Here are selected photos from the spring of 2005. I love the freshness of spring. Everything is new and the green is a soft, nascent color that hasn’t yet matured into the dark green of summer. If only there would be more foliage… I think if we combined the colors of spring with the thick foliage of summer, nature would be even more resplendent.
Today is International Women’s Day, so I’d like to wish all the women reading this a wonderful year in which their dreams come true.
Where would we (men) be without you? The answers to that question are frightening. I certainly wouldn’t be here without one particular woman (my mom) and I wouldn’t be the man I am without another particular woman (my lovely wife). Thank you both! 🙂
It’s a safe bet that all of you got flowers by now, right? Well, I’m going to top those gifts! I’m going to give you lots of flowers from all seasons and various geographic areas. They may be virtual, but they’re uploaded in high res, so you can download them and enjoy them in full screen. (An added plus is they won’t wilt.)
Back in 2003, I visited DC to lay the groundwork for what would turn out to be a new period in my life. I say that because my time there was distinctly different from what I did before and also from what I’m doing now.
It was about the time of the annual Cherry Blossom Festival, so I drove around, taking photos. I was still using a film camera back then, but it wasn’t my Canon Elph, it was possibly a Minolta. Not sure anymore. What I know for sure is that whatever film lab developed these photos, oversaturated them. (I really need to take the time to scan my negatives at some point.)
Until then, here are a few photos taken at that time.
The National Park Service now runs the Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, located along the banks of the Anacostia River. The park was built by the Shaw and Fowler families, who knew the value of preserving wetlands long before the government caught onto it. In it, they preserved waterlilies and lotus flowers, and kept pristine the original tidal marsh — now the only remaining tidal marsh in Washington, DC.
The park is home to a wide variety of flora and fauna once native to the area, but since destroyed by deforestation and development. It houses hundreds of species of birds, animals, flowers and plants.
In the 1900s, the wetlands in the area had been destroyed, because they were thought to be worthless, and by the 1990s, the Anacostia River had silted in, making it quite clear that the wetlands at least played a role in preventing that. So the local government worked with various agencies to dredge the river and rebuild the wetlands, some of which abut the Kenilworth Gardens.
Walter Shaw, a Civil War veteran, purchased the original plot of land in the 1880s, started planting waterlilies, then added more species over the years. In 1912, he opened it to the public. In 1921, when he died, his daughter, Helen Shaw Fowler, took over the park. By this time, the Anacostia River had begun to silt in, so the Army Corps of Engineers was called in to dredge it, and this endangered the park. Mrs. Fowler fought to keep it open, until Congress approved the purchase of the gardens for $15,000 in 1938 in order to preserve it.
Over time, more adjacent lands were added to the park. Now its total area is over 700 acres. One such stage took place in 1992-1993, when 32 acres of mudflats were restored to tidal marshes and added to the park’s domain.
Butterfly World, located in Tradewinds Park, Coconut Creek, Florida, opened in 1988 and is the largest butterfly park in the world. It contains over 3,000 live butterflies. The butterflies are bred and live in what is essentially a botanical garden, filled with all sorts of beautiful flowers they can feast upon.
Visiting Butterfly World is a wonderful experience. You can just sit around and watch the butterflies do their thing, and you might even get one or two that will land on your hand and stay there for a bit.
As you walk around, you’ll get to see beautiful flowers like these.
Raoul Pop 