gardens and galleries

Another part of my week was going to the museums with my partner Keith and alone to a lecture on Sunday. Two trips to the National Gallery of Art, NGA  in a week are a lot for me but I have not been in months so it was welcome time in my favorite DC Museum. One of my favorite things about the NGA besides the art and the shops is the food. They have a good selection of foods and a great desert counter. Keith and I both couldn't resist a nice slice of chocolate cake as you can see above with our sandwiches. Then we dove into the In the Forest of Fontainebleue exhibition and soaked up a lot of lovely landscapes and big oak and beech trees. The NGA also has an excellent website where you can see a few of the paintings and photographs from the exhibition. Look here on the exhibition page for the exhibition feature and enjoy some digital peeks. It is only open for till June 8th so if you want to see those great forest photos and paintings in person you better move quickly. There is also a huge exhibition of recent acquisitions to the prints and drawings collection that spans the medieval to modern eras. Too much for one trip we discovered about half way through the drawings. Watercolors, pastels, book illustrations were also included in the show which really is a works on paper collection that only excludes photographs. The lecture I attended was on a single painting in Christ church oxford by an Italian master A. Carracci "Butcher Shop" was painted in 1580 in Boglonga, Italy and the lecture detailed many interesting stories about the painting the painter and his family of brothers who all helped run a family painting business and eventually opened an academy of art. We had a lot of rain lately but the garden is still looking great. The clipping of our meadow style grassy areas last week was such an improvement it is hard to believe they left it to grow for so long. We have lovely hostas in shades of fresh greens, iris, and a few roses. The siberian iris came to full bloom this week as the bigger german bearded iris finished their last blooms in our yard. To add a second chance for the house wrens to nest I finished up a second gourd with some green paint and shinny acrylic spray and hung it in the old lilac tree. We also lost all the normal colors on our old TV so now I have to find a new HDTV to replace it and that task has become a real head ache...