Textiles and Bicycles

Lately with the coming of warmer weather I’ve been moving beyond my negative feeling of enduring DC to appreciating the endearing DC.  The city in spring is beautiful, with perfectly landscaped beds of tulips framing the clean, classic Roman architecture of federal downtown.  

Today was especially nice.  It seems summer is coming quickly (as it does down here in the swamp).  I woke up to a lovely breeze coming through my open bedroom windows.

The regular hot nights, when the windows are never closed (except when I break down and turn the AC unit on every once in a while) is what I can’t wait for.  Today was a preview, almost 90 degrees, and thus a perfect day for a 30 mile bike ride up through Rock Creek Park into Maryland and back down again through Bethesda and Georgetown.

On the way back we happened upon this little gem:

Not only do we get free museums (for the most part) but we get a Tulip Library.  All I need to do now is relocate the Costume Institute from the Met to DC and I’m set (not really true).  I have beautiful memories associated with tulips.  When I was a child, my mother planted beds of them every year before spring.  I figure either tulips are an easy flower to get right (unlike orchids), or my mother put a fair amount of love into them, because those tulips never disappointed us.  They were huge and bright and smelled delicious.  They even made the suburban vinyl siding look ok…

I’m pretty sure she would have really been into the Tulip Library.  There were some flowers in there I never would have thought were actually tulips with fluttery petals or deep, black hues, which I was particularly attracted to.

And some traditional tulips:

I often find DC to be a difficult place to live.  It’s a beautiful city, but it can be a tough nut to crack.  It’s frequently voted in magazine polls to have the coldest people of any city, making it hard to form meaningful relationships.  Many say it’s because people are so transient here, but I think it’s a vicious circle where people want to leave after coming here because it can be so lonely.  

It looks like in a few weeks this tulip will have some friends, and maybe that’s promising for Washingtonians.  But it certainly is a test of patience.  As for me, hooray for the few lovely folks I do have here in DC — I am eternally grateful.