30 years ago – October 1991

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Looking back at the pictures from October 1991 – it was a pleasant month. Work was still challenging but not as overwhelming as it had been in the previous months. One of my sisters came to visit with the priority to enjoy activities with my two-year-old daughter. We went on a steam train trip near Gettysburg, visited a toy store in Ellicott City, and bought apples at a local orchard (my daughter ate an apple on the spot to the delight of the owner).  I remember the outing to Mount Vernon vividly. We had lunch in the restaurant with my daughter in a highchair (antique style) pushed up to the table; she was thrilled with the arrangement and enjoyed the meal tremendously…charmed the wait staff. Then we opted to not go through the house…enjoying the grounds thoroughly. She hugged a big tree that George Washington had planted!

My sister was moving into a new house and had packed everything before her visit…and then moved almost immediately when she returned to Texas. It was a busy month for her. Another sister was pregnant with her second child and had some difficulties early in the month which were quickly resolved to the relief of the whole family. My parents were still working and trying to help everyone through the flurry of the month.

The leaves started to fall later in the month and my daughter became more enthusiastic than ever about being outdoors. Leaves and acorns are easily picked up and enjoyed. Her favorite movie was ‘Little Mermaid.’ She finally made the connection between saying numbers and counting things; that was the big ‘light bulb’ moment of her development in October 1991.

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We borrowed a special costume for my daughter’s Halloween – a flowerpot for the body and headpiece with big yellow petals for around her face. It was very cute but not something she liked very much.  At that point in her life, she was not eating candy so there was little joy for her that Halloween!

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Great memories from 30 years ago…

House & Garden Gleanings

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I have finally browsed all the House & Garden magazines I found on Internet Archive…from 1901 to 1993! I started back in November 2020….and browsed one or two of the volumes on most days. This post is the grand finale from the volumes I browsed through in 2021 – featuring a few items that caught my attention from the 1940s onward that I haven’t already featured in a blog post (previous posts: Newport Teahouse and Green Animals on 3/12,  The White House in 1940 on 1/21, House & Garden Magazines on 12/16/2020).

In the volume from the second half of 1941 – a page of old-fashioned Christmas tree decorations. I was surprised that the paper chains that I made in the 1960s had been around since at least the 1940s!

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The cover of the volume from the first half of 1942 featured “Planning a Defense Garden” – a reminder of the impact of World War II.

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In the volume from the second half of 1962 – pictures of the White House. I would have been in the second grade.

There were two things I’m highlighting from the volume from the first half of 1970.

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The first is an advertisement for a ceramic stove top. It was the first time I’d seen one in the magazine. It took a long time for the technology to mature!

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The second is a story from the Ladew Topiary Garden. We went several times when my daughter was young in the early 1990s since it is not far from Baltimore.

In the second half of 1971 volume – there is an ad for a Sears lamps that my parents bought (the chain and table versions) and gave to us a few years later. We donated them sometime in the mid-1980s.

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There was an article about the White House (again) in early 1973. This was about the time I got married.

Longwood Gardens was in the Christmas issue in 1977. This was years before I visited the gardens.

In the volume from the middle of 1985, there was an article about Mount Vernon. We had moved to the Washington DC area in 1983 and Mount Vernon was one of our favorite places to take family members that came to visit.

In the fall of 1986, the magazine had an article about Dumbarton Oaks. My husband and I were attending some Smithsonian Associates programs around that time and Dumbarton Oaks was one of the places we toured. I remember it was the first place I saw a black squirrel.

In early 1987, the magazine had some pictures from Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, CA. We had friends that lived in the area that we visited about that time, but I never toured the house until 20 years later when I was there for work and had an afternoon on my own.

There were repeats of locations too – Mount Vernon again in 1989

And Ladew Topiary again in 1992 (which might have been close to the time we took my daughter as a toddler).

There was an article about Monticello in 1993.

Overall – I enjoyed browsing all the magazines….a little history…reminders of places I’d been…ideas for what I might do in my own home (or not).

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 30, 2021

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

I am featuring videos this week….including the newest baby panda in the US and historic houses. I discovered that a lot of house-type museums have increased their virtual content during the pandemic. The historic houses I picked for this post are ones I have visited in the past. Some I have visited more than once (Mount Vernon and Monticello, for example). It’s fun to savor them virtually!

Panda Cub’s virtual debut – From the National Zoo…video is just over 2 minutes

Virtual visits to the Newport Mansions -  3D tours From the Preservation Society of Newport County. Includes The Elms, Marble House, Hunter House, Isaac Bell House, Chateau-ser-Mer, Chepstow, and Kingscote.

The Mark Twain House in Hartford, CT – 3D tour

Mount Vernon – George Washington’s house. 3D of the gardens and mansion

Lyndhurst – Several 3D views….including at Christmas and Halloween

Vizcaya Museum and Gardens – Florida. 3D with links to historic photos of the same area

Monticello – Thomas Jefferson’s house. 3D tour. There is also a Google Arts and Culture tour with video/photos.

Olana’s Historic Landscape Video Tour – Frederic  and Isabel Church home.

Val-Kill tour – Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site from Google Arts and Culture

Wilderstein – Online exhibit, aerial tour, and landscape tour. The house was the Suckley residence for 3 generations from 1852 to 1991.

Zooming – September 2019

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The images I selected for this month reflected the season and many of the places visited during the month. Season reminders…

  • The flowers of autumn like sunflowers and autumn crocus,

  • Hummingbirds eating to fatten up for migration,

  • Seed pods of the golden rain, maple, buckeye, and dogwood trees

Reflections of the places I visited:

  • Patuxent Research Refuge (north tract) – sunflower and hummingbird,

  • Longwood Gardens – waterlily, sunflower, tower,

  • Brookside Gardens – insects and flowers and tree seeds,

  • Mount Vernon – the greenhouse and beautyberry

Overall it was a good month for getting outdoors to capture the beauty of summer and early fall. I am anticipating a lot of leaf photography for October.

Enjoy the September 2019 slide show – hurray for cameras with good zoom lenses!

Ten Little Celebrations – September 2019

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September was a transition month…the end of the Wings of Fancy exhibit and the gearing up for the Howard County Conservancy’s fall field trips for county schools. That overall theme carried over to almost all the little celebrations I’m featuring in this month’s post.

Beginning yoga. I was surprised that I could do some of the poses with relative ease….and others with a little practice. It’s surprising how quickly the benefits begin to be noticeable.

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Question Mark Butterfly. I was thrilled to notice the butterfly in the mulch at Brookside Gardens when its wings were open. I would have never seen it had its wings been closed. I celebrated a second time after I got home and figured out what kind of butterfly it was.

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Mount Vernon. What a place for a volunteer appreciation day…and the weather was perfect! I celebrated the place and the people I was meeting all day long.

Longwood Gardens. The place is always special – because of what we see there during our visit and the memories of other visits.

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Toad near the stream. There are always those serendipity events that make an ordinary hike extraordinary.  During one of our training sessions at Belmont we hiked to the small stream….and were finding mushrooms and moss and macroinvertebrates….and then a small toad jumped into our midst! Being naturalists…we all celebrated.

Large monarch caterpillar. My milkweed didn’t have many caterpillars this year…but one morning when I looked there was a large one (obviously had been there eating). I celebrated that he was probably big enough to make a chrysalis.

Casemaker caddisfly. We’ve had almost no rain for the past month or so and the stream was low…but we found several casemaker caddisfly larvae! They looked like a small clump of debris at first….and then they moved. It’s good to see living things in the water even when there is not much water around.

Carrot cake. I was celebrating something but the carrot cake itself overwhelmed whatever I was celebrating. Yummy!

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Wings of Fancy. The next to the last volunteer shift in the Wings of Fancy exhibit was a light day for visitors and I celebrated some quiet time with the butterflies.

Day at Little Patuxent River. High schoolers in the river….interested and focused. The water was low but they found some macroinvertebrates and they were so organized in the chemical tests of water quality (my station for this field trip) that we finished everything with a little time to spare. Celebrating high schoolers!

Mount Vernon – Part II

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Continuing yesterday’s post about my experience at George Washington’s Mount Vernon…

The garden tours continued with a short walk along the serpentine walk to the Lower Garden. This was the main kitchen garden (fruits, vegetables, herbs) and under the direction of Martha Washington during her tenure at Mount Vernon. There is considerable documentation about the plants that were grown in the garden; one bit of trivia: Martha Washington liked artichokes! The lavender that grew around one bed seemed to be doing particularly well this year.

The garden was reconstructed in 1938….in a Colonial Revival style. Prior to that time the focus has been on the mansion rather than the grounds.

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Our group exited the Lower Garden toward the East Lawn of the mansion. We got a closer view of the scaffolding for the façade renovation project….and the walked far enough away to see the whole of the mansion.

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But the theme of the conversation was about the view….pointing out the minor changes but also the success that buying and conserving the land on the Maryland side has had on preserving the view shed of Mount Vernon. This is the view down river.

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We walked to the chairs on the river-side porch of the mansion and I took a picture upriver too. During Washington’s time the river would have been deeper (a lot of silting has happened since the 1700s) and there was a lot of boat traffic; It was also full of fish….actively harvested. Washington grew hemp to make rope for nets!

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Then it was time for a late lunch (most of us ate our box lunch outside on the library grounds – at tables on the porch or park benches). Then it was time to pick up a ‘goodie bag’ – plants and seeds! This year the plants included: chocolate mint, blackberry lily, spearmint, cardinal flower, pink turtlehead, and obedient plant. The seeds were larkspur, Purple columbine and spider flower. I have the plants on some shelves in a south facing window….will have to buy some pots to keep them happy through the winter. Then I’ll be putting them outside in the spring. The seeds will be planted next spring…and I hope they survive our deer population! There was a bar of bayberry scented soap which I unwrapped and have in my office….a pleasant scent to enjoy through fall and winter.

Overall – this was a fabulous volunteer appreciation event.

Mount Vernon – Part I

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George Washington’s Mount Vernon was the location of The Horticultural Consortium of the Greater Washington Area’s volunteer appreciation day last week. I was invited based on my volunteering at Brookside Gardens. After over 1.5 hours on the road to get there during the morning rush hour, it was a wonderful day. The weather was perfect for a day in the gardens….congenial conversations with other volunteers…informative lecture and tours.

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We started out at the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington with a talk from the Mount Version Horticulturist. The library is for research and only open otherwise for events. It was a comfortable space for a lecture….and then lunch later.

There were tours with a ‘historical horticulture’ them for 4 areas. The first two were the Upper Garden and Bowling Green. The Upper Garen features a reconstructed greenhouse (close to what it would have looked like when George Washington died in 1799) with wide paths and some formal beds closest to it.

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The contents of other beds are less structured with flowering plants that would have been available in Washington’s day and often with vegetables like okra growing in the center. There is even an area for grapes!

We walked a short distance to the Bowling Green. The house was not on our tour but the scaffolding for the renovation of the façade was evident; the side facing the Bowling Green was in most need of repair and is being completed first…then the work on the river side will commence.

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The view of the Bowling Green and the mansion from the Bowling Green Gate is dramatic. This would be where carriages could stop to view the house before continuing to the road that lead to the paddock, stable and carriage house.  In the opposite direction is the view of the gatehouse (zoomed a little) that would have been where carriages would have entered the property.

Some of the trees that were planted by George Washington have died since we moved to the area in 1983. One that is still around is a tulip poplar that he planted in 1785.

Over time other trees were planted – like this American Holly that was planted in 1812…maybe the oldest holly I’ve seen.

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There is detailed evidence (from his journals) of the trees that Washington planned for the walks on either side of the Bowling Green and a diagram produced for a magazine article from the early 1800s. As the horticulturalists continue their work, the walk will have more and more of the trees that were there in 1799.

I’ll post about 2 more Mount Vernon garden tours tomorrow.