New York City, May 30, 2017

★★ Roses bobbed on a fully laden bush. The greenery glowed intensely in the dimness of morning. The clouds stood just low enough to snip off the spire of the Empire State Building. Downtown, with no growing things in view, the scenery was the color of spent charcoal. Past lunchtime, the sameness was broken for a while by a dense, forbidding rain. That passed and the new rainfall was absorbed in the damp, monotonous gloom.