A little while ago today. . .
The forest behind our house carpeted in wood anemones or Anemone nemorosa, a small white flower native to Germany.
I just noticed that little black bug on the flower petal. It looks like a tick. I feel itchy now. . . .
Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king…
I looked out the upstairs window yesterday afternoon and saw that the woods behind our house were carpeted in wood anemones or Anemone nemorosa, a native flower.
When I went out the back gate, I also found yellow primroses — Primula vulgaris, I believe — along the fence.
Except for the little white flowers and some ivy, the forest is still mostly brown and beige, but that will change very quickly now that daytime temperatures are in the 60s° F.
Flowers in a vase
or strewn in mad profusion
across a meadow. Choose— Tom Disch, from “Memoirs of a Primrose“
“Higurashi no sato jiin no rinsen” (Temple Gardens, Nippori), 1857, a woodblock print by Andō Hiroshige, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The view is from Ueno Hill of Shūsō-in, one of three Buddhist temple gardens known as Hanamidera or Flower-viewing Temples. This print is one of fifty in an album of Edo (present day Tokyo) by Hiroshige.
There’s a nice essay on cherishing the brief beauty of the cherry blossoms by Diane Durston in today’s Washington Post, here.
“U.S. Capitol through tulip magnolia,” ca. 1920 – ca. 1950, by Theodor Horydczak, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The late March and April blooms of tulip and saucer magnolias are a well-loved sign of spring in Washington, D.C.
The front porch of the French Legation to the Republic of Texas, Austin, Texas, 1934, by Louis C. Page, Jr., via Historic American Building Survey (HABS), Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
This house — now the French Legation Museum — is the oldest extant building in Austin. It was constructed between 1839 and 1841 for Monsieur Jean Pierre Isidore Alphonse Dubois, a secretary at the French Legation in Washington, D.C., who was sent to Texas to investigate the benefits of establishing relations with the new Republic of Texas.
On Dubois’s advice, Texas was soon recognized as a sovereign nation by France and he himself was appointed as the King’s chargé d’affaires. Unfortunately — and probably before he could ever occupy his house — he became involved in a number of political, financial, and personal controversies, culminating in the so-called “Pig War.” When the Republic’s capital moved to Houston in 1841, Dubois left for New Orleans, only occasionally returning to Texas.
The style of the house is a blend of vernacular Greek revival and Mississippi Valley French. It may have been designed by carpenter Thomas William Ward, who had previously worked in Louisiana.
At the time of the 1934 photos above, the house was owned and occupied by Miss Lillie Robertson, whose father had purchased it in 1848. After Lillie’s death, the property was sold to the State of Texas in 1945. It was then put into the custody of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. They restored it and opened it to the public in 1956.
The same views in 1961, by Jack E. Boucher, also via HABS, Library of Congress.
By 1961, the Legation house was surrounded by a formal arrangement of boxwood hedges — perhaps having taken a lesson from M. Dubois, the son of a tax collector, who styled himself Count de Saligny after he arrived in Texas.
Today, the museum looks much the same. Its surrounding park is 2 1/2 acres and is open to the public. Its wide gravel paths are sometimes used for games of pétanque. From the front porch, visitors can see the Texas Capitol Building and downtown Austin.
enclos*ure 