Four Year Anniversary

It just dawned on me that we have been living in our new home for four years this month. We lived in the Midwest for thirty years, then we moved to Capitol Hill for thirteen years, and now we live in northern Virginia. Capitol Hill was great when I worked at the Library of Congress and our family lived just down the street. But when I retired, and our family moved to central Virginia, the hassles of the city were getting old. The sad thing about living here is that it’s the pandemic house. We only lived here ten months when my mom died, and then the Covid plague struck - and we were stuck in here for the next three years. We never got to do what I thought we were going to do. It’s still not as cozy as I would like. We always made our homes more to our liking. This is the first place we haven’t for a variety of reasons, and I don’t think that’s ever going to change. We thought 1000 square feet would be plenty given as how we basically lived in 500 square feet before - but it’s not configured like I would like it to be. But we haven’t traveled like we thought either. I really miss our Midwest home with the dog and the comfortable place we created, with friends and colleagues nearby. But the winters were brutal. I really can’t and shouldn’t complain about where we live now, but I wouldn’t call it my dream home. I suppose there are issues wherever you live. I need to focus on all of the positive reasons we came here. Our family is just three hours away, my brother and SIL still live in DC and we are finally starting to get together again after a long hiatus, and we drive in to town almost every week for a change of scenery. Everything we need is close by and most within walking distance. I think we just need to resume living life like we did before. Hopefully we will plan a visit to the Midwest soon. It will be nice to see all of those familiar faces. 

National Gallery of Art British Photography

It doesn’t matter what time of the year it is. There is always something to see in the National Gallery of Art. Whenever we drive in to town for a morning walk on the National Mall we are alway tempted to go in. Sometimes it’s just nice to get out of the freezing cold or the sweltering heat. But whenever there is a new exhibit, we like to check it out. We passed by a couple of weeks ago and noticed that there was a new exhibit called “This is Britain - photographs from the 1970s and 1980s.” That’s when you know you are getting old when there is interest from a time period you are all too familiar with. It’s not really history anymore because you actually lived at that time and remember everything about it. We just finished walking the Capitol grounds and entered at the East gallery building. So we first needed to walk from there to the west gallery building through the space mountain walkthrough, past the furniture collection and then on to the exhibit. I can’t say I was very excited about the items on display. For whatever reason photographs don’t seem to fit in the National gallery of Art. I always think of the masters and the beautiful classics of oils and impressionists. This section just didn’t do much for me. I don’t find it an especially attractive period in time. Nevertheless it still had a good amount of traffic. Regardless we are never disappointed when we go. If nothing else it’s fun to see all of the visitors. We are fortunate to live so close to all of these treasures. 

Neighborhood Azaleas

First it was the daffodils, then the magnolias, then the cherry blossoms, then the tulips, then the dogwood. Now is the time for azaleas. The US Arboretum is full of them, but we didn’t make it out there this year. This week we didn’t even go in to town. The weekly photo challenge is the evening “blue hour” sky so we didn’t have a reason to visit. We also had a lunch date with my brother and SIL. It was great to see human beings again. Yesterday we had appointments for the second Covid bivalent booster. So we spent every morning taking our walk in the neighborhood park. It reminds us a lot of Grant Park in the Midwest next to Lake Michigan. Not only are there azaleas this time of year, but also deer, fox, and a variety of birds including the large red headed woodpeckers. And that is where we saw the beautiful azaleas. There are several in the park, but also in the gardens of the homes near the park. And the azaleas come in so many colors - red, white, salmon, pink, purple- it’s hard to pick out which one is most pleasing. It’s such a lovely time of year here in Virginia. We have already planted our balcony flowers and are hoping they do well this year. So when we can’t or don’t go in to town for a morning walk we alway have a great alternative. 

CVS Moderna Covid Bivalent Booster

Because of our ages, we have been waiting for the CDC to make a recommendation for a second Covid bivalent booster shot. We had our first bivalent booster - and fifth Covid shot - last September. That’s seven months ago. And as far as we know neither my husband nor I have had Covid. Lately we have become more comfortable not wearing masks indoors except when we go in to town in crowded indoor settings like the National gallery of art. Being health care professionals and common sense people, we wanted to continue to do everything we can to stay healthy. So keeping up on boosters is one of those ways. So as soon as we heard about the CDC guidelines for 65 and older this week, I got on the CVS app and made appointments for us today. I didn’t think there was a great deal of interest, and the CVS app was very easy to navigate and allowed us to set up a time for this morning at 1100. We were immediately sent text messages and emails to confirm the date and time. So during our morning walk we got a reminder about the appointment and drove over to CVS. Before we entered the store we checked in via text and walked to the pharmacy where they were waiting for us. The last time we were there for the first bivalent booster it was very crowded. This time we were the only ones. So they took us ahead of schedule and we were out in short order. You no longer get a discount coupon for participating and you need to provide your insurance information. We have been through this six times now! Here’s to another few days of sore arms and whatever else side effects come up. But at least we don’t have to think about it again for a while and can feel better about trying to finally live normal lives again. 

Balcony Flowers from American Plant

It’s that time of year again. It’s time to fill the balcony window baskets with annual flowers. We have three baskets that are hung from the backs of the chairs that face outward toward the street. They are coco lined and have stayed in fairly good shape for three years. So twice a year we add pansies and violas for winter/Christmas and then again in spring with whatever annual flowers we like. Our last year spikes did not survive the harsh winter so we were in need of finding replacements. The pansies and violas actually did quite well surprisingly, but we needed a few more plants to fill in the blank spaces. So we went to American Plant to see what we could find. The salvia, angelonia and silver dollar were good spike replacements. The bracteantha, gerbera, and dahlia were the flower replacements. Our balcony “garden” is nothing like the many containers, window boxes, and gardens in the Midwest. And even our tiny patio garden on Capitol Hill had a birdbath and significant flowers and bulbs. But my husband likes having a little bit of things and he is the one who keeps the garden watered and cared for. He has a miniature rose that he has nurtured for almost three years. It comes back a few times during the year and is still going. So I got out my gardening gloves and a spoon and scooped out enough dirt so the new flowers could be added after figuring out which space suited each plant the best. It’s not easy to work on a small balcony making sure the dirt doesn’t fly off somewhere and keeping things tidy. But when it’s done it’s always lovely to observe the flowers - especially whenever we sit there and have a chat. It’s hard to believe it’s already spring/summer. The rituals never change. 

American Plant Spring Flowers

We always had gardens - in the Midwest and more recently on our tiny patio garden on Capitol Hill. It’s been four years since we moved to northern Virginia and we now have an even smaller balcony garden. By that I mean three coco lined window baskets that are suspended from the backs of the chairs. We filled the baskets with pansies, violas, and ivy for the winter/Christmas season and they all miraculously survived the rather harsh winter. But the boxes were a bit sparse since the spikes didn’t last. So after our morning walk we went to American Plant yesterday to see what we could find. We were looking for something that could replace the spikes, but also add a bit more color to the yellow, white, and maroon pansies. It’s always fun to look around the vast array of options. I didn’t think we would have room for anything more than six plants so we needed to choose carefully. I asked one of the gardeners what might be a good spike replacement and she offered the silver dollar as an idea. We didn’t want anything that would grow too wide or too tall and that seemed to be good. I had also googled some ideas and Angelonia came up. We found them and it looked nice too. Salvia is another flower that grows tall and thin so we got one of those. Since the balcony gets full sun we added in a yellow bracteantha, red Gebera daisy, and a pink spotted dahlia. The place was quite busy on a late Monday morning flower shopping spree. We used to have to wait until after Memorial Day to plant anything in the Midwest. It’s so nice to start the planting season sooner. 

52Frames Dreamscape Weekly Photo Challenge

The subject this week for the 52Frames photo challenge was “dreamscape.” Since I have been using my Procreate digital art app to help create some of these photos for the challenges, I thought I may need to use it for this one. That meant it would be a compilation of at least two or three photos. And that also meant that I would have to have something in mind. I really didn’t have anything in mind but figured I would just take pictures of different things and hope that they could somehow be connected and used together to create this masterpiece. So last week at the neighborhood park we walked past some beautiful flowering dogwood. It took a photo of that. When we were leaving the park we came upon the bridge - so I took a picture of that after also taking a few images of other paths in the park. When I came home I started playing around with the photos. The first thing was to upload the background shot of the bridge. Then the image was transformed using a blur function to make it look a bit out of focus. Then I remembered we had witnessed a bridal couple from the third floor of our family’s warehouse in central Virginia on a walkabout after the ceremony. So I cut them out of the photo and added them to the bridge. Then the couple was made a bit transparent to again create a dreamlike scene. But the image still needed something more - and that’s where the dogwood came in. The flowers were cut out of the photo, turned, and enlarged to take up the lower half of the overall image. The green centers of the flowers nicely coordinated with the green from then trees and grass. And the lighting was very pretty. After cropping the photo here and there the final product looked really pretty - and dreamy - to me. So it’s not exactly one photo using camera and setting manipulations, but three images combined in to one. It takes a bit of time to edit the photos and then create an image. If nothing else this whole process keeps me busy - which is a good thing.