Dogwood Tree Blooming By Agriculture Department in DC

On my daily walk recently on the Washington Mall I wandered over to Independence Avenue near the Department of Agriculture and saw this lovely dogwood tree blazing away. Of course, I had to snap a few photos as I knew the rain was coming in soon and all the petals would soon get torn off.

The more you look at these dogwood tree flowers the prettier they get, from the little pink tips to their yellow green hearts.  Of course, I'm hoping that next time I walk over that way, it will still be there but probably not.  I've noticed flowers bloom and go quickly during spring. So doing the best I can to photo and get them blogged!

I also learned -- from the internet -- that as legend has it, the cross on which Jesus was crucified was made from a dogwood tree. God decreed that the dogwood tree would from that day forth never grow large enough to be used to make a cross. So maybe that's why this tree isn't very big! And why it flowers around Eastertide!

Rolling Thunder Passes the Archives

It was scorching hot and noisy in front of the Archives building on the day before Memorial Day as hundreds of glossy motorcycles gladiated by us as we tried to cross Independence Avenue. It was "Rolling Thunder" riders blaring music and yelling some things at the crowd and stressed out policemen shouting at us not to cross the road. We gawped at these mostly large machines ridden by the mostly overweight out-of-towners who come to DC each year for their own special parade. We kind of wondered what exactly was going on and what it was all about. So I looked them up -- again thank God for the internet -- and discovered it is an event that started in 1988 as a call for the government to recognize prisoners of war (POWs) and people missing in action (MIAs), sort of a tribute thing but seems to have morphed into something else. It seems now to more honor veterans and fallen soldiers, a more generic tribute to military men. The first one had but 2,500 participants but now it has hundreds of thousands of participants. Well, I saw a few thousand of them that weekend and a whole bunch of them in front of the Archives building. I'm trying to connect Rolling Thunder's causes and issues with the Archives building which holds the Declaration of Independence so I read it to see how it might pertain. Hmm. Seems that the governed are exercising some life, liberty and pursuit of happiness in their own way.

 " ... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."