On the route from our house to the highway is Mercer Street, a four-lane, one-way thoroughfare. Some people treat Mercer as if it’s a highway, though the intersections along the half-mile length that I drive prevent the majority of drivers from achieving highway speeds. The amount of traffic on Mercer at morning rush hour occasionally prevents drivers from reaching any speed at all; it is one of the few places in Seattle where I have seen honest-to-goodness gridlock.
An 18-inch-wide median separates the two middle lanes of the road, helping to reduce mindless lane-changing and preventing drivers from (easily) running their cars headlong into the columns of the bridge under which the road passes. The median is formed of two standard concrete street curbs, with concrete filling the space between them. Mercer Street is nothing by concrete and asphalt everywhere you look. It is one of the grayest, most dismal stretches of roadway that I drive with any frequency, and I avoid it as often as I can.
This morning, however, I was on Mercer, headed for the highway. As I drove along beside the median, I noticed that, in the joints between the curbs and the concrete median top, small plants have appeared. They are most likely weeds, and are certainly volunteers, for who would seed the 1/4″ wide ribbons of dirt in the median? The seeds that landed in that unlikely place staked their claim on that little bit of soil, and grew. Nine to twelve inches tall now, the plants run in two perfect, couldn’t-plant-’em-straighter-if-you-tried rows along the entire length of the median. Each leafy green stem is topped with several small, yellow, daisy-like flowers.
According to the architect Mies van der Rohe, “God is in the details.” Like Mies, I find the sacred in the details of a beautiful building. And I find something of the sacred in other, less carefully designed details, such as two rows of tiny bright blooms springing up from an ugly concrete median.
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This was really a lovely post, thank you.
I enjoyed reading your post. It reminded me of something I saw driving home today. On a road filled with run-down businesses and fast food restaurants, there was an apartment building, perpendicular to the street. The building itself was nothing special—just a rectangular brick box. But every wrought iron enclosed balcony was brimming with greenery and flowers. A profusion of life and color in the middle of an otherwise dingy street. It was beautiful.
What a lovely post.
I generally hate interstate driving, but one thing that makes it bearable in my state is the DOT’s wildflower program. In spring and summer, it is just gorgeous. If you google “nc roadside flowers” there’s a link to a really pretty slideshow of them on the DOT site.
I have seen similar occurences here - makes you wonder how the poor things survive at all much less beat the odds to sprout lovely flowers amongst all that concrete. Good thing Mother Nature is so forgiving of her poor patrons of the soil - mankind.