Christmas Trees in the District

The District is full of beautiful Christmas Trees at this time of the year if you know where to find them, like this one in the Library of Congress, easy to get into, no ID required, there's almost never a line and the restrooms are good.

Take a self portrait on the giant ornaments gracing the outdoor tree on the porch of the Canadian Embassy.

Stop by the Peace Officer Tree outside the municipal DC Courthouse on Indiana Street NW, where many of the ornaments specifically memorialize slain police officers.

Union Station has a spectacular tree in its rotunda, presented each year by Norway, and there is a busy, expansive food court down below and inside access to the Red Line of the Metro.

The Botanical Gardens at the foot of the Capitol has a tree with a Thomas the Engine train running around its base.

You could imagine this largely unadorned evergreen outside its entrance as a Christmas tree if you're in the proper holiday frame of mind.

Or this potted evergreen tree near the Mary L. Ripley Garden by the Smithsonian Textile Museum next door to the bigger Enid A. Haupt Garden.

Inside the Willard Hotel, which has fabulous bathrooms, there are public alcoves decorated with little trimmed trees where upon glancing up at a portrait on the wall, you'd see you are in the presence of Abe Lincoln and his sons.

Christmas Tree Run 2019, Part II

There is a lot to see in the District on a run at this time of year even beyond Holiday Lights.  For instance, a Giant Panda in the subway system, Washington is nuts about its Panda Bears, all gifts on loan from China, except for maybe the offsprings but I think even those might belong to China by the rules of exchange.  I was in a museum on my run and I listened to a loud exchange between the security guard and a man wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey about the relative suckiness of each other's NFL team and when it seemed to be escalating into acrimony, I offered my opinion that I hated the Washington Redskins myself (it goes way back to the Nixon years); the security guard looked at me and said, "Then why are you wearing their colors?"  I was inadvertently, having donned the long-sleeved technical running shirt de-juere (gold) and the best sports vest I had with pockets that sealed with velcro closures (crimson).  I'll try not ion the future to look like a running prop for the failed team of allegedly despicable owner (he allegedly is very litigious and allegedly sues anybody for anything as allegedly a big bad bully in court burying persons who badmouth him with legal fees) Danny Snider.  (It turned out the two men who seemed to be arguing heatedly were actually friends.)

Hanging art versus suspended construction along the Mall.

A beautiful carousel on the Mall, seemingly uplifting even while looking backwards to the dark days of the Depression when a Merry-Go-Round could bring a brief glimmer of joy and hope.

The Capitol framed by the majestic raised sweep of the uplifted curving Hirschhorn Museum.  There's a lot of rancor and anti-democratic action going on down there; it's sickening Republic-wrecking activity, purely money and power driven, thank heavens for the 2018 elections.

The Cherry Blossoms 2019

Washington is famous in the spring for its flowering and beautifully colorful blossoming of the Cherry Blossom trees around the Tidal Basin, gifts from Japan when we were their friends (after WWI), before we were their enemies (WWII) and now we're their bosom buddies (post Occupation, but pre-Trump).

Pink and white natural colors of the blooms are riotous, but the wildlife don't notice.

I was in Europe, my first trip overseas, when the blossoms were at their peak.

But when I got back, I traversed the Tidal Basin a few days after The Peak and it was singularly still beautiful, before it subsided very quickly into the green leaves of the actual growing phase of these special trees.

The tulips of spring

Now that spring is done, looking back I did participate in certain traditional springtime viewings in the District.

I walked through the National Tulip Library bed, enjoying the colors of the multi varied flowers there.

It's by the Tidal Basin, so you can get a two-fer by circumventing that body of water, viewing the blooming cherry blossoms along the water and affording yourself the pleasure of seeing the nearby emerging tulips as well.

I like seeing the outliers, in this picture a single red tulip that somehow got into a white tulip bed to the left of center.

The colors of spring

On the last day of spring, here are the colors of spring.

The perennials I planted last year.

Any run down any street in town shows nature's beauty.

The District especially reveals springtime's riotous colors.

Holiday Tour, Part Two

This month I went into the District to do a holiday decorations tour on a bicycle. I spent a little time enjoying the National Tree with the National Menorah and the Washington Monument bookending it.

Downtown I went into the Willard Hotel and the Trump International Hotel to see their trees and warm up for a little while.  DC in December can be cold and raw even when the sun is out.

The Nutcracker Sentries were manning one of the the Willard Hotel entrances and outside the Portrait Museum some life size wooden soldiers stood guard.  The Hotel Monaco had a nice little tree in its tiny lobby.

The Smithsonian Castle always has a tree.  The nice thing there is that there's never a line to get in and it has bathrooms and even a small food court.

The Capital Tree was nice, although it's always dwarfed by the Capitol.  After seeing it from afar, I went up to Union Station to have lunch in its food court and see the tree in the massive lobby.

I headed back to Haines Point to retrieve my car and drive home.  Along the way I ducked into the almost totally underground African Arts Museum to see its tree and conclude this year's holiday decorations tour.

Holiday Lights Tour, Part One

I went on my yearly Holiday Lights tour in the District this month, fitting it in before my mid-month operation which limited my mobility severely.  I bicycled over to the Ellipse from Haines Point, where I parked my car, to view the National Tree.

From the White House, I entered the Willard Hotel to see its Christmas tree, always very well trimmed.  The old Postal Pavilion, now known as the Trump Emolument Violation Hotel, is across the street.

      

I went into enemy territory to see the Trump Tree. Inside I fell into a conversation with a Californian lawyer who was arguing before the US Supreme Court the next day on the interesting question of national sovereignty for Indian tribes, and the more I chatted with him the more I started to think he was in the Trump Hotel for a reason, as when he boasted that "Kamala Harris always lost to me."

I went to the Portrait Museum next, where they had a holiday tree set up in its inside, covered courtyard.  I love the way the shadows created by the iron lattice roofing play off the walls.

From there I went to visit the Peace Officer tree outside the DC courthouse.  The tree is adorned with ornaments honoring slain police officers in the DMV area and I was saddened to see that the previous evergreen tree had been removed but gladdened to see that it had been replaced, albeit with a tiny new one.

My next stop, midway through the tour, was at the US Botanical Garden to see its tree.  That stop was memorable because while I was inside, the Federal Protective Service called me outside over the PA because I had parked my Capital Bike-Share bicycle by the entrance, which, it was carefully explained to me by an armed policeman, is definitely a big no-no for some illogical reason concerning a skinny little bike with no bags upon it.

The District-Maryland-Virginia

Washington, besides being a swamp that needs to be "drained" (of money?), is a city that is filled with moment and beauty everywhere.  The view from the Tidal Basin.

The Mall is a national treasure.  The Washington Monument dominates the Mall.

The Smithsonian museum system--most admissions are free--is a draw for the region and is unparalleled anywhere else. The plane that ended World War II hangs from the ceiling at the Dulles Air and Space Museum.

I love living in the DMV.  Locals understand about tourists and don't let their idiosyncrasies get in the way of welcoming these treasured visitors to our wonderful city.

The National Gallery of Art

My sister came to DC to attend a charitable event and we had a couple of enjoyable dinners in Chinatown.  We also spent time at the National Gallery of Art after her conference was over.

She studied art in college so she was able to inform me as to what I was looking at.  The museum has a prodigious collection of world-renowned art, like this Rembrandt self-portrait.

My favorite piece, however, is on the roof.  My sister also liked this refugee from The Food of the Gods.

We did a lot of walking, also visiting the Portrait Gallery, the Hotel Monaco, the Archives, the Navy Memorial,the Statue Garden, the National Botanical Gardens and the Library of Congress.  There is so much to see in the District that you could spend a month here without visiting a site twice.

National Tulip Library

On this week's, and last week's, long runs, we passed by the National Tulip Library by the Tidal Basin, which last week had started to burgeon.

This week they had lost their bloom and were fading.

But they'll be back next year.

In a field between the aforementioned Tidal Basin and the Washington Monument, every year around the start of May the field blooms with beds of tulips waving gently in the wind.

Five miles

Yesterday I met a friend in the District for a 3 mile run around the Tidal Basin at noon, running from  Haines Point to L'Enfant Plaza for my meeting with her and then back to my car afterwards to add a couple of extra miles so I accomplished this week's LSD of five miles.  On Haines Point another friend of mine from my former workplace ran by so I spent a few minutes chatting with him, catching up on office goings-on.

The run at the Tidal Basin went past the Tulip Library so we spent a few moments drinking in the beauty of its floral beds.  Reds, whites, pinks, yellows and more colors rewarded our circumvention of the Tidal Basin.

My favorite sight is when a particular bed of one kind of tulips has an outlier or two in it of a tulip of another color.  Each bed seems to get encroached by another kind, maybe a wall, a big, beautiful see-through wall--not a fence--should be built around each bed to stop this kind of unlimited breeding and dangerous intermingling.

Taking the Francis Case Bridge back to my car afterwards, I looked down on the newly constructed Washington Waterfront and saw the old and the new side-by-side.  The modern waterfront seems to be killing the old, once-thriving fresh seafood business that it is encroaching upon.