First Evening Primrose of the year. My favorite weed.

I'm trying to encourage this weed to take over one of my side gardens.

Ask me if I love this chair. It was tucked into a corner of the Inn we visited last week. Possible (probable?) site for The Daughter's wedding next year. [but see Update below]

The chair was made using old books. Or at least books. Becca and Sean on the porch checking things out.

Update 4/30/12: I should have known it wasn't an original. On this site I found an identical chair, with the same books in the same order. [You have to scroll way down the page to find the chair -- or use the "find" function and search for the word "chair.] Now I guess it could be the exact same chair, but I'm suspicious. I envision a Chinese factory pumping out these things. (And I also, unfortunately, envision a suicide net around the factory. If you don't know what I mean, just google "suicide nets and Chinese factories.")

I hate that I'm sinking so much time into this book but I am. For now.

Scenes from two neighborhoods in DC: Brookland in Northeast DC (top, at the Franciscan Monastery) and Georgetown in lower Northwest DC (bottom).

Another visit to the Delaware shore, across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, and through the MD-DE farmland.

The little anonymous boy in the surf -- about 10 I'd say -- wasn't the only one braving the April waters. It was a perfect Spring day on Saturday. Next scheduled trip is in August, far enough away that I might be able to shave off some of my Berger cookie hips so I can don a bathing suit with minimal wincing. And everywhere I go I see wisteria.

Please explain this sentence to me.

"She had a kind heart, though that is not of much use when it comes to the matter of self-preservation. For more than eight years of half a lifetime she had lived at Hardborough on the very small amount of money her late husband had left her."

I picked up this short little book today at the library. I think I've checked it out many times but tonight I decided to read it. In the second paragraph I came to the above passage and I'm now trying to figure it out: what does "eight years of half a lifetime" mean? Is the writer making the assumption that, say, 45 is half a lifetime, and that the character's husband died eight years before she reached 45?

I'm not reading another word until someone helps me decipher this.

A trip to the National Gallery of Art. 18th Century artist Itō Jakuchū. 30 scrolls in a collection called Colorful Realm of Living Beings.

My blogging buddy Anne got me out of Silver Spring and into DC to see this wonderful exhibit. Last picture shows wisteria growing along a wall on the mall entrance to the Gallery. And I managed to take one interior shot before a guard politely told me to cease and desist. A beautiful exhibit and a lovely lunch!

A certain Nyack blogger asked recently how my kitties are doing. Just fine, is the answer. Hard at work, as usual.

Young adult novels: simply the best.

I just love these young adult novels that give you a refresher course on historical figures or periods along with a lot of details about day to day life in other times and places. I read the Mary Tudor novel in a flash, now I'll start the Anne Tudor story. In the Mary story, Anne is seen as the corrupter of her husband Henry VIII, Anne's father. So now I'll read the same story but from Anne's point of view.

I'm also trying (second time) to read Gilead by Marilyn Robinson. I've read other books by her and liked them a lot. I can't figure out why I'm having a hard time getting into Gilead. I won't try too hard. Thousands of other books sit here waiting to be read and time's a-wasting.

Henri. Paw de Deux.

Go to full screen to see it all. Double-click image to do so.

I dare not name this plant in the title of this post.

It's a wisteria and I know it's invasive and non-native and I'm sorry but I still want a wisteria tree in my front yard. Last summer I yanked up a runner from the tree shown in the top picture (my neighbor's tree in bloom) and potted it up. Lo and behold it survived the winter and is now growing inches a day. Soon I'll find a place to plant it. If I keep the runners in check, and put in my will that whoever lives in this house after me must also keep the runners in check, well then I've done what I can. In return for the (in my view) fairly minor sin of growing a wisteria tree I will continue to not use my clothes dryer. For about 4 years now we've basically not used the dryer so look how much energy we've saved! I'm not sure that this is an apples to apples trade but it's close enough.

The kitty in the tree is Kenny -- my neighbor's sweet boy. He likes to hang out in his tree while his owner sits on the ground under him reading. Maybe one day I'll get a picture of them together. It's very cute.

[Note: This is the neighbor who proudly flies the Tea Party flag so I'm thrilled that she (he? the husband?) decided to take the flag down for a while. We've only become friendly in the last couple of years so it will be interesting to see how we get along when I put up my Obama sign in September.]

Back yard before the deer break through the fence.

The redbud is blooming, the hostas are that nice, bright early-spring green, and the hellebores are huge this year.

Someone is spending unauthorized time in my car.

Twice in the last month I've encountered this scene on the floor in the back of my car. The Kleenex box is battered mostly because I toss it around from time to time, and load heavy bags of groceries on top of it. But this kind of tissue-destruction can, I believe, only come from the chewing of a small rodent. At least that's my theory. Confusing me is how a rodent gets into my car (a 2-year-old Honda). I noticed the scene above on a Monday morning, after the car sat undriven for 2 days. Anyone else have any ideas about what's making my tissues disintegrate? Are you impressed with the minutia of my thoughts? I DO spend time thinking about larger issues: life and death, good and evil, that kind of thing. But I also spend an inordinate amount of time musing about truly trivial things. So sue me.