suns along the Mohawk

With new cherry blossoms and a blanket of fog, yesterday’s Stockade morning was so enticing that I was out with my camera well before 7 A.M.  No words are needed for the photos, but you can scroll over each for a description or click on it for a larger version.

Go here for views of the 2008 Washington Ave. Stockade cherry blossoms, and here for the 2009 Stockade cherry blossoms.

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An Interruption for an Urgent Editorial Comment: Like cherry blossoms, the mature trees shown above on Washington Ave. have also been condemned to impermanence, as the City plans to take them all down as part of street repaving and sidewalk repairs this Spring.  [The skinny little trees will stay, and trees like them will replace the old shade trees.]  This deforestation and man-made blight will soon spread throughout the Stockade to the block where you live – – see the precedent on No. Ferry Street. When historic district homeowners rightly need permission for the smallest changes in their street-side façades, this drastic change in the appearance and attractiveness of the Stockade streetscape surely should not be made without the City considering all options, as many municipalities do within and outside their historic districts  (e.g., preserving sidewalks not drastically in need of repair in order to save a healthy tree; modifying techniques used when removing roots; narrowing the sidewalk or the utility strip). Finances should not be the sole criteria used by the City, just as it may not be for homeowners making alterations in an historic district.

If — like people in residential urban areas around the world, who value their shade, beauty, environmental benefits and enhancement of property values — you treasure and would like to save as many healthy, mature shade trees as possible, please let the Mayor, the City Council and the Stockade Association know ASAP, as bid requests for the work will go out this month.  Preserve Our Stockade Trees (POST!).  For more on this topic, see my new weblog (created April 12, 2010) “Preserve Our Stockade Trees.”

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. . . a few street scenes:

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. . . and Riverside Park scenes along the Mohawk River:

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. . . finally, back to my home base  at Washington Ave. and Cucumber Alley. . .

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