A Night Blooming Cereus in Waverly

One afternoon this week, a neighbor along East 33rd Street called me to ask that I come over when it got dark to photograph her night blooming cereus as it was about to flower for that night only and would not flower again for another year.

My neighbor, Phyllis Brent, is a wonderful artist and gifted gardener, who has transformed her block along the southside of 33rd between Avon and Westerwald into a "Garden of Eden".

She adopted all the tree wells along the curb, designed a green oasis on the front lawns of adjoining properties and made sure that to every season there is a colorful thematic view for the many pedestrians and commuters who travel that boulevard which was built in 1919 with a green median based loosely on recommendations of the Olmsted Brothers to the City.

Despite the bugs dominating dusk, I got one decent shot of the cactus as it opened beside the steps to her porch, which Phyllis has decorated with colorful tiles. In fact if you went inside her home, you will find many of the walls pasted with a variety of tiles she has placed upon her artist's salon where hang, too, paintings she has resurrected from flea markets and second hand shops, as well as her own great oils of still lifes with much mood and attitude.

Phyllis has inspired many other Waverly Villagers with her creativity, like the young MICA students on the corner of Frisby and 33rd who got permission from the city to organize a community garden and temporary art space they called "Tinges Commons" paying homage to Tinges Lane, which has disappeared but has not been forgotten.

Thirty third street is now home to Stadium Place with the Y and senior citizen housing, the Giant with colorful community murals on the outside of the supermarket, Thanksgiving Place, a Methodist Church, Hopkins at Eastern and the sculpture of the Good Shepherd dedicated to Lizette Woodworth Reese, which I like to visit on the hill above the boulevard to reflect and pray.

Thanks to Phyllis, the blocks on the southside of 33rd Street in Waverly Village are beautiful all year round. To anyone passing by, it is clear that people living there care about their corner of the world and want to show their space as very special.

Phyllis preserves a tradition Lizette Woodworth Reese represented in honoring the natural beauty of the village despite its loss of fields and orchards to buildings and concrete and the quality of the villagers who cared for their surroundings and for one another in creating community. To end this ode to Phyllis, here is how Lizette Woodworth Reese closes her poem "Today"

To every age some mystery all its own,

That makes it dullest air,

A something hushed and fair;

Down every age some breath of Beauty blown;

Each day is but a pool within the grass,

A haunted, gusty thing,

Of ancient fashioning,

Where earch and heaven do meet as in a glass.