Springtime in our capital city

The public school system in Washington, D.C., in the 1930s and 1940s gave the children an unsupervised full hour for lunch. Some of the children went home for lunch, some went across Wisconsin Avenue and bought things at a delicatessen, others brought their lunches in a lunch box or brown paper bag. I was one of that group , but we had formed our own little lunch club and headed off the school grounds to an area where there was a little creek, lots of moss on the grounds and only a small amount of sunshine coming through the tall trees that surrounded the area. In that little Eden we established very few rules. The most important one was not to leave any of their wax paper or bags littering our spot, or perhaps so no one will know we were using this area so often. We could collect tadpoles in the creek and secure them in wax paper until time to go back to school. But the best thing was a bed of violets on one side of the clearing. We'd make chains of the violets to wear back to school as long as the teachers would let us.

The houses we rented were also in the midst of Mother Nature's workshops. The earlier home had a huge yard adjoining another even larger yard. Apple trees with their branches hanging close to the ground and lots of spaces to make a camp site in the sky. Nearby there were two large trees that were great for trapeze tricks or just swinging in the sky. Behind the house was a wooded area and past that some farmlands provided things such as wild strawberries we could pick. The adjoining yard had a nice tennis court we were free to use, and also had two small boys to play with us

After we moved and I was in high school, the house was half a block from Rock Creek Park. We could wade in the creek, and walk or bicycle down the trails preserved by Congress for the people to enjoy.

Since we only had one car for all of us, we couldn't use the car to go had downtown very often, but when we had company from out of town, we could always tuck in a corner of the back seat when our parents were showing them around. This was especially nice in the spring when the cherry blossoms on the Japanese gift trees planted around the Tidal Basin and Haines Point were in bloom.

That many trees, all blooming at once, and also reflected in the water made a beautiful sight. Of course the sidewalks beside the trees were very crowded with people going each way, many of them Japanese themselves.

My sisters, Ellen and Miriam, and I went back to visit siblings in Washington a few years ago. Every house we had visited was surrounded with blooming bushes and individual flowers. The houses next door were also surrounded with blooming bushes, flowers and trees. Every street corner that had a little space in the turn area, had that space filled with blooms, and the highways and freeways have plantings on the right of way.

After we started home and were talking over our visits there was a lull in the conversation. Finally I couldn't help thinking how calming the open space was. There were some pretty trees and bushes, but not many. As the farm houses began to emerge I voiced my reaction. "Isn't it great to get away from all those blooms and trees?" This prairie chicken needs some space to thrive.