Grey and Green

I take a bus every day, twice a day. To work, from work. Down the busy street, onto the highway, over the bridge, onto another highway, past the airport, over the skyway, through the tunnel, across 42nd Street, up Madison Avenue. Down Fifth avenue, across 42nd Street, through the tunnel, over the skyway, past the airport, onto another highway, over the bridge, up the busy street. 

There is a strange and beautiful thing during the latter part of this mundane journey between onto another highway and over the bridge. There is a house, a boxy, old house. A house with greying white paint. It is on a street that leads to loading docks for the big boats coming from Japan and Singapore and Hong Kong. There is a truck parking lot across the street and a gentlemen's club on the corner. Next to that, the house with worn white paint. 

It has a (bright) white picket fence, this house. There's a rectangular porch that stretches out from the back of the house that a rickety green lawn chair sits on and beyond that porch with the picnic chair is a garden.

It is a stunningly beautiful garden that I can see from above as my bus creeps up the arch of the bridge. Green trees hang over a stone walkway that meanders around the yard and ends at a stone fountain. Flowers spurt up along the walk at times blocking the path. It is overgrown in the most perfect, natural way. I like to think that a stubborn old individual lives there, a man or woman who refuses to leave his or her home despite the collapse of the neighborhood; an individual who still believes in beauty and color in a world of grey pavement. 

Image via flickr