Day By Day

Monday, April 27, 2009

Spring -- It Was Nice While It Lasted

A week ago it seemed that Spring had finally arrived here in Baltimore. There was a riot of color everywhere. It was really fun on a cool day to take my camera for a walk down and around the streets and byways of Charm City. Well, that's all over now. The heat and humidity of deep Summer arrived with a vengeance this weekend. Temps rose into the 90s each afternoon and the big crowds returned to the Harbor. Spring lasted approximately five days this year.


Carnival Cruise Lines was advertising their new season of cruises originating at the Port of Baltimore and so there was a lot of entertainment available to the surging masses. I walked around sampling the delights and spent some time watching tumblers, dance parties, street performers, sand sculptors and the like. Most of the time I hung out on the West side of the Harbor listening to a calypso band. It wasn't the greatest band, pretty bad actually, but it reminded me of my youth, hanging out in South Florida in the Sixties. As I get older more and more things remind me of those salad days.



Today, walking down South Charles toward Cross Street I was struck by the fact that the intense Spring color was nearly all gone. Only a few small trees and bushes still bloomed. Otherwise they were a uniform green. What variation in color there was came from the buildings, not from nature.



And for a real riot of color, you had to go inside like this interior shot of the Cross Street Market. This is the ultimate triumph of the built environment over that of nature. Not only was the inside brighter and cheerier than the streets, it was also air conditioned and provided relief from the heat and humidity that plagues the whole Chesapeake region during the hot months.