I'm Just Visiting This Planet

Anne and I took a day off and went to The New York Botanical Gardens to see the Emily Dickinson's garden exhibit. It was fabulous-the videos on the web site show how the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory was transformed into this wonderful replica (albeit in minature) of what Dickinson's garden might have looked like. I especially liked the way her poetry was connected to the flowers and plant life-look at this one. I also loved the flowers: foxglove, snapdragon, marigolds, peas-look at these: the picture doesn't really do them justice. These are called "Schizanthus", poor-man's-orchid-this particular type is called Angel Wing's Mix-how's that for a name? According to Wikipedia , this plant is in the nightshade family. The foxglove were absolutely stunning-look at the photos below. And in addition to the poetry there were little "factoids" about the plants-things like when they were introduced to America, and what the plants meant in Victor...

Hard to believe that our wonderful week in Virginia Beach is coming to an end. We've biked, hiked, taken a garden/house tour, rested on the beach and eaten at Waterman's four out of five dinners (or something like that). Last night I dreamed that I was too tired to go back to work-wonder what that means!

What a wonderful time of the year-first we have Passover, two seders and lots of people over. Six for the first night, eleven for the second night. Wednesday was "recovery day." Tonight I'm off to First Presbyterian Church of Yorktown for a Tennebrae service for Holy Thursday. Tomorrow it's St Bart's Episcopalian Church for an ecumenical Good Friday service. Sunday a dawn Easter service at Wilken's farm, and then a 10:45 service at First Presbyterian. Lots of good food, good prayers and good friends. Happy holidays, everyone!

It's been very interesting here in Northern Westchester-18 inches of snow, about 5 inches of rain, and then a huge crash in the middle of the night and two trees in the woods behind our house came down. The house shook but luckily nothing was damaged. I'm sure it's nature's way of keeping us on our toes. And we have been so lucky-we've never lost power, just Cablevision and Internet access. And now that we're back on daylight savings time it will soon be time to start working on the garden!

So here's what I bought while we were in Mysore-And here's what Anne bought: doesn't she look great? We absolutely loved the clothes, the food, the country and the people. Now if only the flight weren't so long...... I have all the usual pictures, you know, the ones of the Taj Mahal, and the Hindu temples, and then I have the "business pictures." Those are the photos of the America On-Line graduation, which was the whole reason for going. But I like these pictures, of Anne and me in our shalwar kameez in our beautiful hotel room in Mysore. These pictures don't tell the whole story, of shopping, trying on, having the clothes altered, and having chai and thali in Cafe Indra while we waited. And drinking lassi and then realizing that the yogurt was probably diluted with water and waiting to get sick-an not getting sick. All in all it was an amazing trip.

Anne and I are back from a two week trip to India-Delhi, Agra, Bangalore and Mysore. I am reminded (as always) that I know so little and learn so much! Pictures to follow but for now let me say that this was (another) life changing trip-add this to China and Nicaragua and all I can say is that I seem to be getting more adventurous as I get older. Maybe that's one of the joys of getting older!