Royal dishes for pins, rings and other things

The other day I came across a couple of rather battered looking biscuit tins among the things my now deceased  mother-in-law had given me. I fully expected them to be filled be photos and souvenirs upon opening, but oh no, it was yet another set of what I call Royalophile little trinket and commemorative dishes. I sort of grouped them by what they were about and at least three of them were about the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spenser back there in July 1981.  So I've dutifully photographed them and posted them up on Ebay for sale as I really don't know what else to do with them. I'm not a collector of these items myself and I'm hoping there's a at least a few persons out there in Ebay land who would want these. They are all quite pretty and have interesting images on them and some are gilded. They are all made in England so I am fairly certain she acquired them while on trips to the old country.  The best use of them is probably as pin dishes (like glue a magnet on the underside!) or as ring catchers beside the kitchen or laundry sink. Or maybe use them as soap dishes?  Natch, I have put up the biscuit tins for sale also on Ebay!
Follow up Note: It looks like I've sold all of these on eBay now. Very happy they found new homes!

Spring Flowers

Well, I can't get by without doing at least one blog filled with photos of my flowers from the garden. The past few weeks have seen all the daffodils come out (after the forsythia) and now there's violets hiding everywhere and the peonies are starting to shoot up.  Also, so glorious are the tulips; there should have been more but either the dratted squirrels had lunch on them or, due to the snow and ice that came so late this year, some of the bulbs actually rotted in their pots. Nevertheless, I have some peach, red and yellow tulips, and a lone creamy white one.  It's such a delight to put bulbs down in the late fall and then wait and see what comes up in spring! So amazing!

Photo Essay of Tuesday Lunchtime in DownTown DC

Lining up for lunch at the food truck

Lunch time I had an errand and went across Farragut Square to get a sandwich and some cookies for our staff meeting. Somehow I just knew it was going to  be a great day for photos as the park was filled with people eating their lunch, buying their lunch and chatting and just generally enjoying the sun. So I snapped a half dozen photos as I thought this captured downtown Washington DC in the summer very well. From the pigeons, gnarly trees, food trucks and flowers, it all seemed youthful and joyful and I wished I could have spent more of my day outside.

Pigeons ready to pounce

Interesting gnarly tree

View from K Street across the park

Pansies hanging in the  balance?

View towards the White House over Adm Farraguts Shoulder

Diagonal path across Farragut Square park

Hallelujah, It's a Bloomingdale Spring!

How could I not take my digital camera with me every day and take photos of all the flowers as I  make my way to the bus each day this past week? There's pansies on porches, tulips to toe by, daffodils to dote on, and Eastern rosebud trees to walk under as I hurry down First Street. It's spring for sure and there's just flowers everywhere and I just love to see the shoots shooting out of the ground and the bright splashes of color of the flowers that are now blooming. In the brighter light of spring, even the grass seems very green and the tree trunks seem a brighter brown after the soft mild grey tone colors we've become used to over what seems like a very long and cold winter.So, I'll probably keep snapping away either on my cell phone or my clunky digital camera throughout the season which is surely one of the best gifts from the Creator that we see each year.

The Bluest Hydrangeas

This year my front garden had the bluest hydrangeas and this photo really captured the color exactly.  But the price I paid is a bush that is now almost completely dead and I think it is because I let the soil get too alkaline. Most of the stems did not leaf or flower and I think the soil was out of balance around most of the bush. You need just the right amount of acid/alkaline balance to get blue hydrangeas otherwise the bush just gets very pink in the marine clays that are in DC gardens. What I will probably do is just cut the bush down completely and see if it will grow back. We did that once before and it grew beautifully a couple of years later. Garden resurrections are among the best!

Gargoyle or GeeGaw?

Everyone knows I'm on Capitol Hill quite a bit lobbying on disability issues, but it's also an opportunity for me to snap a few photos with the miracle of a cell phone camera. Nope, not an iPhone, just a simple ole LG for $40 that came with the Verizon service plan. This time I looked up from my walk from Rayburn over to the Ford building as I stood in the shade to cool off from the 90 degree weather. Not only was I standing under a wonderful flowering Southern Magnolia but I could see this gargoyle gee-gaw thing on the top of the wall column. It seems to be a cornucopia or horn held by a creature like a squirrel and looks over toward the HHS building, past the ornamental garden that is alongside the Route 395 entrance way. I'd never noticed this before and wondered what was behind the design for this. If you look closely, it turns out to be the head of a little winged horse with a giant horn behind it and it may have waves carved in the base stone, although it's hard to see from below. It does remind me of the wonderful fountain sculpture in front of the old Library of Congress, so I think one day I will conduct some research and find out about this stone creature and when it was put there and what the iconography is all about. It just doesn't seem to fit into our techno modern world of sleek literal easily understood icons. Or at any rate, I've forgotten whatever it is I might have learned in Art History about this type of ornamental sculpture. But what a mystery to bump into, on the way to a policy wonk meeting with committee staff in a drab building! It quite got my mind in a better frame of thought, curious about its meaning. Can I say it influenced what I said at the wonk  meeting or did I say less as a consequence? I don't remember but the image has stuck with me where the conversation has not.