Poem for Thursday and Rainy Flowers

Spring Rain
By Sara Teasdale

I thought I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
In a rush of rain.

I remembered a darkened doorway
Where we stood while the storm swept by,
Thunder gripping the earth
And lightning scrawled on the sky.

The passing motor busses swayed,
For the street was a river of rain,
Lashed into little golden waves
In the lamp light's stain.

With the wild spring rain and thunder
My heart was wild and gay;
Your eyes said more to me that night
Than your lips would ever say. . . .

I thought I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
In a rush of rain.

 -------- 

We had rain most of the day Wednesday, which was fine as I had things I actually needed to get done. Plus I had a nice long lunchtime Zoom chat with my high school friends -- everyone made it this week! In the late afternoon, the rain stopped and we went for a walk, which let us see lots of shiny wet spring color, then I went to do a Pokemon raid and the rain started up again and I got drenched. 

 

Wednesday night after dinner (peanut butternut squash stew, which was awesome) it was time for The Masked Singer, in which I'd barely heard of the guy who was unmasked because I'm old, but the new guy in the crab costume is great and Black Swan is great too. Then we caught up on The Flash (better without mirrors, but still meh) and Debris (still interesting and great characterization). 

 

Poem for Wednesday and Kenwood Cherry Blossoms

Yoshino Mountain
By Yosa Buson
Translated by David G. Lanoue

Sakura, sakura
they fall in the dreams
of sleeping beauty

Petals falling
unable to resist
the moonlight

Wind blows
they scatter and it dies
fallen petals

-------- 

Tuesday was just as gorgeous a day as Monday, a bit warmer, and since Paul had no afternoon Zoom conferences, we planned at lunchtime to go to Kenwood, the Bethesda neighborhood with over a thousand Yoshino cherry trees. Parking isn't allowed in the neighborhood, so we left the car up a side street and walked to the central area, which in addition to the cherry blossoms has lots of forsythia, magnolia, flowering ground cover, daffodils, and the earliest tulips. There were a number of other people walking around but almost everyone was masked, including the children, and people were respectful of other people's personal space. 

 

We ate leftovers for dinner because we were running tight on time (for one thing, my little laptop was refusing to acknowledge that it has a camera and I still don't know what's wrong). My Voyager group watched "Maneuvers" -- the one where Chakotay goes off after Seska and she steals his DNA -- and while it's more interesting than some of the surrounding episodes, I don't like how many characters are written, especially how Seska turns from a woman I love to hate into a woman who's simply despicable. Afterward I watched Supergirl purely for the SuperCorp (which did not disappoint), then Michigan vs UCLA (in which the Wolverines did).

 

Poem for Tuesday and Neighborhood Cherry Blossoms

Sakura at Kan'eji Temple
By Masaoka Shiki
Translated by David G. Lanoue

The cherry blossoms:
Being ill, how many things
I remember about them

Scatter layer
by layer, eight-layered
cherry blossoms

Moon at twilight
a cluster of petals falling
from the cherry tree

cherry blossom petals
blown by the spring breeze against
the undried wall

-------- 

Monday was a spectacularly beautiful day after the rain of Sunday, cool and breezy. I looked for excuses to take walks, even just to the Pokemon gym, and in the afternoon we walked in a different direction than usual so we could see the cherry blossoms two blocks away coming into full bloom, plus lots of forsythia and hundreds of daffodils. 

 

We interrupted basketball after dinner to watch the two-hour season finale of Snowpiercer, which had good performances and some decent twists, but if that one cast member is gone next season, I make no promises that I will keep watching; the fact that we're still subjected to LJ and Audrey while female scientists get short shrift pisses me off.

Greetings for Cherry Blossom Season

We had rain on Sunday morning and Sunday evening, but there was a period in the afternoon when it was overcast and warm, so we went looking for local cherry blossoms, which are expected to peak in the next couple of days. The streets in our neighborhood are a bit behind the ones downtown, but the ones around the mansion in Rockville Civic Center are pretty full and the ones in Cabin John Park are stunning. Plus there are daffodils and forsythia everywhere and redbuds starting, so lots of pink and yellow!

 

Otherwise, it was a pretty quiet day, apart from a brief period of thunder and wind when the cats went to hide down the basement. I folded laundry while watching early basketball, and our evening TV after dinner and Zoe's Extraordinary Playlist (better, since Zoe's love life was not a plot point this week) was the Maryland women playing the Texas woman and the Terps lost to the Longhorns by shooting terribly. I would have been okay with losing to Dawn Staley but I really want women's teams coached by women to win.

Greetings for Pesach

Happy Passover! This is a quick entry while watching the end of SNL after a busy day: morning chores, early lunch, drive to Mount Vernon to see the new lambs (plus lots of flowers in the upper gardens, skinks in the woods, and actors playing various Washington-era residents talking about life there). We hit traffic on the way home and discovered that it was from people in the various parks along the Potomac, looking at the cherry blossoms from there since the Tidal Basin streets are closed to traffic for social distancing. 

We went to my parents' for the first night of Passover and a very informal seder, though I'm not sure it was less organized than last year's, when we had more people on Zoom. We talked at various points in the evening on Google Meet with my kids, my sister and one of my nieces, and we ate lots of great food made by my mother (charoset, matzoh ball soup, carrot souffle, real and fake chicken, various desserts). When we came home, we watched a bit of basketball plus the season two finale of Ghosts. More downtown photos later! 

Greetings from Locust Grove

Friday was nearly 80 degrees and sunny -- daffodils everywhere, magnolias coming into bloom, bluebells starting. I didn't get a lot done -- I was watching the wrens and chipmunks out the back window when I was at my computer, and I took a walk in the neighborhood in the morning and at Locust Grove in the afternoon, where the bees were buzzing, the frog who was underwater with eggs in the tadpole nursery last time was poking out of the pond this time, the flowers were in bloom all over the hill, and the earliest bluebells were peeking out (warning: there is a large beetle in these photos): 

 

We had samosas and vindaloo for dinner before watching The Falcon and the Winter Soldier long distance with Cheryl. It is extremely well done, very well acted, socially relevant, upsetting, moving, and laugh-out-loud funny all at the same time; I'm not sure which was my favorite part, the scene with the therapist that seemed written entirely for fangirls or the scene in Baltimore that hit so many issues with humor and pathos. Then we watched some more Ghosts, which is just straight-up entertaining, plenty of rom-com cliches and occasional moving backstory.

 

Poem for Friday and Neighborhood Deer

The Fallow Deer At The Lonely House
By Thomas Hardy

One without looks in to-night
    Through the curtain-chink
From the sheet of glistening white;
One without looks in to-night
    As we sit and think
    By the fender-brink.

We do not discern those eyes
    Watching in the snow;
Lit by lamps of rosy dyes
We do not discern those eyes
    Wondering, aglow,
    Fourfooted, tiptoe.

-------- 

Thursday morning was still damp, but the weather got drier and warmer as the day progressed. I don't have a lot that's exiting to report -- got some work and some laundry done, did a Pokemon raid, chatted with a neighbor, took a walk to see the daffodils and emerging hyacinths. We watched bad Georgia voting news and Biden's press conference, and had basketball on the TV on and off during the afternoon too. 

I'm sad about Jessica Walter, too sad for AD reruns. Kay recommended yesterday that we watch the BBC's Ghosts, so we did that after dinner, and it's hilarious -- it's about a woman who inherits a British mansion from a distant relative, then winds up able to see the ghosts of all the previous inhabitants. Here are some photos of the largest group of friends we've seen in the woods this spring: