Reader's Digest Flowers

7:10 a.m.:  Turning right from the Sawmill River Parkway onto Roaring Brook Road, I'm waiting in a line of traffic until the train passes through the intersection and the guard gates rise again.  I catch a glimpse of the orangey-red stripe of the red-wing blackbird in the green leafery of a tree.  I turn off NPR and an annoying report on Goldman Sachs and open my windows, hoping to hear the birds.  Indeed, there's the trill of ss ss ssss -- ss ss ssssss lingering, hanging in the air of morning just after a heavy rain.

Up ahead, Reader's Digest is abloom -- the front lawn bursting with yellow daffodils; fruit trees dabbed in pink and white.

4:13 p.m.:  Coming home down Roaring Brook Road, past Reader's Digest, making a left to cross the railroad tracks and make another left onto the Sawmill.  The red crossing lights started flashing and the gate blocking access to the railroad tracks came down -- on the roof of an SUV -- where it stayed.  I wondered why the driver didn't back up.  The driver behind the SUV backed up, as if to make room.  The train was coming.  It was clear that the train's width would, were it to sweep down the track, swipe off the grill of the SUV.  Instead, the train slowed to a stop.  The conductor signaled to the SUV to cross the tracks.  It did.  And then, at a few miles per hour, the train slowly passed by.  Then the gates rose again, and we were on our way.