The Botanic Gardens

Bonnie, Jer, and I went to the Botanic Gardens on Monday. It was raining, but we figured we could, at the very least, check out the conservatory, as it's indoors. I first even heard of the Gardens from teaching BSCI 125, where the students can get extra credit in lecture if they go and do a write-up about it. Everyone assured me it is very beautiful and worth going to. We took the metro in and hoofed it the few blocks to the Gardens. We briefly got sidetracked by aliens.

But we finally found the place, and the Capitol was just behind it.

The place itself was interesting looking. 

Even the doors looked nice.

This poor fellow had a runny nose.

His friend looked like she'd been crying. 

There was a really cool, and really big, Nepenthes (I think) sculpture out front. 

And, once inside, it was so tranquil and serene. If I worked near here, I would totally come here on my lunch breaks. It was just so pleasant inside. Even with the shrieking swarms of children. 

They had the place divided into various sections, like "orchids" and "jungle" and "medicinal plants". I had handed photography duties over to Bonnie at the entrance, but here's a selection of what we saw. We were particularly taken with all the orchids.

I even took a moment to air guitar, because, really, what else does one do in the middle of a public location?

Actually, I have no idea what I was doing there.



Really, it was so beautiful. It even stopped raining, so we were able to tour the outside gardens and the park across the street. The park had a huge fountain.

And this little guy was out there to greet us.

I don't know what the bare patch is going to be - a veggie plot maybe? Right now it's just weeds and, apparently, bugs and worms. That's an American robin (not to be confused with a European robin; both are referred to as just "robins" in their respective locales).

Just outside the conservatory (the enclosed area) is the National Garden. There's a butterfly garden that wasn't seeing much action due to it being early in the year and it raining. I bet it's just spectacular when it's in full bloom. Here's an entryway, with the conservatory behind it.

The jungle is what's enclosed in the glass area. This is a view from the canopy walk.

Since it was practically next door, we went ahead and wandered over to the Capitol. I've been here since 2000 and this is the first time I've done this!

Something was going on and there was security and sniffing dogs and cordons everywhere. We never did figure out what was up.

My limited knowledge of DC told me that the Capitol sits at one end of the mall, opposite the Washington monument. I turned around to see if I was correct and I was. This actually quite surprised me.

So, that was basically our trip to DC/the Gardens. We saw some random monuments and wandered around a lot and had a swell time.