… Catoctin Wildlife Preserve. Camp David is down the street.
… embraces her cousin while waiting to chomp down on mazurek.
Photo Joanna Soltan.
… already in early April. In UD‘s garden.
… but the Latin for “The person who plants, preserves” – which is the Roosevelt family motto – appears above the door of the building leading to Pope Farm Nursery, which supplies plantings for parks around UD‘s Montgomery County. UD and her sister visited Pope today – an insanely beautiful clear-full-blue sky day – and gazed at rows of green shoots in little green buckets.
If it’s UD’s Garrett Park, it means that yesterday morning there’s a knock at the door by a man identifying himself as “the town arborist.” Of course UD knows Phil Normandy, who leads regular town walks where he updates GPers on newly planted trees, dead and dying trees, rare and exotic finds, etc.
“Margaret, letting you know the town’s planting two trees in front of your house.” The town right of way extends fifteen feet into what you might call our front yard. It’s up to the town what it does with it, and what it’s doing with it is planting — free of charge to Les UDs, of course — two very beautiful trees for us to gaze at from our front windows:
- American Fringe tree, female (with blue berries!)
- Siebold Magnolia, variety Colossus.
… appears in UD‘s frigid garden as she takes her first walk in a month — since (almost) recovering from bronchitis.
After a fully dreary day yesterday, the sun was out in force today; and UD’s sister, who scans maps for interesting green spots in Montgomery County, found the Tridelphia Reservoir. We got there exactly at noon, and as we walked the path along the water, the sun warmed our backs. The air was chilly enough to keep people away (we were alone), but actually, in the event, very pleasant. Dry, fresh, clear. The clarity of the entire setting was astounding.
The feel of the place was… eerie. Aesthetic abandonment: no birds, nothing but twigs in the muddy lake, disused canoes on the banks. For a few moments we heard a jet pass, but it barely registered.
We spoke some words, mainly about the wind, which was also high and very much part of the eerie sweetness. It was easy to hear the wind, shaking the dry leaves that still, in mid-December, hung on elms that overlooked the water. The sun cast a shadow of their branches on the lake surface.
The phrase ‘perfect moment’ has been hijacked by advertising; but everything really was in breathtaking, mystical, alignment.
Just down the street from UD (well, 23 miles away) live the stubborn couple who changed state law so that if you want to keep a pollinator garden in front of your house around here, you can.
A [2021] bill was drafted that forbade homeowner associations from banning pollinator plants or rain gardens, or from requiring property owners to plant turf grass.
They had a long hard tussle with a neighbor, but they made such a fuss it went all the way to Annapolis.
One of their neighbor’s bitterest complaints involved the deer their natural garden attracted.
Welcome to UD‘s garden.
(The post’s headline is taken from the thousands of comments the article has received, most of them agreeing with the statement’s strong anti-lawnism.)
… spied at The Wharf, where UD and her
sisters strolled yesterday, in spectacular
mild sunny winter weather.
- Play Bach’s Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother BWV 992.
- Sample what’s left of the crispy salmon you made for dinner.
- Empty the dishwasher.
- Check on your dog, asleep on top of seven blankets in the guest room. Give her a kiss.
- Play Wordle (it took me five moves).
- Go to the NYT archives and complete two acrostics. (Each took me about twenty minutes.)
- Check Amazon for extra large socks with octopuses on them for Andrew Ferree MD’s Christmas present.
- Read many articles about the spread of Iran-inspired hijab-burning around the world.
- Go out on the deck with binoculars and marvel at how gorgeous the night sky already is, without even a lunar eclipse.
- Go to Winston’s Gutters website and request a visit.