I did my customary check of the Greenway bubblers. No water turned on yet on this chilly day. And Joanne’s paver. Looking as sharp as ever. Others were fading fast.

There was not much color except white snowdrops and gold, white and purple crocuses, a few dusty-pink hellebores and witch hazel shrubs blazing yellow.

Many daffodils and irises were starting to green but not yet flowering. Yellow- and red-twig dogwoods showed tough pruning but good bark color.

The Native Land Acknowledgement on Parcel 21 is back just in time for Trump’s war on DEI.

In Parcel 22 across from the Boston Fed, boxwoods provide a good earthy smell.

For more than 30 years, I was the executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education. In 2023, I left the editorship and began volunteering in phenology at the Rose Kennedy Greenway and in English language teaching at the Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Mass. Also see A Volunteer Life and Back to Green and Witnessing Beauty but Wilting in Empathy and What To a Volunteer is Labor Day?