SIDE TRACKED!!!!!!

Okay, I admit it....life has managed to side track me from my journaling about our Canadian cruise. I will get back to it, but for this post I would like to remain sidetracked and look at fall outside my window and also Thanksgiving.

You might remember back in the spring I took some pictures of the pretty pink cherry blossoms on the tree outside our bedroom window. Preceding this picture was an entry from February which had a picture of the bare tree in all its winter dreariness.

A few weeks ago I took a picture out the same window of the same tree in all its fall glory. The leaves this year were brilliant in there red, orange, and gold colors. Unfortunately their beauty is not any longer lasting than the pink petals of spring, but they are so beautiful for the week or two they are around.

Now the leaves have fallen, been raked and bagged and the tree is back to its dreary winter bareness. BUT the good news is that come April once again the tree will be covered in pink blossoms and the cycle will repeat yet again for another year.

Along with beautiful fall colors comes Thanksgiving. This year Jerry and I went down to North Carolina the week before Thanksgiving to help my mom move into a new home. We then had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal at my sisters new home. I do have to say that it is a beautiful home. They did well in choosing it.

When going to others homes for Thanksgiving you learn new ways of doing things. For me this was the case. Here is what I learned..............Turkeys can be cooked successfully in bags! Now, I knew that they made cooking bags for turkeys. I've seen them around, but I never concidered tring to use one. How the heck could the turkey skin get crispy in a bag???? Well it did and it stayed nice a juicy too. So I guess old cooks like old dogs can learn new tricks. Next year I will try and remember to use a bag to cook my turkey.

I did have a part in preparing the Thanksgiving meal. I got to do my favorite part. I got to bake the pumpkin pies. Not that that is a hard or tricky thing to do....especially when one relies on Pillsbury to make the pie crust and all yu have to do is unroll it and place it into the pie plates.....but they were tasty in any case. And I thought they were pretty also.

Finally my last picture for this post is of all the gals. I thought we made a pretty grouping. There's my sister, her daughter, my mom, my sister-in-law with my daughter behind her and then yours truly. Finally I'm not the tallest woman in the picture....Thank you Steph!

I hope you all had as wonderful and blessed of a Thanksgiving as I. Now on to Christmas............

ITS BEEN A MONTH!

It has been a month since I have posted here. Time continues to fly by. I am thinking that I have been way to busy with too much stuff in my life, but I haven't been bored, that's for sure.

So what have I been doing since the first part of September???? Well lets see.....mainly I guess it's been getting things rolling for the fall activities at church. There's been a picnic, a cleanup day and the Tuesday night dinners have started up again. For all those things I did the food. I've also cooked for the Golden Girls luncheon and have ended up being in charge of the fellowship coffee time between and after our Sunday morning church services. I think I've become the chief cook and bottle washer at the church. For the most part that's okay because I like to cook. Also the Monday morning study group which I teach has started back up and we continue in our Wednesday morning quest to create the needed gift items to be sold at our annual Secret Shop for the children of the church and community. Of course in the midst of all that are the normal activities of payroll, bill paying and newsletter article writing as well as staff, finance and church council meetings.....whew....no wonder I'm tired....and those are only the church work related activities. There's also been a yard sale, I attended and helped out for a day at a quilt show, a good friend got married, and I attended a stamping show.

I do have a picture of some of the prep work for a Woman's Tea our church woman's group hosted yesterday. Yes more baking.....yummy scones.
I made three kinds; plain, currant and raspberry cream. They were all yummy and I wasn't the only one who thought so which was nice. Of course they were served with clotted cream and strawberry preserves. I did make enough so we have some to munch on here at home for breakfast this week.

This week is one filled with much anticipation of the beginning og a much awaited trip which starts early Thursday morning. We will be heading out with some good friends from church for a lovely 9 night cruise to Canada and back. I have been doing some packing planning to get ready for it. I love to cruise and this will be my 5th one, but it will be very different from the other 4 as it will be a cool weather cruise. This presents a few different packing challenges. No shorts or tee shirts but rather cordury pants and turtleneck sweaters. Temps can range from 70 to 35. The word to remeber I keep telling myself it LAYER!

I tried to get everything into one suitcase, but I don't think it's going to work. Between being 9 nights and bulkier clothes I think I will need one big one and a smaller one. Maybe only a hlaf of the smaller one we'll see. Also there need to be day time casual clothing and evening more dressy including two really dressy things for the TWO formal nights. I'm not taking a formal, but do have sparkly dressy items.

Here is what the guest room bed looked like Friday before I began moving items into the actual suitcase.....Yes I am over eager and I alsready have the main suitcase packed.....but that's also becasue my busy schedule doesn't slwo down till we get in the Suburban and head north to New Jersey Thursday morning. I still have to work this week and have activities and meetings every night. Yeah some people never learn. Jerry was smart and started his vacation last Friday!!!!!!!!

BACK TO FLOWERS AND FRIENDS!

It's been a while since I have posted here. Life has been rather crazy. We've been to MI and I have spent a week with 100 little kids in Vacation Bible School. But life does eventually calm down to where one can take time to stop and smell the roses. In my case I don't have any roses but I can stop to look at my Black Eyed Susans. I say look rather than smell as I don't think that they have any scent.

I am not a gardener in any sense of the word. I have a purple thumb in fact. Normally anything green and growing I can kill in a few months if not weeks. My father and my grandfather where marvelous gardeners, but that family gene missed me. I am no good ant gardening and I do not enjoy it. However a few years ago I purchased some Black Eyed Susan plants from Costco. I got them one because they are the star flower of Maryland; two I sort of share their name; and three I think they are pretty. They have managed to stay alive over the past few years, though they are somewhat scrawny looking. Despite that I thougt I would take a picture or two of them to share. I really do think they are pretty.

Also I have a picture of a friend of mine. He (or she) is a regular guest in our yard. Every once in a while he/she has a buddy and they are so fun to watch as they frolic in our yard chasing each other back and forth. But his morning when I looked out our back patio door he/she was just sitting so very peacefully not too far from the door. I could not resist getting my camera to grab a picture. Such big beautiful eyes and he/she seemed to be totally relaxed.

We also had our resident squirrel begging for peanuts at the back door. I wish I could have gotten a picture of that. He/she was so cute sitting on his hind legs and peering in the glass door. I really do think he was begging. But alsa by the time I got the camera and turned it on he had given up and moved on. Obviously this squirrel does not know our family. We do not feed wild life. Nor pets for that matter. Mr. Snuggles, Nick and Pattie could all attest to that. We loved them dearly, but begging got them no where with us..........

Well so much for a day of flowers and friend. You know it really is amazing what you can find in your own yard if you just take the time to look.

YUMMY!

I am hooked on these cookies. They are so yummy! I keep telling myself since they have peanuts and peanut butter that they are good for me also....now please don't anyone break that illusion bubble please!!!!!!

These are the cookies that won a million $'s for a friend of mine in the Pillsbury Bake Off in April. I'm glad they don't cost me a million to make. I do them pretty good, but I do have to admit when Carolyn makes them they are better.

If you would like to try your hand at them you can find the recipe here. One suggestion, stick to the recipe as written. I tried substituting chunky peanut butter in the filling because that is what I had on hand. The filling was not as creamy and I think that is what makes these cookies so awesome...crispy outside and creamy inside. ENJOY!

TIME PASSES BY!

Time just continues to fly by....I can hardly believe that it is July let alone the middle of July very soon. I have so many pictures I have been taking and so little time to post anything here. This is a photo I took while waiting for my flight out of Kansas City airport back at the end of June. I love sunsets and always try to photograph them with little success. I am, however, very pleased with the ease with which my new camera captured this image and really excited when I saw the plane taking off in the middle of it. There are many beautiful things in life, but few match the splendor of God's artwork!

LOVIN' IT!

Oh, I am so lovin' my new camera!!!!! One of the things I wanted to be able to do is take some pictures of our backyard "wildlife". Now I know our "wildlife" is no where as exciting as friends Lee or Susan's are, but hey, when you live in a suburban housing development ya takes what ya gets! Lee gets bears and Susan, well Susan has what we consider all sorts of exotic critters seein' as she lives "down under" in 'strallia. Here in Germantown we get squirrels, chipmunks, bunnies and the occasional skunk! Fortunately non of those this year so far.....

I've been waiting for some wildlife. It's been so hot here lately I think they've been hanging out in cooler areas, but today my patience was rewarded and I got to play with my telephoto feature on my camera. The first pic is what Mr. Squirrel looks like using the normal lens length. What you can't see him???? Look closely just to the left of the broken fence beam. See him....well I don't really know if it is a him or her, so I will just use the generic him.

Here he is......Isn't he cute? It looks like he has found himself something to eat. Not sure what it is????? It looks like he is not so sure that I might not come to get it, but I think I will wait for a much tastier breakfast of fried egg and English muffin with raspberry jam. This was taken from the same position on the porch just with zoom out to the full 12x. I don't have the digetal zoom engaged as I don't use it, but I wonder how close I could get with that???


I really went out this morning hoping to find one of our resident bunnies, but figured I was going to have to settle for Mr Squirrel. Oh well. I go in to put the camera away and then when I went out a few moments later to get the morning paper look who I found next to the same fence Mr Squirrel was standing on......? I guess Miss Bunny didn't want to miss out on here moment of internet fame....Now why I have labeled her a she I have no clue! Maybe just because I think bunnies are cuter than squirrels.........This picture was also taken from porch with zoom.

So that is it for my morning fun with the new camera. I now have close and far shots figured out. I wonder what I should learn next????? Stay tuned to find out.......

NEW CAMERA!

After 6 years it was time to get a new camera. The trusty ole' Pentax 3MP 3x optical zoom camera just wasn't cutting it anymore and it was getting rather flaky only working when it wanted to not when I necessarily wanted it to.

I had certain requirements that I wanted to find in a camera and debated lomg and hard as to whether I wanted to go all out and get a DSLR. Finally I came to my senses and decided that when I had a film SLR I raely changed lenses. Too lazy to do so I guess and it always seemed I had the wrong lens on for what I needed when I did change them so I missed some good shots. So I decided see if I could find a non DSLR that could do most of I wanted. And I did! The Fugi Finepix s1000fd. I have had it two days and already I love it.

So what were some of my requirements....1) it had to use AA batteries (uses 4 of them) 2) a long optical zoom (has 12x) 3) capable of macro photography (this camera not only has macro but super macro down to .8 inch) 4) preferably used SD memory cards 5) At least 8MP (has 10MP) and 6) settings for high ISO so can do low light shots (can go up to ISO3200 if reduce MP setting)

What I didn't care about was tiny....it fact I didn't want tiny...too easy to misplace. For the powerhouse if a camera that this one is it is amazingly small and light weight. Here is a picture I took of one of the blooms on our azalea bush in the back yard. It is using the macro mode. And I am very happy with how it works. I still have a lot to learn about it though. More as I learn in future posts. Oh the other nice thing about it was the price. I set a limit of $300 and this was on sale from local camera shop for $230. So I think I did good!

BABY IT'S HOT OUT THERE!!!

I've been trying to find a picture that would depict how hot it is today. I've looked everywhere and this is the best I can come up with for now. It doesn't truly show it since this is a desert picture which means little humidity and our humidity is 46% at the moment. This means that though it is only 92 degrees it actually feels like it is 97 degrees. Which I guess is probably a bit cooler than this picture were it was probably about 100 degrees. But when you get that hot what is another 3 degrees....

This picture was taken on a vacation in the fall of 2006. It was a wonderful vacation where we jeeped around south western Utah for a little over a week. I loved our little yellow jeep that took us to some very interesting and desolate spots. This is one of them in Canyonlands Park.

So look at this picture and feel the heat. If you want a true feeling of what it is really like outside here in Maryland at the moment. Go into your bathroom and turn on the shower with the water coming out as hot as you can get it. Leave the room for a bit making sure all the doors and windows are closed. Let the steam buildup and then pop back into the room and close the door behind you. Take a deep breath. If you feel like you are drowning in the steamy heat, you have it. It is supposed to be like this till Wednesday when it will get cold again....89 degrees for forecasted high.

GETTYSBURG BATTLEFIELD

On Tuesday I took a group of women from our church, The Golden Girls, up to Gettysburg National Park. We had a wonderful time and it was an inaugural trip for us and the church van.
If you live in the area or are planning a trip to the area you need to make time to explore this park and definitely do not miss the brand new information center. It is wonderful! Plan at least 90 minutes to tour the center. And if you want to spend some time looking through the huge book and gift shop even more time.

This is a picture of one of the over 600 cannon that are scattered around the battlefield, and according to the guide we heard many if not most of them still work!

It was a good thing that we started our trip with an early lunch in Thurmont, MD. After we spent about an hour at the visitor center (we didn't have 90 minutes to devote to it) we got back into the van and toured the battlefield for 3 hours! It was a fascinating tour which was directed by an audio CD giving history of the battle and actually doing some audio reenactments.

We almost forgot to take a picture of our little group,but we didn't and we found a nice place in front of the largest monument in the park. So here we all are. At this point it had been a rather long day and there still was a 45 minute drive home.

Now they are debating among themselves as to where and when our next outing will be.

GRADUATION!

It was graduation day for Nate, our youngest, last Saturday. It was a beautifully sunny day, though a tad windy!

We left home for our 2 hour drive northwest to Frostburg, home of Frostburg State University and Nate's home for the last 5 years. This is what greeted us when we arrived! Okay so it was still two and a half hours till graduation.

We relaxed a bit and then headed out to lunch at one of his favorite restaurants. El Canelo, it serves good Mexican food at prices that can not be beat! My chicken quesadilla served with Spanish rice and refried beans was $5. You don't find that in the Washington DC area. Then it was time to head back to his house grab his cap and gown and head to graduation.

There are no pictures in cap the wind took those mortar boards and they became kites without strings. BUT here is how he looked cleaned up and in his gown. Not bad huh?
HE was my man in black!

The graduation ceremony was appropriately solemn with cheers and laughter thrown in just to show how proud friends and family were of this group of grads.

After graduation it was a totally different matter. This was when it became apparent that though Nate graduated with a degree in Physics, his heart was with his roommate and friends who were theater majors! Yes this is a whole new use of diplomas and academic cords.

It was a great day and we ended it with dinner at the restaurant were it all began with a family dinner early in his freshman year; The Acropolis. A world tour of food through the high in the mountains of western Maryland. Mexican for lunch and Greek for dinner.

As I said at the beginning it was a beautifully sunny though windy day. A special treat since it had been raining all week. As we left for home the rain once again moved in and we drove through it the entire 2 hour drive back to Germantown.

MORE PINK!

The cherry blossoms are long gone, but we have more pink in our yard. The recent rain intermixed with moments of sun have brought our rhododendron bush into bloom. We forgot to prune it last summer so it is very big this year and full of beautiful blooms.

This bush is right outside our front door. The blooms are actually a cluster of many smaller flowers and each bloom measures about 6 to 8 inches across. This is what one looks like close up. Fortunately for allergy sufferers there is no scent at all with these flowers. I'm sure my husband appreciates that.

I also took a picture of the whole bush so it could be seen in all it's beauty. It's relly quite large and this summer we will need to be sure and prune it back or it will take over the whole front of our house.

I think I mentioned in one of my posts about the cherry blossoms that though they are pretty when they are fresh they get really nasty when they are old. If you look carefully at the lower left of the picture of the rhododendron bush you will see what looks like brown dirt on the side walk.....That is what is left of the cherry blossoms that didn't get swept up before the rain came. They are a pile of brown mush now......YUKKY!

Also though the rhododendron doesn't have any scent at the lower right you can see my lavender bush that also is overtaking the garden bed and when it looms it has a lovely scent.

PINK PETALS

A while back I posted pictures of our beautiful ornamental cherry tree and mentioned that when the blossoms came down they would need to be shoveled up! Well that is where we are now. here are a few photos from our front yard now that the blossoms are falling off the tree and there are many more to come down.

When the wind blows and they fall it really is as if there is a pink snow fall. BUT after they a have been on the ground for a while they begin to turn brown and that is not so pretty. What we need now is a really strong rain fall to wash them all away! Once they are all gone we know that is is now summer in Maryland!

SIGNS OF SPRING!

Since this BLOG is titled "Life out My Window" I thought I would share a bit of what I actually see outside my bedroom window. Things have been changing over the past week.


A week ago this is what I saw when I opened my bedroom curtains in the morning. Our Ornamental Cherry tree was just beginning to show the hints of buds that would eventually burst into full bloom. A Few leaves were also beginning to poke out and show some, but not much green. As you can see out neighbors home a crossed the street is very visible.


Now a week later after some very sunny warm days and some very spring like April showers this is what I was greeted with this morning when I opened the curtains. A profusion of pink cherry blossoms. They are so pretty when they are fresh and new. Now our neighbors home is barely visible through the thick layer of pink petals.


So this truly is what life out my window currently looks like. It is very beautiful. BUT it is even more beautiful when I venture outside my home and get the full view of this wonderful cherry tree. Here it is..........what do you think?

The sad thing is that in another week or so these gorgeous pink petals will begin to fall to the ground. It will be like it is snowing pink flakes. That in and of itself is pretty. But soon after they land on the ground they turn an ugly brown and are layers so thick I consider taking out the snow shovel to get them all up.

The happy part of this though is that after they all fall the tree will then be a lovely shade of green and summer will be soon upon us!

CARDS FOR OUR HEROES!

Last Saturday was Women's Health Day at our church. We put on this program for women of the community, though mainly church members attend, and this year the topic for discussion was Bone Health. Lots of wonderful information on developing AND maintaining strong bones. We even had a team from the local hospital do DEXA scans as a screen for osteoporosis. I was a bit nervous about doing this as I have so many markers for developing this disease, but my T score was well into the normal range. Whew....one less thing to worry about health wise right now.

As part of the program we serve breakfast and lunch. I was in charge of purchasing the food for these meals and having it all ready for the men who come in to set it out, serve it and clean up.

We also do a craft/service project. I was also in charge of this and so we made Mother's Day cards I sent off to Cards For Heroes today. Since most of the women have very little crafting let alone card making experience I made up 4 sample cards and put together kits for each sample. I did all the cutting and stamping and they did the assembly. It was fun to see that after they made one a few of the women got brave and made some minor yet creative changes. We did 45 cards in about a 60 minute time block. Here is a pictuure of the final results of our work.

Every one that worked on the project, probably about 15 women, seemed to really enjoy it. A couple of them made four or more cards.

If you would like more information on several of the individual designs hop over and visit my Stampin' and Kwiltin' Blog tomorrow. Tonight I am now headed to bed. It's been a long busy day. Good night!

BIRTHDAY FLOWERS

I don't get flowers very often so I'm making this picture big so I can come back here and enjoy them often!!!! They are from the Golden Girls (affectionately called the GG's). This is a group of Senior Women who meet for fellowship and lunch at our church once a month. I cook for them and put on the lunch. Their normal meeting day would have been the day right after Easter which is a day many are still busy with family around here so they changed the date to the next Monday which was March 31; my birthday! That didn't bother me. These are a fun group of women and I really enjoy putting on the lunch for them. They surprised me with this bouquet of a dozen roses. They are so pretty and they brighten up our kitchen table especially on this another dreary rainy spring????? day. (The question marks are because it is barley rain rather than snow!)

PART TWO OF VISIT TO DC

Welcome back for part two of our Saturday adventures.

After leaving the rugby match Jerry and I walked down to the Tidal Basin. This is only one of many places around DC that you will find cherry trees, but it is probably the best know and most popular area. The picture here is of the Jefferson Memorial which is at one end of the basin. It to is a popular tourist stop. This picture was actually taken further on in our walk around the basin but I wanted to show it to you here as a picture representative of the beauty of the area.

There were many of these paddle boats out on the water and they added to the picturesque scenery.

There was a concert going on at the foot of the monument. It looked as if in might have been a high school band. We did stop and listen to them for a moment. They were pretty good. Then we climbed the steps and went in to visit Tom.
He's quite an imposing gentleman standing watch. I always find it humbling to read his words that are etched into stone at various points around the interior of the memorial. They are words that make one stop and think for a moment about where we began as a country and where we are now.

In case anyone is wondering, even though the cherry blossoms are plentiful and very pretty, Jerry reported that they do not have any scent. This is probably a good thing. It could have been vary noisy and maybe even a tad dangerous if all those thousands of people had a massive allergy attack and all sneezed at once!

We continued our walk around the Tidal Basin. Just after leaving the area of the Memorial we came upon a Bride and Groom having their wedding pictures taken in a very small park area and in front of the hanging cherry blossoms. It was a very setting for wedding pictures.

Our next stop was at the FDR Memorial. This was the first time either of us had been at this memorial. It is quite impressive. Unlike many of the memorials in DC this one has absolutely no steps and is totally handicap accessible. (On thing DC is known for is its steps! Be prepared to climb if you visit here!) Once again there were many inspiring quotations carved into the stone. There also are beautiful cascading waterfalls and a number of brass statues. Several are of FDR including one of him in his wheelchair, one of Eleanor his wife, then several which show images of people during the depression years. I've been wanting to visit here and was glad we were able to finally do so.

Our next stop was by the Washington Monument. Here we were able to watch, for only a moment as we were running out of time the multitude of kites that individuals and families were flying at the annual Smithsonian Kite Festival. Boy kites have sure changed since I was a kid. I don't think I saw a single kite that looked like the type I ever flew. There were dragon kites, butterfly kites, bee kites, fish kites, stealth bomber shaped kites and I even saw a kite that looked like a bi-plane. There were also all sizes of kites from very small hand made paper kites to one that looked the size of a small airplane. Everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time and the weather was perfect. Just the right amount of wind. Unfortunately I did notice a few kite eating trees!

We had one more stop we wanted to make before we headed to dinner. This was the National Gallery of Art. The East Building had an exhibit on the Photographs and Paintings of the Forest of Fontainebleau in France . We stayed there till the Gallery closed at 5pm and then headed to our dinner location.

Dinner was at Marrakesh, a Moroccan restaurant in DC. It was a wonderful end to a fantastic day. The food was great, but the restaurant itself was a treat. I wasn't sure where Jerry was leading my to as we headed down New York Avenue. I could see nothing that looked at all like one of Washington's top restaurants. We went up to some fairly nondescript but large double doors and he knocked on one of them and this little door in the middle of one of the bigger ones opened and they invited us in. (It reminded me of the types of doors you might have seen in movies placed during the prohibition era with a speak easy as one of the locations.) Now we were in a nondescript room that had a coat room off of it. We told them we had a reservation and our name and then...........they parted a curtain for us to enter the restaurant. I was as if we had just stepped into Morocco. It was beautiful and lavish. We sat on low couches and had a very small low table. There is no choice of menu items. It is a 7 course meal and as I said the food was beyond good. You do eat with your fingers though! Also at 7:30 we ere all entertained by a very talented belly dancer. We were seated pretty much right in front of the portable stage they set up. I think this was probably because when making the reservation they asked if we were celebrating something and Jerry told them it was my birthday. I also received a special drink (no idea what it was, but it was good) a piece of baklava with a sparkler stuck in it, and a birthday certificate which is in Arabic so at this point I have no idea what it says but it looks impressive!

So that was our day. After dinner was over we headed back to the Metro and took a train home with many others who were returning from their days adventures as well. Fortunately, I found a seat as about 20 minutes into the trip home I fell asleep.

There was one depressing thing about the day. This is for my SCS FLYBaby Buddies.....after walking all over downtown DC all day long (we did take a two bus trips to navigate the full length of the mall each direction) my pedometer showed I still had only walked 9876 steps!!!!!! No wonder in a normal day I have a hard time getting over 5000! How on earth unless you use a tread mill and walk for hours do you reach 10000 steps. I really would need the 48 hour day I have been yearning for!

TRIP TO DC

Yesterday Jerry and I took a trip into the District. It was one of those trips where we had many planned sites to see and discovered other unexpected ones along the way.

Since this year long photo project has morphed from the 365 project of daily photos into a photo journal for 2008 I would like to share some pictures from our days travels. I tried to pick out a few of the highlights and will share them in two posts. One made today and the other hopefully tomorrow or Tuesday.

Our first stop of the day after we arrived downtown via a very crowded Metro system was the Botanical Gardens which are at the Capitol end of the Mall.

This was my birthday trip so I got to choose the activities and the first was a stop to see a small quilt exhibit at the Botanical Gardens. The show was around quilts which had depictions of flowers and/or vegetation. I know several of the women who had quilts in the exhibit and so wanted to see them. This is one of the wonderful quilts that was there . It is a marvelous example of hand appliqué work done over the top of a beautifully pieced background. I love the way the quilt maker chose the fabrics she used and the effect of shading in the background.
I found my first surprise of the day here at the gardens. Not only was there the quilt exhibit, but they had a special exhibit of orchids. They had ones of every color and size imaginable. Some were very delicate while others looked very strong and sturdy. This was one of my favorite that I managed to get a good photograph of.

We spent additional time going through a few other of the many exhibits and then decided if we were going to see all we had come down to see we had better move on. So we headed back outside. (The Botanical gardens are primarily indoors in controlled environments.) It was now lunch time and so we found a seat on some steps by the reflecting pool in front of the Capitol building and ate a rather chilly lunch. This was the view from where we ate.

I think that all towns across the country must have emptied out and headed for Washington DC yesterday. I have never seen so many people in town. We thought it was crowded up by the Capitol, but it was empty up there compared to our next stop which was to see the Cherry Blossoms around the Tidal Basin and the Jefferson Memorial.

We took a bus to as close as we could get and then walked the remainder of the way. The Mall and Monument areas of Washington are known for their game fields. Almost any hour of any day you will come a crossed some sport being played and yesterday was no exception. Normally you expect to find football in the fall, baseball in the spring and soccer all year long. Yesterday we found along out walk what at first I thought was soccer, but discovered when I saw the ball was rugby. I've never seen rugby played before and so we stopped and watched for a while. What they say is true: it makes American football look like a game for wimps. Rugby is one rough game and the players wear no protective clothing. Here is a picture of the beginning of a pile up which the ball is under. They just keep pulling and clawing at each other until the referee determines no one will be able to get the ball out. It was also interesting that when they toss the ball out from the sidelines team members pick up one of the guys and lift him up over their shoulders so he can try and catch the ball. It was very interesting to see and another unexpected treat.

After this short stop we reinserted ourselves into the flow of humanity heading to the tidal basin and moved on closer to the cherry blossoms. But that is where I will pick up later as this post is already long enough. I hope you are enjoying this trip through Washington on a chilly spring day.