A fresh bouquet in the lobby of the Freer Gallery drew my eyes to a formal courtyard. The Gallery featured works of Asian art.
My wife and I visited our daughter during Georgetown University’s family weekend. On Friday night we had a stimulating dinner at a restaurant called Zaytinya specifically to try authentic Turkish food (it was very good). Then we dropped our daughter at her dorm and we headed to Bowie, MD for a night at my brother’s house—though his family had gone to White Oaks Farm, their spread in West Virginia.
We recovered our daughter from Georgetown on Saturday morning and parked on the south side of the National Mall. After a short walk, we decided to tour the Freer Gallery of Art.
Wooden statues stood at opposite ends of a long hallway in the Freer Gallery. Both statues appeared angry, though this one was clearly the angrier.
The gallery featured Asian works which suited me fine; I’m very fond especially of Japanese paintings. I was impressed by an Indian dagger made from a meteorite, and by how advanced Syrian glassmaking was by the 1,300s. We walked through an exhibit by modern African artists that interpreted Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, and then we drove to the National Arboretum.
The Arboretum deserves its own post. I’ll need to select from, perhaps, 150 photos. It’s a big number considering we visited only the bonsai exhibit, the herb garden, and “the Columns” and were back on the road in under two hours.
We stopped at the Eastern Market which is a large collection of tents in front of and alongside an old market building that includes a dining area and dance floor. I love these markets. There were vendors of jewelry, art, clothing, produce, meat, cheeses, prepared foods… enough to hold your attention for hours if you stroll without a deadline.
The point of the story
And here’s the whole point of the story: We had made our way to the farthest vendor tents and started back to the car. We came to a produce vendor selling several varieties of winter squash, among them: Neck Pumpkin.
Visiting the National Arboretum has been on my mind for more than 30 years; I remember wanting to check it out when I was in college. My wife, my daughter, and I went and it was too short a visit — it also was in the wrong season; I want to return in late spring or early summer.
The columns used to be part of the US Capitol building. Workers removed them years ago to make way for an expansion. The columns are strangely out of place at the arboretum, yet they provided some compelling photographic moments.
Neck Pumpkins are common in central Pennsylvania, and relatively unknown elsewhere in the US. I’ve written a lot about them over the years and was quite surprised to find, there on the neck pumpkin display, a photo of myself holding a neck pumpkin!
I’m probably the only person in the world who would have recognized me in the photo—it shows my legs and my right hand. I had set my camera on a tripod, put the shutter on its timer setting, and posed on our screened porch. The photo appeared in one of my earliest blog posts about Neck Pumpkins—in 2009. In fact, I harvested neck pumpkins just a few days ago that are direct descendents from the one in that photo.
But that’s not the point. The point is: there in a Washington DC produce vendor’s booth, I found myself holding a neck pumpkin.
Footnote about copyright
It is illegal to use a photograph for commercial purposes if you do not have express written permission from its creator (or owner). If you can’t find any statement accompanying a photograph that says the photo is free for you to use; don’t use the photo. If you really, really want to use the photo, don’t. But do contact the owner and ask nicely. There’s a reasonable chance you’ll get permission.
Nearing the end of a pleasant stroll at Washington DC’s Eastern Market, I found myself. I’m the legs and the hand holding the neck pumpkin in the sign in this photo. I first published the original photo in a 2009 blog post titled Neck Pumpkin: a Home Kitchen Garden Marvel.
Small Kitchen Garden – Found Myself at Washington DC’s Eastern Market