Here’s an art form I don’t use too often but which comes in handy for large-scale decorating in a hurry—big white paper cutouts. This is our frightening Halloween front door, featuring the ghost family: Dad with mini-version of boat he is building; Sis with energetic jump-rope; Bro with faithful iPhone; Mom with paintbrush and spoon; and the world’s least scary Dog, unless you fear relentless licking.
Way down at the bottom are my toes being painted in honor of my wedding anniversary. It’s hard to draw, though, when your feet are being pumiced to a fare-thee-well.
My friend Jana says the pedicure sandals look as if they are made from Necco wafers.
I realize that my feet are probably not the first thing my husband will be gazing at when we go out to dinner tonight, but an anniversary pedicure feels so celebratory.
Sheila & Jim
Eat your heart out, Boston! We have our own Big Dig in Washington, DC, at the National Zoo, and ours has elephants in it! Well, maybe it’s not quite as Big. But it’s certainly been transforming the core of the zoo for the past fifteen years—on every visit you have to navigate construction equipment and major piles of dirt, although not always the same piles—and it ain’t over yet.
First we got big splashy Amazonia Habitat with its science gallery; then Think Tank, for research into primate (as opposed to primary) education, with the crowd-wowing outdoor overhead O-Line for the use of orangutans when they decide to move between buildings. This was followed by completely redesigned panda exhibits to welcome for their honeymoon a new young panda couple, parents of hugely popular Tai Shan. Then came Asia Trail, with its green roofs, convincingly sculpted rocks, and several new endangered species for the zoo’s species preservation program.
Now the major project under way is Elephant Trails, a research and breeding program to preserve the endangered Asian elephant, which will provide an expanded herd with a more natural and environmentally friendly environment. Phase 1 opened this summer, and on a recent walk I had a look at the elephants munching breakfast near a big new stepped pond, in well-kept rolling grassy fields, like a high-end retirement home. I don’t know what the elephants think, but I’m ready to move in. You can learn more about it at the zoo’s website, and even make a donation and get your name on a plaque.
This is a heads-up that the LAST National Zoo Sunset Serenade of the summer takes place tomorrow night—Thursday, August 5th (weather permitting), from 6:30 to 8pm. If you have never attended any of these free outdoor concerts, then this is your last chance (this summer, anyway) to pack a picnic dinner and join the fun on Lion-Tiger Hill. The evening usually ends with spontaneous barefoot dancing. According to the Zoo website, tomorrow’s group is The Grandsons, performing from their WAMMIE Roots Rock-winning albums.
I have ambivalent feelings about this tree. On the one hand, I never park under it, for fear that I would return to find my car crushed. On the other hand, it is the most powerful and heart-lifting tree in our neighborhood, with its fantastically sculpted trunk and enormous, light-filled crown, simultaneously shimmering and shady, undoubtedly home to innumerable beetles, birds, and squirrels.
After a recent summer thunderstorm, I went to check it out. There it stood, serene as ever, despite its permanent streetward slant. It’s a variety of maple (to find out what kind we’ll have to check Melanie Choukas-Bradley’s wonderful City of Trees), although it has the ancient, stalwart feel of an oak, as if it arose here here long before any of our houses.
Below, a tree poem for Sunday.
A Final Affection
I love the accomplishments of trees, How they try to restrain great storms And pacify the very worms that eat them. Even their deaths seem to be considered. I fear for trees, loving them so much. I am nervous about each scar on bark, Each leaf that browns. I want to Lie in their crotches and sigh, Whisper of sun and rains to come. Sometimes on summer evenings I step Out of my house to look at trees Propping darkness up to the silence. When I die I want to slant up Through those trunks so slowly I will see each rib of bark, each whorl; Up through the canopy, the subtle veins And lobes touching me with final affection; Then to hover above and look down One last time on the rich upliftings, The circle that loves the sun and moon, To see at last what held the darkness up.—Paul Zimmer
Francine
One of the projects of our homeschooling Botany block, which we began just before the spring equinox (and which looks like it will continue for a year, if we want to get a rounded view of plant life) has been a Tree Study. My daughter chose a tree in its winter state, down the street on the grounds of the hotel, and we sketched its bare branches and made crayon bark rubbings. Spring arrived; we sketched other, now-budding, even flowering and leafing trees; did other bark rubbings. Our Chosen Tree remained mystifyingly and unashamedly bare in a forest of showy blossoms and new green leaves. Good grief! Was it even ALIVE? Yet the reddish branch tips were springy, not dry.
One day the tips seemed a bit longer. The next day more so. Still no green, but increasingly long. Finally each tip gently opened to reveal a glimpse of…GREEN! Then, long clusters of large, fresh leaves unrolled themselves day by day, impossibly, from the formerly slender twiggy tips. In a few days the tree bore a bright and bushy yellow-green crown wider than it was high, well worth the wait. We sketched it in its new glory. Some of you must be familiar with this type of tree, but I only recognize a handful of varieties. Our neighbor Jason, seeing the sketch, revealed its identity: it is a hornbeam.
Here is friend and neighbor Tom, a brainy and funny guy who combines 21st century thinking with old-fashioned gentlemanly kindness. In honor of his birthday I am putting up this drawing of him from my sketchbook. Although it was drawn several years ago, Tom never seems to get any older. (What’s REALLY in that glass, anyway?) Happy Birthday, Tom. Perhaps you are already awake and having your morning Elixir of Youth.
Tom
Three years ago my daughter and I bought three little strawberry plants at a school fair. Each year they have multiplied, and now we have about fifteen pots full of plants on our tiny rooftop deck. This spring we are drawing them at their different stages of development for our Botany block, and the process, from bud to fruit, is pretty fascinating. The strawberries are terrific. Unfortunately this year a squirrel has discovered them and visits often. What’s so annoying is that he (she?) doesn’t simply eat an entire strawberry, but takes large bites out of several and then wanders off. One day I caught him trying to BURY one as if it were a nut.
