Friday, April 19, 2013

Unglued

It's been quite a week for terrible news. At some point one tends to become a bit unhinged if one remains glued to the TV and other media, so I unplugged and did other things.

Jefferson Memorial

Earlier in the week I was in Washington. As the twigs pictured with the Jefferson Memorial indicate, peak bloom of the Tidal Basin cherry trees was last week, but it was still nice to stroll around. At one point beavers (of all the unlikely things) were chewing down the famed trees, which is what beavers do, and somehow that translated into signs admonishing two-legged pests against damaging trees by picking flowers or climbing in them. I suppose it makes sense to someone.

Don't pick or climb

Not that they have much effect. The brown sign reads, "Please do not climb or sit in this tree."

Climbing anyway

Meanwhile, for reasons that escape me, Llama Llama Duck has little twist stitch cables that are set off by purl stitches on the leg but not on the instep. Perhaps it makes sense to someone, but for me the charm of the little cable is lost on a stockinette ground. See what I mean? I followed the pattern as long as I could stand it, then gave up and fixed one cable.

Llama Llama Duck as written is problematic

No surprise, I liked the effect so much, I decided to fix all of them. It only meant dropping back 28 rounds. No biggie.

But fixable

Ah, that's better!

Ah, that's better

After a lot of walking, I finally found a cherry tree that still had a good amount of flowers. Connoisseurs can tell they're past their prime, but they still give an idea of how incomparably beautiful peak bloom must be. I'd like to come back some day to see it.

DC cherry blossoms close up

However, rather than pine about what I missed, I went to Cherryblossomland, which is at peak now. Go if you can or check out cherry blossom cam, or stay tuned....

1 comment:

Kaye said...

I was going to say--pish to D.C.! Branchbrook has more trees!
I drive past BB every day--it's been interesting seeing it develop every day. Especially considering this time last year I think the blossoms were pretty much a month come and gone!