Forward
I ventured south at the lowest point of my life, expecting nothing.
My job was writing entertainment reviews and essays on popular culture for Manhattan Gothic magazine. My column was called A week in the life…of Donovan Ford. I spent the entire month doing things that were new. I went to restaurants the night they opened, well before the critics arrived. I saw shows while they were still working out the kinks in Philly. I attended private parties at clubs that were awaiting their liquor licenses to open to the public. Each month, I told the tale of what would be hip, cool and popular next. I had gone on movie shoots, taken adventure vacations, and traveled with rock bands.
At 35, I was jaded. Worse than jaded, I was a cynic who was passionately in love with his own cynicism. I thought it made me hip. I thought I had seen it all.
But, as it turns out, I had never seen a dogwood. I had never smelled a gardenia. I had never even heard of a bradford pear.
In case you haven’t either, the bradford pear is an ornamental tree that blooms in March in Atlanta. They put out thousands of tiny white flowers at the first sign of warm weather. They are one of the early signs that winter in North Georgia is coming to an end.
One of the first things I learned about Atlanta is that something is always happening there, just like it was in Manhattan. And for a brief time, I was charmed by the similarities between the two cities. When I took a few minutes to slow down and actually observe Atlanta, however, I was enthralled by the differences.
The second thing I learned was that some plant or tree is always blooming in Atlanta, no matter what time of year. Much of the city’s character can be correlated to what is in flower at that particular time.
Before I came south, I never would have written about trees or flowers. Frankly, I never would have even noticed them at all.
