DC Spinster

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.

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.

I saw some blue cylindrical flowers with what looked like tiny bells hanging from its central column that I liked last year at the U.S. Botanical Garden, and when I saw them at the Home Depot a little later, I bought a couple of pots and planted them. It was the first planting I've done around my house, besides trees or bushes, for a decade or more.

I noticed one cylindrical head protruding from the earth a few days ago, then on the first day of spring a few more flowers joined that first pathfinder. My friend says they're liriope and it looks great and I feel great, a new start.

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.

The creeping phlox flowerbeds are much more robust this week, at their peak.

I run past them on my runs, sometimes stopping to photograph them, sometimes snapping them as I run by.

Virtual movement downstream, flowing, cascading.

Very beautiful.

The cascading phlox flowers flowed down the embankment and fell off the wall like a waterfall.

Colors sparkled on the sloping flowerbed, reminiscent of sun-dappled water.

This corner in my hometown is my favorite spot to run by at this time of the year.

The colors of spring.

In addition to the splendor of the flowering Cherry Blossoms trees in the District this fortnight, there are many other flowers starting to burst forth this spring.  I have recently noted that the bulbs at the neatly tended beds at the National Tulip Library are poking their heads up; there are also a profusion of colorful and interesting looking flowers emerging around the grounds of the National Botanical Garden at the foot of Capital Hill.

There's a flower library on the Mall, over by the Tidal Basin, near the Washington Monument.  Every spring it bursts forth with tulips shortly after the cherry blossom bloom.

This year the library bloomed spectacularly, as usual.  My sometimes-noontime running group ran by it earlier this month.

My running buddy likes to seek out the different flower amidst a group of similar flowers.  She calls them outliers.

There's always something to go see on the Mall.  DC is a great running town.

I have a few favorite pictures from running around the District in past years.  This shot I caught early one morning showing a striking reflection in the water under the Key Bridge.

This photo shows my all-time favorite flower, a delicate circular purple ball of blossoms in a flower bed  lining the Mall.

This picture was taken by a friend from atop the Washington Monument during Cherry Blossom time, looking past the Tidal Basin towards the Virginia shore.
 
Here's one of my favorite posed shot from a couple of years ago, eavesdropping outside one of the Smithsonian museums.