A to Z Challenge: My theme this year is NYC before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

MUSEUMS: How can I not mention museums for M? (You saw my arts calendar; they’re a big deal.) The Husband and I have always loved museums and no matter where we travel, museums top our list of activities. After all, I majored in art and minored in art history (which seems like a long ago era in itself). With museums constantly adding exhibits throughout the year, becoming members to several made sense (I had to include the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens because, hey, the gardens are designed to be more than just a bunch of plants).

Did you know the first museum dates back to the Babylonian era, 2,500 years ago? Neither did I (reiterating my college days probably need to be carbon dated too). During an excavation of a Babylonian palace in 1925, British archaeologist Leonard Woolley discovered a collection of neatly organized and labeled artifacts. This early museum belonged to Princess Ennigaldi and contained items as ancient to her, as the fall of the Roman Empire is to us. Crazy to think about. The idea that the science of archaeology existed in 530 BCE, blew Woolley’s mind. Coming across artifacts spanning a couple of thousands of years, all jumbled together, would be like an ancient jigsaw puzzle. Items included inscriptions from the Kassite period around 1,400 BCE; a 2,058 BCE statue of a Babylonian king; another statue dating to 1,700 BC; and a large votive stone mace-head believed to date back 2,200 BCE. All of this is so fascinating to me. I have to wonder, considering so much of our current world is digital, what tangible discoveries would future civilizations unearth when our society disappears? Would they find evidence of our technological advancements? It’d be a shame if they thought we only got as far as floppy disks and Blockbuster.

MISSING MAGNOLIAS: Mourning, mopey, melancholy, marooned, are a few of the other M-words I could easily monologue right now. We’re halfway through this A to Z Challenge and I admit, my momentum is waning, but at least there’s an end in sight after “Z.” The virus, however, lacks a clear end date. With so many other things to be missing right now, like my family, it rings a bit petty to bemoan missing this spring’s magnolia blooms, but y’all don’t need to see a meltdown. So here we go.

One of the few things I can appreciate humidity for (including sunsets), are the plants that thrive in this muggy environment. Coming from the dry Colorado climate, magnolias were simply never a thing in my world until I moved here. Last year it was Magnolia Mania.

This year, we’ve only been able to catch a few blooms since we don’t venture out too often these days. We did manage to see a beauty earlier in March.

For your viewing pleasure, here’s a video I took of a magnolia tree with some early blooms: