Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Monday, April 17, 2006
Lunch, Gardens, Art
We had a diversionary kind of day yesterday; did some things we haven't done for a while.
Lunch was in Chinatown at Lei Garden. Nothing very garden-like here, but we like the dim sum. We tend to focus on the dumplings and yesterday's "steamed" cart offered up a couple that we never had before - one with a spinach filling and one with a mushroom filling. Both very good. In fact when they came around again, we got another order of the spinach ones.
After lunch, we walked down to the mall area. I'd been meaning to go look at the outside of the newish National Museum of the American Indian ever since it opened. There was a newspaper article or two at the time about the innovative and symbolic landscape design surrounding the building. Sounded interesting, and I wanted to see it. Well, we saw it. It is interesting, but this looks to me like one of those things for which landscape architects get their names in the paper, but nobody ever writes about whether the installation is being maintained or was maintainable in the first place. The pond looked stagnant; when the shrubbery and grass planted around it begin to grow, you won't be able to see it at all except maybe from inside the building on one of the upper floors. The meadow area has been invaded by urban weeds. The Native agriculture area looks like they may plant some crops there or have in the past, but right now is just a muddy space between the sidewalk and the building. But maybe I'm being too hard on them; they packed many ideas into a small space and it couldn't have been easy. And the waterfall and stream on the mall side of the building are attractive and perfectly complementary to the building. The museum doesn't seem particularly interested in telling the public anything about what's outside, at least not on their web site. And the landscape architect's site has very little about it.
The Mary Livingston Ripley Garden on the east side of the Arts & Industries Building was very floriferous yesterday. I was surprised to see so many plants there which I have at home - perhaps the garden designer there and I think alike. Or maybe I just have a bunch of plants which are more common than I think. I noticed we both have: Euphorbia robbiae, Ipheion uniflorum, various Epimediums, and some others which don't come to mind now that I want to write about them. One plant that made a big impression on me was Tulipa acuminata (so I believe). I read Anna Pavord's The Tulip late last summer, and was intrigued by her description of the tulips of the Turkish Tulipomania (before the Dutch did it) with their long, pointed petals. I assumed we could no longer obtain such things, but then yesterday I saw some growing right before my eyes. If there was a label near them, I didn't see it, but when I got home I Googled and found Tulipa acuminata. I'll put those on my list of things to plant this fall, and hope the rodents let me have them for one season.
Our real destination for the day was the Hokusai exhibit at the Sackler Gallery. We really enjoyed this - the prints and paintings were fascinating and beautiful. The exhibit is so large it's easy to get overwhelmed (I did). I wish I had studied the entire online exhibit before going there in person, but going through it afterwards refreshed my memory. Nature lovers could even just concentrate on the landscapes and plant and animal studies, and still have plenty to look at.
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