In D.C., two magic places work year round and are at their best in the spring and summer: Mount Vernon, the compulsory pilgrimage to George Washington's home and Washington's best-kept secret, the mansion, estate and gardens of Marjorie Merriweather Post: Hillwood Museum.
The Butterfly at Mount Vernon
or
The Bumble Bee and the Blue Thistle at Hillwood
If only choices were always as simple!
***
One may prefer decoding an artist's pictural inspirations. When strolls in Giverny are but only a dream not yet come true, strolls in Hillwood's cutting garden and Japanese garden offer comfort and hope.
The Japanese Garden?
or The Cutting Garden ?
I fancy that Manet is giving me his blessing for walking around these beautiful gardens and trying to understand what he saw, what he felt, and what he interpreted of Nature's bounty, of Nature's beauty, of Nature's colorful summer kindness to human eyes tired of the winter grays and the winter blahs.
Nympheas at Giverny, waterlilies in a Japanese garden in DC....
...Bridges to cross....
Waterfalls or water music...
...The Japanese maple trees are ablaze already...
Dame Sei Shonagon's spirit espouses Manet's.
The world is a garden...
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