world in which idiosyncracies can sit in marble buckets in the middle of midtown for no apparent reason. And you know what? I'm too captivated by the damn things to think of anything remotely coherent to say.