Please Do Not Take the Flowers

All over Midtown Manhattan, there are areas where local block associations of sometimes it seems just a building or maybe an individual store owner have taken over cultivating flower or other decorative planting around the base of street trees...

At this little planting area around a tree on Second Avenue about 37th Street or so, now that Fall has come, typically someone has augmented the naturally growing plants with implants of flower cluster--sort of ready made bouquets..

HERE, a sign a sign says "Please, Do Not Take the Flowers"--  implying that maybe at some past time people have ( some people will take anything that is not nailed down in this City, and then there are some who are really just sort of kleptos)...

Those cluster plantings usually are not as hardy as the naturally growing flowers, and tend to fade and die suddenly after a period of time.

As it gets colder, many people who manage these plantings go in for decorative kale-- last winter, which was unusually mild, these plants often made it through the whole winter in places...only to be ripped out in the Spring for the planting for more "normal" decorative flowers. This seems unfair to the decorative kale to me, which seemed to have earned its stripes by making it through the harsh weather and providing a reminder of the Spring to come....I wouldn't mind if they let the kale plants grow all year round in some places. But then, no one is asking me...