Somehow I always feel things are bathed in sunlight, when it's sunny.I moved to Ingleside Terrace in December 2021. That January we had a little snow.The light is wonderful even when clouds filter the sun. And there's so much to see. This is a screenshot from a 1 hour mediation film made on a rainy day. Just think of the pleasure a person leaving this apartment on Ingleside Terrace must feel.
Again, the light is so special..Almost across the street from the apartment with the rose by the steps we see this.Possibly, though, someone is coming to visit people in that apartment.
Who maintains that lovely garden? Another close-to-the-ground entrance. A warm light to welcome us on a somewhat grey day.Sunlight on the corner building at Kenyon and 19th Street. Blue/lavender flowers to greet walkers by. Again, that special light. Red clays are common in DC and the DC area. This could be anywhere in DC if you imagine hard. Note, there are chairs and tables nestled in this little space. That green in the lower right and the greens on the rocks perfectly balance the pruple-grey-blue-green. I've no idea what any of these plants are. * * *I wondered whether the blue and yellow flowers were put in to remind people of the suffering in the Ukraine.
With so much beauty on earth, how can such things happen? A lovely man has been slowly building a native plant garden on the corner of 18th and Kenyon.
These little legends help us all.He plants perennials. I hope to learn a lot by documenting growth in this garden this year.I fell in love with the green paint on this porch.
Here, the light again steals the photo.
A little like that Magritte. Notice the reflection of the streetlamp in the bay window.
And the light on what looks like fencing below the porch. The blue-grey painted path lower right with just a hint of a flowerpot on the far right.
I don't think this was a rainy day. Looking down from my window. Car with question marks desirable.
We'll see what happens to the strip of lawn come Spring 2023.
Wish I had more of the street lamp here.A little blurrier than I would like, this is a little chunk of sidewalk that ends rather abruptly. Not the best light for my camera to photograph this stately home.
Does anyone here know what those flowers are lower left?Here's light at work. It's as if one of the greatest artist of all times was told,
"Go forth and paint homes in Mount Pleasant, for the light is good there."Blue flowers, grey stone and crepe myrtle and other trees. From Dylan Thomas, "And I must enter again the round/Zion of the water bead":
Dylan Thomas - 1945 https://buckram.org/refusal_to_mournSo much to like: The wall that lean along the sidewalk. The yellowish lichen in the lower right.
Those pale, dry leaves that rustle in winds.A mass of warm colors with bleached brick all set off by the greens on the left. Relaxing after the show. I hope Franko isn't offended by this. He adds so much just by being.I think these are figs and I wonder what has been dining on these leaves. The camera just knows how to do this. Thank you Apple. Near an alley.On that strip where I learned the District of Columbia plants trees.So much to love here. The greens, the little round flours on the left, the dry grasses on the right, those pale flowers and what appear to be dried flowers or seeds coming from the green and white leaves.The view from my window on a day when it wasn't snowing or raining.
Some days I wake to this. How lucky.We must all do something, however small, to stop the violence. There's too much beauty out there. Use it!One of the joys of the Mount Pleasant Village Walking Group - the early light!The dark green door, the rocker, the well maintained white trim.
Subtle brickwork and brass. Is someone behind you impatient? Time to relax, look around. Take a photo.There just aren't enough pale lavender homes. Light is rather dry in this photo.
Is that car plum colored? The light is great here. Time of day, I suppose. Such a lovely pair of stately homes. Married in a way. Well cared for. Some mornings the walking group takes an excursion out of Mount Pleasant.
A close-up photo taken from the sidewalk.
I've forgotten where this is.They look like violets, probably are. I'm new to all this.
I took plants for granted for too many years.Chosen for the light, but also for the little plants, especially those on the bottom of the fence.
Some nice dry dusty leaves and mulch in the stones, lower left.A view from my window in April. So bright you feel you are almost in this photo if you are viewing on a large screen.Not in Mount Pleasant, but close. The Mount Pleasant Village Walking Group some days takes a route that has us cross this street.
Join us!Chosen for the light, the orange sills, the little crack where the bricks dip down, the hint of green where the building ends.Great place for a sundial. Properly maintained, they can be surprisingly useful. Can teach about shadows, time, how things move about. The soft shadow of the tree on the green house.
The sharper delicate tracery around the lower windows of the lavender/pink house.
The pale blue door.
And yes, Black Lives do Matter. More than many seem to understand.Walking home one evening I noticed something. Couuldn't resist. Those yellow and black columns and the colors of the signs. Is the clock at All Souls stopped at a significant time?
People do think that way. They really do.Nothing special here, just nice bands of yellows and greens and plants someone loved. One day the Mount Pleasant Village Walking Group took a longer than usual walk.
I learned other neighborhoods also paint their homes with imagination.
Were the little plants growing up in a line on the brick walkway plucked? I wonder.Sometimes I place a little rock for a pom-pom. This cairn has evolved.
There's a little one to my right and the lady on the left often wears a hat, sometimes with a leaf made from a scarf.Flowers high in the air. I'm not sure that this is Mount Pleasant. It could be in Adams Morgan, a photo taken on one of our walks.
Focus isn't great, light, is. Perfection is either always there or an illusion.I have a lot of lovely rainy-day photos I want to share. Here we are on 18th street looking towards Kenyon.
I must have been doing something important that morning, although I can't remember what. Doesn't that fanned out pruned tree make a statement. So much here. And those hastas(?), don't they look like dancers in a chorus line?One day, on the way home from a brisk walk with the Mount Pleasant Village Walking Group, I noticed something very beautiful.
It's not easy to do what this artist does. Love the lichens and that concrete ledge.In the distance, someone walking home, alone, on a foggy evening. A morning with the Mount Pleasant Walking Group when I thought I might be in Tuscany. That cable spool isn't as blue in the real world. iPhones have their ways.
The reflection in one window, the lined up bottles in the other, the planks lower right.
We're all so fortunate Dos Gringos has made it through the pandemic.It's 9pm. I've been procrastinating. Why not!
If you've come this far, thank you. Many more photos to come.I would sometimes meet the Mount Pleasant Walking Group by taking Harvard Street to get to the zoo. Second oldest home in Mount Pleasant, I was told. A Diamond as Big as The Ritz - at Dos Gringos.Elegant sign by the Sacred Heart School.One night when I was new in DC I went wandering. Glad I did. The leaves and the reddish brick do a lot.
The conduit and the diagonal shadow too.
Ask a fine art painter to match just one panel of that green. Two white scooters. Envy!
I would love to know what that man was working on that morning.While we're thinking of vehicles, imagine owning the full size version of this gem.In Rock Creek Park behind Ingleside Terrace, there's the steeper path, and the less steeper path. What a pleasure. Imagine sitting and talking with passers by.
A world that's almost vanished lives on here.Most elegant. When I get the time I will try and find photos of this building under construction.
This is a screenshot from a short video. The lights were blinking in the video. Stately. Did widows ever walk up top? There's no sea to see. Yet another good reason to join the Mount Pleasant Village Walking Group. Thank you to whomever for making this meaningful reminder. Freedom, sadly, can be forgotten.
Can you name Franklin Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms"?Sometimes, at night, I look out the window.There's a story here. A good one. I lost my mobile phone. An artist found it. A very elegant young man told me he was about sixteen when he saw the incident that caused great unrest in Lamont Plaza.
If my memory serves me, he said his Dad had opened up this dry-cleaning shop.Some days, the walking group goes into this lovely park.Beauty comes to Mount Pleasant from so many places. Sometimes the walking group takes routes that include overpasses.Signs by the Bancroft School. They work for me. Bamboo with windy morning clouds.Another day starts. I have many more photos I hope to put up here. May not get to that until Friday.A perennial, I imagine. If I'm lucky, I'll capture some of these during their yearlong journey. Could this be a mirage? The light on the balconies, so delicate. On the East-facing side, imagine the shadow as a gnomon on a giant sundial. Some must walk while others sleep. To me the low brush looks like a comforter.Day before yesterday I recall asking about the origin of the castellated posts often seen in our neighborhood. I imagine awakening in that bedroom with that bay window, remembering, of all things, this:
"Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!"
Matthew Arnold - 1851 https://buckram.org/dover_beach_poemHomeward bound.A gift. Even when a little blurry. Are those dark blue/plum globs flowers? Rudbeckia hirta. I was walking quickly with the iPhone video capturing what it could.
Screenshots from these short films have marked motion blur. On the way to the Zoo on a Friday morning.
Join us!Not clear what caused the blur here, although it does focus the eye.
A very good professional photographer once told me to always check that the lens is clean on iPhones.If you are looking through a large monitor, don't those large leaves lower right just seem to be inches away from you?
Aren't those leaves that cradle the second floor middle bay window lovely? I could straighten this, but I would perhaps lose something.
Why force yourself to make choices. In Mount Pleasant people are forgiving.Ah sunshine. Makes the daffodils grow strong and tall.
May also have something to do with the pine cones.
People in Mount Pleasant have more imagination than anywhere I can remember.So delicate. When I look closely, in the distance, I see a small white dog. On the way to or from an early morning walk.Everything perfect in the photo. The purple planks, the blue bricks, the hanging branches.
Those leaves lower right trying to escape through the fence.Some mornings we walk along alleys. That's
a carpet on the floor. Isn't the light on that leaning planking special? I'm imagining some little boy (or girl, maybe) just as they are given any of these gifts.A tree in fall colors. Lovely rocks at her base. Well dressed window. Little sprig. On the way home from a morning walk.Ouch, almost 9am. Time to have people read tall stories and short poems while I and others (mostly) listen. https://readingroom.thereader.org.ukJuniper berries? I suspect not. Much laughter in the reading group. One morning I emerged from Rock Creek and heard classical music coming from an old-fashioned transistor radio attached to a fence in back of the Bancroft School.
I listened for a while.
Eventually a lady appeared. She had been helping weed or prune in the garden.
I never introduced myself. When I find it, I'll add a quite amusing bus-stop poster. Couldn't resist. Saw this on my way back from Dos Gringos...Whoops, found the poster I thought, at the time, was quite amusing.
On the way back from Dos Gringos...
...I noticed that flowers seemed to be coming up earlier than I recalled.
I think I hadn't been paying attention last February.I walked back slowly, as I had a thought while at Dos Gringos that needed more thinking...
and I always walk more slowly when thinking.I had been mulling an idea over coffee. When I said to myself, "It wouldn't be that impossibly difficult to build something..."..."something that may be useful, helpful."Possibly a small way of honoring or even rewarding local heroes......or helping people we know should an unexpected need arise.I thought, "Or maybe just for fun. A contest, but not a raffle.
Something that may require (learnable) skills and camaraderie"
Also, maybe a way to help Mount Pleasant Village reach out to people who don't know who we are, or what we do."In this contest, people living in clusters boundaries would form teams, teams that would submit photos of things they see and love.
Photos that can be associated with a location/address in Mount Pleasant. Sometime,s a photo together with a fragment from a photo. Something only found at that location, and likely to be there for a while.Those photos would have some detail that is distinct, that can be taken out and enlarged put into a separate photo, and not easily identify the address/location.These photos or fragment images would be compiled on a page like this.
Where they could be used in a "scavenger hunt." Could you find this fence in Mount Pleasant?Or this really big tree?
Or this graffiti?
This one may require teamwork!
The what-is-to-be-found must must be something that remains in place and is easily visible from a public place.It's okay for people on teams to send team-mates emails and ask friends if they can help ID'ing a photo.
It's encouraged.If vegetation is an important clue, use a photo where he vegetation will be close to what it looks like during the time the contest is open.
These scavenger hunt may be open for a month or more.There's likely to be people on teams who will know how to crop photos, or the contest organizers can offer help.
Teams could have mini-openings, of particularly fine photos contributed.
Mount Pleasant is so photogenic I think people will be amazed at the beautiful photos they take.It may be possible to publicize the contest through local shops.
They could, for example, post "recent finds." And maybe have a "fund-raiser" at the end of the contest for an award or helpful gift.
There, we could, perhaps, make a little money for a cause by selling refreshments if, for example, there is an event when the contest closes.And could very likely also sell high-quality prints of our photos and/or jigsaw puzzles made from them.
Money for a cause and photos of our lovely neighborhood. Also, maybe most important, harmless way for people in clusters to get to perhaps get to know each other a little better, meet a few neighbors they might not otherwise meet, walk about and take and share photos.Building an archive, often of buildings seen through the eyes of many people at different times of day.That was a was a good morning for thinking.
Walking by this little strip I thought again it would make a great little park.
A shady place on a hot summer day with some chairs and tables. Maybe with some water for pooches.
Approaching owners of commercial properties can be an adventure.And then I thought, could all this just be my vanity at work?Could be, but who cares. A little vanity is forgivable.
Things aren't always that black and white.The Walking Group meets now at 8:30am on Mondays and Wednesdays at Lamont Park.
On Fridays we meet at the Harvard Street entrance to the Smithsonian Zoo.
Join us!
