Land Of The Lotus Lovers

Went today with my artistic friend R., aka the best cook in the world, to the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Northeast D.C. Wow.

You have to drive through a not-too-lovely part of town to get there, and my sweet little GPS device took me through quite a bit of construction, but once you arrive at the Gardens, it's as if you're a million miles from evertyhing else. The lotus blossoms -- correction -- the acres and acres of lotus blossoms were in full bloom. Huge, dinner-plate-sized blossoms of the palest pink surrounding lemon yellow structures that will become seed pods. Gigantic pointed buds, standing straight up, as if they're about to be launched into the sky. Structurally-elegant seed pods, yellow, green, and brown. Huge, serving-tray-sized green leaves, often with a tablespoon or so of dew sitting in the middle of the leaf, just above the stem. Really, you can't wander here and not have a mystical experience.

Amazingly, we saw bees everywhere, as well as literally dozens of butterflies and a young blue heron, with a neck like a prima balllerina, who let us get up quite close, the better to admire how graceful and exotic she was. We saw a dam that must have been built by beavers.

We wandered into the back of the Gardens to the boardwalk over the Kenilworth Marsh, filed with water lillies, cat tails, white rose of sharon bushes, and a lovely purple-flowered weed that I couldn't identify. The Marsh serves an incredibly important function, helping to clean much of the water that flows through DC before reaching the Atlantic Ocean. Sadly, our drought is taking its toll on the marshes; many spots were clearly exposed as a result of the lack of water. Lots of water lillies may not make it.

If you're ever in DC this time of year, you should go, even though you'll have to go a bit out of your way to get there. R. and I were discussing a topic that came up for discussion the other day in Comments over at Eschaton: how unusual it's becoming for Americans to spend time outside with each other, especially when they're not at some organized "event." It ties in with quite a few of the points that Barbara Ehrenreich makes in Dancing in the Streets about how unfamiliar most Americans are with the notion of festival, of celebrating with lots of other people. TV keeps so many of us indoors and isolated. But as we used to say when I was young, "We've got to get ourselves back to the garden."

PS Sadly, the receding marsh water shows that some people have thrown soda bottles into the marsh. What kind of a motherfucking dickhead do you have to be to do something that goddamn ignorant? You're in a spot of magnificent beauty and you can't carry your goddamn empty soda bottle back to the parking lot and put it in the trash can? You think that marsh is there for you to throw your plastic Mountain Dew bottle into? It's a good thing for you that I don't know who you are. Because if I did, I would hurt you.