The walk to work takes me by a large swath of parking lot and a busy corner gas station. It’s concrete and asphalt as far as the eye can see.

There are, however, some beautiful trees that line the sidewalks.

In May, five of the trees exploded into pink blossoms and it was lovely to walk beneath them. As the blossoms began to age and fall, my morning walk had about 30 seconds of what seemed like pink snow. A week and a half ago, a different tree bloomed into tiny white blossoms in clusters that reminded me of a lilac bush. The smell was heavenly, faintly evident despite the overpowering smell of car exhaust and gas. This tree is beginning to lose its bloom, but another section of trees is showing its own flowers.

I feel pretty lucky about it, for some reason.

I got into the habit of reaching up and pulling a branch down each morning to smell the flower bunches and look at the fine detail of the flowers. It made my morning. I miss all of the flowers from the farm, and perhaps these are my surrogate flowers, these scented trees in the middle of noise and machines and concrete.

Yesterday, while walking home from work, I noticed the woman in front of me. It was difficult not to, as she was talking loudly on her cell phone in a tone of voice that suggested she was upset. She’d just gotten off work at the hospital, it appeared, and was striding along oblivious to anything but her own self. Upon arriving at the white lilac-like tree, she impatiently pushed the lowest branch of flowers out of her way, causing some to fall on the ground, and walked on. They were in her way. Perhaps she didn’t see them as anything but a nuisance, and she had other things to do rather than waste time stopping.

Whatever the case, I thought it interesting. I guess you can decide to push the flowers away or you can pull them in and enjoy them.