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Category: landscape

Olmsted in Kentucky

Olmsted in Kentucky

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I learned through weekend wanderings that famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted once turned his attention to my hometown. 

He and his brother, as the marker explains, had a hand in designing Transylvania Park, where the lovely Lexington Library once reigned; Ashland Park, where I spotted this sign; and Woodland Park, one of my favorite haunts.

It doesn’t surprise me. These places may not be the Chicago World’s Fair or Central Park (two of Olmsted’s more well-known accomplishments), but in them the built and natural environments work together. They have a beauty and a presence — a  sense of having always been there.

Feast for the Eye

Feast for the Eye

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A walk this morning before the rain moved in: tall grasses swaying, leaf piles growing. I love to walk in Lexington because, at least where I stroll, no two houses are alike. 

Some are traditional, others contemporary. Windows are mullioned or plain. Doors arched or square.

Chinquapin oak leaves litter brick sidewalks, and a ground cover I’m not familiar with froths around the base of a tree.

The variations are a feast for the eye and a balm for the brain.

Way Too Early

Way Too Early

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The Washington and Old Dominion (W&OD) Rails to Trails path was bustling late yesterday when I finally made my way to it. There were runners and walkers and cyclists, mostly the latter zooming by with a brisk warning of “passing on the left.” 

I slipped into what I always think of as the “bridle path” part of the trail, the unpaved route that runs alongside the asphalt. But due to the bridges over Herndon and Fairfax County Parkways, I couldn’t always stay on that calmer and less traveled path. 

What I could do was to focus on the scenery I passed: the changing colors of the deciduous trees. 

The subtle beauty of the shaggy undergrowth … and the sun setting way too early, once again.

A Walk Recorded

A Walk Recorded

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I took a stroll late yesterday through the gloaming, the exquisite though way-too-early gloaming — I was walking between 4 and 5! — then came home and wrote these words:

The late fall light is draining quickly from the sky and a bright near-half moon showing itself. There are the most delicate of evening sounds: a few hardy crickets, the bird that says “Judy” (did I determine that’s a wren?) and various human-caused sounds — a pinging that could have come from a small forge but was likely a kid banging on a pipe — the distant downshift of a passing truck. But none of these sounds disturbed the peacefulness of the landscape. They only enhanced it. 

Some of the shorter shrubs have lost most of their leaves. Those that remain seem to be offering themselves for viewing, like golden coins on a platter. Back on my street, the russets and scarlets of the maples and oaks shimmered in the twilight. 

Night falls fast this time of year, but when it’s warm, as it has been today, that doesn’t seem to matter as much.

Charting Time

Charting Time

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It’s only a baby habit, just getting started, but I’ve decided to keep a time chart, noting on my (paper) calendar what I’m doing and when. 

Time flows differently these days, it eddies and it stalls and sometimes it swirls by so quickly that I barely see the ripples it leaves behind. 

So rather than wondering each day, where does the time go, I will try to chart it as it flies. 

A noble experiment, yes? 

We’ll see. 

The Piedmont

The Piedmont

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Although you might not think it, there are hills around here, inclines that push walkers and cyclists into overdrive. These are not the hills of Seattle rising like cartoon mountains, making a hazard of rolling suitcases and winding the faint-hearted in just one block. These are more subtle gradients, but gradients just the same.

It dawned on me lately while walking up a steep rise that it’s the piedmont at work. The land we inhabit here on the western edge of Fairfax County is just past the fall line of the Potomac. Virginia hunt country lies nearby. 

We live in the northern Piedmont region, literally at the foot of the mountains, those mountains being the Blue Ridge, which you can see rising like gray ghosts a quarter mile from here if the weather is clear. 

It’s comforting to think, as I chug up a steep grade, that I’m not just out of shape … I’m hiking the Piedmont.

Mirror of the Moment

Mirror of the Moment

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So many walks to choose from these days, paths around ponds and through forests. Trails in the morning, chaste of footfall. Paths in the afternoon, littered with leaf bits from all the walking.

On Tuesday I passed two ponds, a bright one with cattails and a shady one rippled as if a fan were blowing on it. 

The water was meditative, brisk, a mirror of the moment. 

Marine Layer

Marine Layer

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Sometimes it seems as if you could will away the marine layer that cloaks this city in the morning, that by walking up and down the hills, through parks and intersections, past coffee shops and markets you could build up enough heat to part the clouds and let the sun shine through.

That’s the way it felt this morning, as I ambled down Pike to Alaskan Way, and headed north … toward Alaska.

I didn’t get that far, of course. Only to Myrtle Edwards Park. But by the time I hiked back up the hill to the hotel, the sun was shining. 

Saturday Morning

Saturday Morning

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It’s cool and crisp today;. The witch hazel and the weeping cherry are starting to turn, but most trees are green, and pools of shade and light still dot the lawn. 

Along the fence row, the ornamental grasses have settled in, grown up and out. They catch the light, their tassels gleaming. And the ferns, replenished by rain, are verdant again.

In between feeding runs, a hummingbird perches on the slim twig of the climbing rose, which bends slightly with its tiny weight. 

I have the feeling I often have when struck by natural beauty — that I’d like to hold it, inhale or imbibe it, anything to keep it here. 

The Shore

The Shore

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I’m home now, looking out the window of my office, staring at the trees that aren’t palms, the greenery that’s not tropical. 

Yesterday I took a walk along familiar streets, nodding at neighbors, noting the changes even a week can bring, the house that’s up for sale, the fall clematis about to bloom. There was much rain while I was gone. Not enough to rescue the parched ferns but enough to green the grass that clogs the mower. 

It’s lovely, it’s my home. But I miss the big skies above the palms, the limitless white sand, the confab of shore birds that hung out at a tidal flat near where I would go. I see in my mind’s eye the small crescent beach only reachable at low tide and the alternating blues and greens of the Gulf water, lighter above the sand bar. 

What a magical place! How grateful I am to have gone there again!