The secret garden

National Gallery of Art and magnolias Wednesday evening, March 17.

The bubble man and admirers at Meridian Hill Park.

Just continuing a celebration of spring and could not leave out Forsythia Hill, a veritable avalanche of yellow flowers.  Cherries are from a week ago or so, they’re mostly gone, now there are Kwanzan cherries, dogwoods, and red buds blooming.

#cherryblossomsdc #doaks

Gorgeous orchids greet you in the East Bldg at the National Gallery of Art, DC. The horticultural team is tops! #ngadc #orchids

Jeanne d'Arc facing south at sunset in Meridian Hill Park

This was a few weeks ago, on the grounds of Kentuck Knob, a Frank Lloyd Wright home in Chalk Hill, Pennsylvania, near its more famous sibling, Fallingwater.   A number of modern and contemporary sculptures are sited on the grounds around the home, creating a woodsy art-nature walk.   Here I am squeezed into an aperture of an Andy Goldsworthy wall piece, which forms a roofless ring in the woods.  The above are reflecting ponds that glowed in the darkness of the woods.

The US Botanic Garden on the mall downtown is in gorgeous fall form right now. The garden has matured well over the 8 years or so since it was replanted. One of my favorite places to take lunch on the mall. You can see the glass pavilion that houses the exotic plants at top right. Capitol dome is just out of sight to the left.

A bench has been repurposed as a planter for moss on the Arbor Terrace and I noticed a new formally planted area with an urn at center around the Prunus Walk.

Catching up a little on summer....an early August visit to NYC and Governor's Island, site of a defensive fort (Fort Jay) and Castle Williams, a penitentiary (above) that was used until the 1960s. Rocky Graziano was imprisoned there for going AWOL from the military. The landform (bottom left) encloses a strange colonial-style residential courtyard. At right are  newly planted gardens around the old barracks buildings. 

A half-and-half lantana outside the National Gallery of Art.

Roses at the US Botanical garden downtown in almost full bloom.

The sound installation, The Pool of "Bamboo Counterpoint" by Hugh Livingston at the Lover’s Lane pool. Snippets of piano practice—musical fragments—intersperse with recorded sounds of restless children, percussives, and other mysterious sounds -- all combining with the rustle of the wind through the bamboo that lines one side of the pool.  I do miss the agate clarity of the usual stone bottom pool that turns green with algae (the artist seems to have painted the bottom of the pool black), but it is a curious experience.   The 12 sound pipes, like those of an organ or submersible musical instrument peer out like periscopes at people sitting at the grassy risers that once sat the audience for different amateur performances enacted there during the Bliss' time, the pool covered over with a stage.  Sounds emerge from the pool like possible memories or echoes of the past, of children and families long since dissolved.

A charming carpet of cherry blossoms near home in Adams Morgan.

Love from the garden.

Planting the vegetable garden under Luis' direction: cabbage, onions, kale, artichokes, broccoli, and more to come as the soil warms up, finally. Tulips in force in the cutting garden and herbaceous borders. Photos contributed by Tina.

Cherry blossom time at Doaks.  Weeding in the rose garden, growth there still very nascent.  We've waited and waited... through random snow days and deep freezes, and now ... the payoff.