Commencement Six Family Activities to Consider during Commencement Weekend
From a picnic on the BU Beach to strolling Newbury Street, there’s plenty to do in Boston
May 13, 2021 Twitter Facebook
With #BU2021 Commencement set up differently this year and the many COVID restrictions in the city still in place, planning your weekend festivities with family may require a bit of creative thinking. Not to worry we’ve got you covered. Explore campus, take photos, and experience the city of Boston with this list of activities to do with your family during Commencement Weekend.
Take a tour of the Boston University campus
The perfume of May seems to be saying, “Wake up, you sleepy insects!” Early irises are blooming, and everyone is astonished apparently by the flowering lilacs across the Island. The May transformation is here, seemingly overnight from brown to green, always swift and surprising, with fragrant lilacs and lilies of the valley welcome whenever they […]
Bloomberg May 11, 2021 11:08 am
Olivia Schneider pulled down her mask and inhaled the perfume from purple blossoms, their sweetness casting the engineer back to her Wisconsin kick-the-can childhood and her mother clipping lilacs for the dinner table.
Last spring, the simple act would’ve flouted signs imposing pandemic rules for the Harvard-owned Arnold Arboretum’s more than 400 lilac bushes. “Please enjoy the lilacs from a distance,” they read, warning that they should be treated “like any other surface that can spread COVID-19.”
This Mother’s Day, lilac-sniffing is fair game another small reminder of how data and experience have refined our tools for combating the virus.
The time of year when a flower blooms is influenced by many factors, including genetics, weather, and pollinators. But climate change is causing bloom times to happen earlier across ecosystems. According to several Boston-area scientists and curators at the Arnold Arboretum, over the past hundred years the temperature has risen 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit in the city. This is not just making the city a hotter place for people to live it’s getting warmer for the plants, too.
Abraham J. Miller-Rushing and a team of four researchers at the arboretum wanted to determine if the city’s increasing temperatures were affecting flowering times. As they note, “The most convincing evidence that living organisms are responding to global warming comes from flowering plants, which are especially responsive to warm weather in the spring.”
Olivia Schneider pulled down her mask and inhaled the perfume from purple blossoms, their sweetness casting the engineer back to her Wisconsin kick-the-can childhood and her mother clipping lilacs for the dinner table.
Last spring, the simple act wouldâve flouted signs imposing pandemic rules for the Harvard-owned Arnold Arboretumâs more than 400 lilac bushes. âPlease enjoy the lilacs from a distance,â they read, warning that they should be treated âlike any other surface that can spread COVID-19.â
This Motherâs Day, lilac-sniffing is fair game â another small reminder of how data and experience have refined our tools for combating the virus.