The transition from winter to spring in NYC always feels like a test. Yvonne doesn’t mind January/February weather, as long as it occurs in January/February. But by mid-April, she’s lost some of that bottomless patience for which NYCers are well known.

She heads for the New York Botanical Gardens, reasoning that if it doesn’t feel like spring in Manhattan, going north will surely help. Perhaps, somehow, it’s spring in the Bronx.

The tour guide on the tram said this hill will be covered in hundreds of thousands of daffodils—in the spring. In the spring? Define “spring,” Yvonne thinks.

But inside the Conservatory, it’s a different season entirely.

It’s orchid season!

Yvonne takes a deep breath of humid air and promptly sheds her coat.

The orchids are intoxicating, each variety more extroverted than the last. Yvonne is glad she wore pink.

She feels her shoulders unhunch.

The orchids seem otherworldly. She thinks she’ll see blossoms in her dreams.

After she’s made a full circuit of the show, she feels ready to face whatever the weather throws at her. But when she emerges, the temperature seems to have risen, and the wind has died down.

And in the azalea garden, a gorgeous surprise. Blooms that perfectly match her boots.

In fact, NYC has stunning flowers of its own, ones that live here and don’t require a hothouse. They’ll come out when they’re good and ready, you just have to wait.

Yvonne is made from a suit of my husband’s. Her coat is made from fabric from my mom, her t-shirt is a t-shirt, her skirt is a sock, and her boots are from an old totebag. Her necklace, bracelet, and brooch come from a stash of odds and ends from Ellen.

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully.

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

—E. E. Cummings