pretty in pink - Newtown

For WEEKS, an older friend has been longing for the arrival of spring.  Every day, as we headed out on a ramble, she'd gesture to the barren trees & say, "One day, these bare branches will be covered with green leaves!"  

After a very long, very cold, very grey winter, yesterday was the FIRST fully completely undeniably day of spring.  But it's still very hit & miss about where to find blooming trees, so it was a bit of a risk wherever we headed.  I opted to go to Newtown, a cozy town about a picturesque 30-minute drive from my friend's place.  If nothing else, we'd have the fun of seeing the little lake at Churchville Nature Center totally ice-free (for months, it's been covered, from shore to shore).  

We gloried in the hillside of daffodils along Terwood Road, right before the drop down Fettersmill to Bryn Athyn.  Anne was awed by the stunning magnolia outside of Gail & Scott's, one of the earliest heralds of spring.  Daffs along Buck Road were duly admired.  But most of the trees were on the brink of bursting into bloom - almost, but not yet.  Although there were a couple flowering trees right before we got to the nature center lake, every tree encircling that charming body of water was bare.  

So, I was totally unprepared for what greeted us as we turned left on State Street, in the heart of Newtown.  The street was lined with beautiful flowering trees.  My eyes couldn't quite believe what they saw - PINK flowering trees.

Now, it's been a few years since I made it up to Newtown in early spring, but only a few.  Okay, maybe five.  But no more.  The last time I drove along State Street, the trees that lined it were decked out in white.  

That's how they looked the spring John & I courted (we met in Newtown), that's how they looked just five (or less) years ago.  Not now.  Now they are most definitely pink.

        

When we headed to the Zebra-Stripped Whale for ice cream, the owner explained that they took down the white-blooming trees a couple years ago & replanted with the pink - and that this was the first spring they'd really strutted their springtime beauty.  Alas, I forgot to bring a camera, or I could show you that the tree showing in the photo below, right outside the Z-S W's front door, was FILLED with pink blossoms, much to the utter delight of my older friend, who not only got to see spring in bloom, but to touch it, too!

Thank you, Newtown!  The rest of the our little corner of the world is getting ready to burst into bloom, but you are already pretty in pink!