Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
is hung with bloom along the bough
— A.E. Housman
This what greeted me when I came up out of the Metro this morning:
Yeah, Navy boys (and one Navy lady) practicing maneuvers or whatever they call that stuff. Not a bad way to start the day, if you ask me.
Then, at lunch, a co-worker and I headed down to the Tidal Basin to see the cherry blossoms – the festival officially starts tomorrow, but it’s going to be a madhouse down there because of the National Marathon, the circus, the Cherry Blossom Festival, and the Kite Festival, and my boss encourages us to take extra time at lunch to go and see them. It wasn’t as sunny as I’d hoped for picture taking purposes, but it was a great day otherwise – warm, breezy, perfect. We headed to the Mall, where I snapped these pictures (if they look cut off, click on them to get the full picture; trying to resize them all to the right proportions is making me crazy):
Then we came upon the, literally, thousands of cherry blossom trees that surround the Tidal Basin and the Jefferson Memorial. Here are my favorite pictures:
And here’s my really favorite:
On the way back we saw this amazing tree, and I just love this picture:
And then . . . we saw this group of dorks, and I had to have a picture of them:
The guy on the far right is the tour guide. Yes, you can take a Segway tour of the monuments. Cool or dorky? I can’t really decide.
Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and a great way to work in a 3-mile walk on my lunch hour (and a half). The schedule of events for the Cherry Blossom Festival says they have a guided running tour in the morning on both Saturday and Sunday. I’m tempted, but maybe I better wait til next year when I’m a real runner!
Hear Me in the Harmony 
I know dorks…this is a full-fledged gaggle of them!
Cool Pics, sis!
Looks like a great day.
See you Sunday…GO NATS!!!
First of all, you ARE a real runner…and second, I think that doing the segway tour would be way cool, but I’d probably fall off! The trees are beautiful! We still have snow…but that just means we are overly excited when spring finally decides to give us up here a nod.
You look great!
OMG, you look so freaking skinny in that pic under the cherry blossom tree!!! I’m convinced you’ve lost another 20 pounds, you look great!!!
Great shots, Mel!
I have a “thing” with taking pictures of cool trees.
What’s that all about?
I’ve only been to D.C. once, but have great memories. You are fortunate to see that every day.
And you do look really good ;P
Aimee, it’s a camera trick. Or maybe it’s the running, because I’m actually still working on losing the FOUR pounds I gained while I was in Houston (which was totally worth it, by the way)! So I’m not actually losing all that much weight, but I have noticed my pants are looser, which is good.
I’m glad everyone is enjoying the pictures!
Colleen, I love tree pictures too, especially bare ones where you can see the trunk and the branches so clearly.
Dawn, I’d be so bummed if we had snow right now. I don’t know how you Northerners do it (or is MI considered the midwest?).
Keely – thanks! And thanks for reading!