Report from the apocalypse

Jeanne d'Arc awaits the snow on Friday afternoon, Meridian Hill Park

After days of dire warnings, the snow finally began to fall yesterday afternoon.  A day later, the winter storm dubbed "Snowzilla" by my favorite local weather forecasters, the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang (I refuse to use the Weather Channel's "Jonas") has unfolded about as predicted.  This morning I measured between 16 and 18 inches of snow.  By Buffalo standards (where I grew up) that's not so bad, but for a city like Washington, DC it's a disaster.  Ironically, I was supposed to be flying to Buffalo today to visit with my family; needless to say all airports are closed and all flights are cancelled.  And we're not done yet; it's supposed to snow some more later today and into tonight so we may well get the two feet or more they've been warning.  I don't have much more to say so here's my video report (you'll need to click on the image to go to the video in Flickr):

For comparison, here's the same view of my garden as of November; last year wasn't my garden's best, but it looked a whole lot better than right now!

A perfect August weekend or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the summer

Capitol columns, United States National Arboretum

This past weekend was about as good as summer gets in Washington, DC: sunny with relatively low humidity, not too hot and cooling down nicely at night.  I spent Saturday morning touring the United States National Arboretum's gardens (more on that later), and on Sunday I spent the morning watering my garden, took an afternoon nap, and did a little light pruning and weeding in the afternoon.  I relaxed in the evening on my roof deck with a gin and tonic in my hand, enjoying a light breeze.  Rain is the only thing that would have made the weekend better, because my garden is getting awfully dry and many of my plants start to look stressed after just a few days without rain.

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens

Lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens

I've been making an effort to get out and visit more gardens this year, so when Washington Gardener Magazine and DC Gardens announced they were having a "tweet-up" at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens in Washington, DC last weekend, I decided it was about time I re-visited a garden that's practically in my own backyard.  I'll keep my comments brief because my friend and fellow garden blogger Teresa Speight has already written a great blog post about the garden and the event: A Gem in the City – Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens.

Summer means great gardens in Washington, DC

National Museum of Natural History (Constitution Avenue entrance)

I'm privileged to work at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC and a beautiful garden greets me as I arrive at work every morning.  As the summer gets hotter and hotter, it just keeps getting better and better.  I know a lot of people don't like the heat and humidity of a Washington, DC summer but this is when our public gardens really start to hit their stride.  Don't get me wrong, I love spring gardens with their tulips, daffodils, peonies, bleeding heart, foxglove, poppies, and bluebells, but by mid-summer, most of these plants look the worse for wear.  Some of them, like oriental poppies, bleeding heart, and most spring bulbs, have the good sense to go dormant in our summer heat but gardens that depend too heavily on these spring-flowering plants aren't worth seeing the rest of the year.

A bird of a different feather

I've had neither the energy nor inspiration for blogging the past couple of weeks.  It happens.  So to go completely outside the box, here are some photos I took yesterday.  I felt like crap in the morning and called in sick, but as I was trying to sleep in some large low-flying aircraft kept circling over my neighborhood for at least an hour.  I looked out the window and this is what I saw.  This is the kind of thing that reminds me that Washington, DC isn't like other cities!



I had no clue what this thing was until I saw a flurry of activity on Twitter and somebody identified it as a V-22 Osprey.  I've seen many different kinds of military aircraft flying over the District, but this was a first for me.   There were also several large military helicopters flying over, which usually means the President is on the move.  Since I was awake anyway, I grabbed my camera and was able to get a few decent shots from my roof deck, including one that also captured a jet flying far overhead (which I didn't even notice until I downloaded the photos from my camera).

Needle palms: big, bigger, biggest

Needle palm, January 2015

Something smells a bit funky in my garden this time of year.  The fruits of needle palms (Rhapidophyllum hystrix) ripen in late fall in dense clusters at the base of the plant and look--and smell--like some wild animal came along and pooped out a big pile of scat.  I suppose this must be attractive to some animal that disperses the seeds, but I don't think anybody has figured out for sure what animal that might be.  The flowers it produces in late spring are about as appealing, looking like some strange fungus attacking the plant.