Last Sunday, I ventured around DC with my friend Kathy and her mom. We took the metro from Arlington into the L’Enfant Plaza station and walked from there to the gardens around the Smithsonian Institution. Sunday morning was the Cherry Blossom Festival 5k Run-Walk and we passed many runners who had finished the race. The Washington Monument is still under repair after the Mineral earthquake damage. We found a few cherry trees blooming near the river basin even though we were there before their peak. Other trees, flowers, and bushes are blooming. I think we all enjoyed our adventuring even though it was cold and windy. Kathy and I were overly optimistic and wore dresses.

 

We also visited the National Gallery of Art to see the gift shops and the Albrecht Durer exhibit. Can I just say he makes me feel like a real underachiever when it comes to drawing and art? He was doing really intricate drawings by the time he was a teenager. I think I can draw well and have been told so by my college professors. But sometimes I just do not maintain enough focus and patience to really draw well now that I am busy with “adult life.” I have been really wanting to spend more time drawing and to put a lot more effort into what I do accomplish. The Albrecht Durer exhibit was “no photography,” so I do not have images to show you – and online photographs probably cannot truly capture the scale and detail he worked in.

We concluded our afternoon by watching Lincoln at Kathy and her mom’s apartment. It was a bit dull at first, but it picked up well. I have also been reading The Boy in Striped Pajamas recently. These two stories really make you wonder how someone can become so blind towards the humanity of another individual. People of other ethnicities, creeds, cultures, languages… as my friend Jeff would say, “It’s not better or worse. It’s just different.”

Monday, I did a walkabout and if you are interested there is a brief description at the bottom of my *Sneak Peak!* DC Blossoms post. The underlying conclusion is, “We see a lot, but notice little.”

Tuesday morning, my dad and I worked on cleaning up his front beds and mulching. We are hoping to get mulched beds done this year around the Japanese maples. They were in sorry shape last summer and I think some proper springtime watering and mulching will really help them last through the summer better. The main front beds by the wall of the house are kinda sad looking after a few bushes were removed, but that just means there is more room to plant flowers, right?