march madness; spring fever

Illustration of the original mad tea party with Alice, March Hare (with straw) Door mouse and the Mad Hatter.

species crocus 3 inches tall

giant crocus 5 inches tall

Mad orange Hatter, Queen of hearts, and Alice in Wonderland a Tim Burton masterwork.

Keith chose art, a wood engraving by Rosemary Feit-Covey and a vase made in the Torpedo factory studios. Then he built this amazing nail and pull tie sculpture, his speciality to complement the artworks.

It is nearly the middle of March and I am ready for spring. This past week the weather warmed in DC and the snow is completely gone. I walked out one afternoon to go visit my mother and discovered my tiny species (wild) crocus had come up and begun to bloom and some of the giant purple crocus are also bursting out! It is a welcome sign.Last weekend Keith was part of the biannual Ikebana and Art exhibition at the Alexandria Art League Gallery in the Torpedo Factory. That was a lot of fun to attend and I loaded up a slide show of my opening night snapshots on my flickr page.

Here is a video from the opening night of the ikebana and art exhibition, pardon the shaky camera man who almost forgot and turned the camera side ways while filming.

Live music was in the room with the Japanese style tea bowls, an exhibition that was a nice complement to the ikebana.

Sunday we went to see a movie that was a new experience. 3-D Alice in Wonderland with an orange haired mad hatter as a wild looking clown but much more sympathetic as a partner with blue Alice as she seeks to end the oppressive rule of red Queen of hearts. Orange and blue are complementary colors on the color wheel which I hadn't realized while watching the movie. 3-D is really quite a bit better than it used to be when I was a teen. On the subject of March and madness... I was surprised to learn that the March hare in the wonderland story was a misunderstood interpretation of a natural behavior of rabbits. They begin matting in England in March and females fight off unwanted mates and leap straight up in the air and do all sorts of sudden moves to avoid them. Hence they are called march hares because of the crazy behavior which was believed to be males sparing when the book was written.

Another interesting tidbit was that wearing straw on a person's head was a sign of madness to Victorians and was used in satires and political cartoons.

This weekend rains are keeping us gray but encourangeing the flower bulbs to grow so they can cheer us all with the returning sun. We turn forward our clocks tonight the day light savings time begins just in time to kill the winter blues.