Acorn
Olive and I had a nice walk in the woods today. There are so many oak leaves on the ground, and lots of acorns. It looks like rain later today, and then another sunny day tomorrow.
If there is water to be found, she will be in it.
DC Tidal Basin
Peter and I were hoping for some cherry blossom action today, but it was about a week too early. It was a beautiful day for a stroll, and the crowds were out. As we were starting to walk around the Tidal Basin I asked him if he knew anything about Fanne Fox and Wilbur Mills and the famous incident that happened in 1974. I was hoping for a “History Happened Here” plaque, but no such luck so we sat on a bench overlooking the water and read about it on my phone. What a great story, and the amazing thing is that Mills won his next reelection campaign in spite of it all.
As I mentioned, the blossoms were just about ready to pop.
The only ones that were out were on this tree, and there was a queue to get the shot.
When I was a kid, I used to love playing around with cherry tree sap. I haven’t thought about doing that for ages.
We were thrilled to stumble across the new Martin Luther King Jr. monument. It is really powerful, with lots of King quotes sprinkled about.
We kept on walking around the tidal basin and soon came to the FDR Memorial, which we had also never seen. I love this sign for the restrooms. Kind of surprising that they didn’t include an ideogram of someone in a wheelchair.
Peter is fascinated by World War II, and we always stop by the memorial. What a lovely day. DC is fantastic.
Trees
Our house is surrounded by enormous white pines. Every once in a while, during a storm one of them falls down. Before I became a homeowner I used to love violent weather. Wind, lightening, heavy rains…the more the better. Waking up in the middle of the night with the wind is blowing like crazy isn’t so much fun when you are waiting to hear a loud crack and hoping that an eighty year old tree doesn’t land on your head. When our neighbor Ken decided to have a few of the larger pines around his house taken down, it seemed like a good idea to join in. We began talking to Leon and Shay this summer, and they encouraged us to wait until the winter to have the work done. They showed up Wednesday morning with a giant crane, a chipper, a tractor and lots of chain saws.
These are huge trees. I got no work done over the last two days, watching these guys work to take them down. Shay would clip his climbing harness into the ball of the crane, be raised three quarters of the way up the tree and attach one of these yellow chains to the trunk. He would then rappel down to about 50 feet off the ground and make a cut. The crane would support the weight of the tree and move it over the house to the driveway where it would be dragged to the street.
It is always interesting to watch people who are very good at what they do, and who seem to have lots of fun in the process. Shay was a rock climber when he was younger, and seems to be most comfortable flying around in the air. The crane guy told me that of all the tree climbers he worked with, Shay was at the top of the list.
What a great bunch of guys.
Jon Crispin's Notebook 
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