Gregory Edwards and Scarlet were caught by surprise Wednesday morning when they walked out their front door.

It wasn’t the sirens from the police cruisers flying down the street that caught their attention. Officers were responding to a ShotSpotter notification of possible gunfire on the next block. (The responding officers, pictured, ended up not finding evidence confirming the notification.)

Nor was it the burnt odor still emanating from Dix Deli around the corner two days after a fire that left the convenience store and upstairs apartments boarded up. (The cause of the fire remains under investigation.)

It was a tulip. Or what was left of it. Near the sidewalk.

“Amongst all of the litter and filth,” Edwards reflected, “comes this beautiful flower.”

Needless to say, it was a metaphor moment for the daily coexistence of challenge and wonder living on Willis Street.

Edwards bought the circa 1902 Colonial single-family home in 2010 and fixed it up. He finds living there frustrating, beginning with “the gun violence.”

“I’m kind of happy” that the fire shut down Dix Deli, Edwards said during a conversation on the “Word on the Street” segment of WNHH FM’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” program. “All they did all day was sell crack outside. There are nothing but problems there. And the police let it happen. [And] my taxes are going up.”

He pointed to a vehicle parked a half-block away at the intersection of Dixwell.

“Right there is drug dealing all day long. People come and they sit in the car and they sell drugs on the corner of Willis Street. Look it’s happening right now. This is all day long.”

Then again, there are the neighbors.

“I love my neighbors,” Edwards said.

And the trees. Urban Resources Initiative (URI) planted seven of them stretching down the block. They’re thriving.

Edwards was taking the day off from his job at a Westport hair salon to care for his three teen sons, whom he had for the day while they were on spring break from school in Hamden.

Scarlet, who usually works the night shift, was on her way to work Wednesday morning filling in for a day-shift colleague as a courier at a medical practice with multiple offices. After meeting Edwards online (they were both previously married), she said, she moved here a year ago from bucolic Stone Ridge, N.Y. (population 1,234).

She does miss all that nature, she said. On the other hand, she looks “at each new move, each new place, as an adventure,” where beauty and renewal can be found in unexpected places, whether in personal relationships or in physical environs.

Take their front yard. While the tulip’s time was passing, another tree in their front yard, a redbud, was in full bloom.

And by next week, Edwards pointed out, all those city trees on the block “are going to bloom and blossom.”

Click on the video to watch the full conversation with Gregory Edwards and Scarlet on the “Word on the Street” segment of WNHH FM’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” program.

Click here and see below for other episodes of “Word on the Street.”

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The Word On Willis: Beauty Pokes Its Head

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