“An artist seen painting the Cherry Blossoms along the Tidal Basin,” Washington, D.C., by E. B. Thompson. The photo is undated, but was possibly taken in the 1920s. Via D. C. Public Library Commons on flickr.
The National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C., will begin next week on Wednesday, March 20, and will continue through April 14. Click here for more information on events and local accomodations.
The National Park Service is predicting that peak bloom (70% of the flowers open) will occur March 26 – 30. The average date for peak bloom is April 4.
[ADDENDUM: The Capital Weather Gang blog at The Washington Post is departing from the NPS prediction. They believe that the peak bloom will come between April 3 and 7.]
Here’s another lovely hand-colored photograph of the Tidal Basin from about 1920.
The photographer is unknown; the image is via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The cherry trees along Washington’s Tidal Basin were a gift from the Japanese government 101 years ago, so they would have been about 10 to 15 years old at the time of these photos.
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
Ford Motor Co. snow plows, ca. 1910 – 1925, possibly in Washington, D.C., National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
“Most sources seem to agree that the basic street snow plow (not horse-drawn or built for trains) was created in 1913,” according to the blog Landscape Management Network.
“The first street snow plow, however, wasn’t patented until the early 1920s. At the time, a New Yorker by the name of Carl Fink was the leading manufacturer of plows mounted to motorized vehicles. Today, the company is known as Fink-America and its plows are still on the market.”
This Kigali pharmacy has taken the flower pots requirement to heart — with clipped weeping figs in the ground and then more pots behind them.
The city of Kigali has a requirement that all shops must have flower pots at their entrances. I learned this yesterday from our local newspaper, The New Times.
According to the article “Kigali City residents bemoan KCC* policies,”
[a business owner,] who deals in hardware business, . . . especially criticized the policy of flower pots at the front of every shop. All shops are supposed to have flower pots in front of them, a policy that was established in 2011.
“We are struggling with paying taxes which are high on top of that they are asking us to buy flower pots which cost between Rwf 15,000 to 20,000. Not all of us love flowers,” he said. “Every time I see these flower pots in front of my shop, I feel like it’s making my shop ugly because I would prefer something more artistic other than a flower pot but then I also can’t have two decorations at my door.” . . .
Last week, during an inspection, a few shops were locked up because of not having flower pots outside their shops.
I don’t know how many or what size pots are required. Rwf 15,000 is about US$24.
Back on January 19, I was also diverted by the article “Eleven arrested smuggling plastic bags:”
The police have arrested 10 Burundians and a Rwandan found smuggling 400 cartons of plastic paper bags and marijuana into the country.
The suspects were arrested in Kibungo town. They were travelling by bus heading to Kigali, from Kirehe district.
Police said the suspects had smuggled the goods through one of the most notorious entry points on the Burundi and Rwanda border in Gahara sector.
Rwanda banned disposable plastic bags in 2005. The ban was effected in three years later. However, Rwanda, which replaced the menacing bags with paper bags, is the only country of the five EAC member states with effective policy on plastic bags.
The initiative was a response to the plastic’s negative environmental impact, amid extensive physical presence of bags across the country.
Supt. Benoit Nsengiyumva, the Eastern Province Police spokesman, said the suspects would be charged as soon as investigations are complete.
“Rwanda is now entering its fourth year with a nationwide ban on all plastic bags. This is what we are guarding; as Police and we won’t rest,” he said.
Nsengiyumva said the suspects would also be charged with illegal entrance into the country and trafficking in marijuana, an illegal drug.
Note which crime is emphasized in the article.
Rwanda takes its restriction of plastic very seriously. Passengers arriving on international flights are warned to leave behind their duty-free store bags, and once, returning from Pretoria, I had to pull off all the security plastic wrap from my suitcase before I could exit the baggage area.
While I could go either way about storefront potted plants, I do like this plastic bag prohibition. I remember how the last place we lived in Africa — Niamey, Niger — was just inundated by this particularly obnoxious form of trash. The bags are such a plague on the continent that a common joke is to refer to them as the national bird, seen nesting in the trees and fields.
But they are extinct in Rwanda.
. . . And behold,
the plastic bag is magic;
there is no closing it. . . . .
This hotel garden had an interesting combination treehouse-garden seat called a shoo fly. The 10′ to 12′ elevated platforms were popular along the Gulf Coast as places to catch the breezes and maybe avoid deer flies.
The photo was taken from “the porch of the Hotel De Montrose [sic], Beloxi, Mississippi,” ca. 1895 – 1910, by the Detroit Publishing Co.* The Hotel de Montross (or Montross Hotel, later the Riviera Hotel) looked out on the waters of the Mississippi Sound.
“Anecdotal history of the early 20th century relates that the Hotel de Montross or Montross Hotel was the oldest hotel extant at Biloxi,” according to Ray Bellande of the Biloxi Historical Society. “It was operational before the first railroad was established between Mobile and New Orleans in 1870. Here on the central Beach of Biloxi and Lameuse Street, . . . the Montross Hotel was the focus of social life and fashion. Its pier was the disembarkation place for the society people arriving at Biloxi to enjoy its fine food, hospitality, and the gaiety of life, joie de vivre, that was offered to all visitors. The Montross Hotel flourished as a fine hostelry and boarding establishment until the late 1920s, when it became overshadowed by Biloxi’s modern beach front hotels. . . .”
I also like the light fixture.
A Hard Rock Hotel and Casino is located in approximately the same place today.
Beloxi has been a summer vacation resort since the first half of the 1800s.
“An artist seen painting the Cherry Blossoms along the Tidal Basin,” Washington, D.C., by E. B. Thompson. The photo is undated, but was possibly taken in the 1920s. Via D. C. Public Library Commons on flickr.
The photographer is unknown; the image is via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
enclos*ure 