Vegetable Gardens in the Most Unlikely Places

We lived on Capitol Hill for thirteen years. I worked at the Library of Congress for ten years. Since we moved to northern Virginia five years ago we visit our old neighborhood at least once a week. On Monday we found a place to park near our old condo and started our walk towards the Capitol. It always seems funny to run in to large vegetable gardens outside of the Library of Congress Madison Building. We saw it being planted a couple of weeks ago. Now it’s already sprouting. Another place that has a very large outdoor vegetable garden is Bartholdi Park - a part of the US Botanic Garden. For some reason it just looks odd to see greens and such growing with the US Capitol Building in the background. This year in front of the US Botanic Garden building are raised garden beds contributed by school and other groups. The crops are shared locally at a variety of places for the underserved and otherwise. It’s such a joy to see all of these gardens consistently doing well and cared for by the professional staffs of the architect of the Capitol. We always enjoy our morning walks in the city. And it’s all so familiar! 

Library Program and Pick up Dinner

When we lived on Capitol Hill we used to go to the Library of Congress for a variety of programs. The topics may not have been that interesting all of the time, but it was a great excuse to get out of the house. I worked there for ten years so we knew our way around  - and the commute was a two block walk. Since we moved to northern Virginia three years ago we continued the outings - but we would need to plan for plenty of time to drive in, and then afterwards we would go out for dinner. A lot has changed since the pandemic. We haven’t been to the library for over two years, but we still received program information for virtual meetings. Yesterday afternoon we watched a program from the Kluge Center about “Pillars of Democracy - The Media.” We mirrored it to Apple TV and watched from our living room. Rather than go out for dinner afterwards, we had ordered pick up at Pulcinella - a favorite Italian restaurant just down the street. It certainly wasn’t the same as doing everything in person, but it did remind us of some sense of normalcy. We never did a whole lot of anything since I retired six years ago. But the last two years really changed everything.