Mrs. Dean has been gone more than two decades now, but her garden is still thriving — a legacy for its current owners (who have lovingly cared for it) and those who live nearby.
It starts off innocently enough: daffodils and forget-me-nots.
But it soon slopes down a steep hill into a bowl-shaped parcel studded with red bud and dogwood. It’s a secret garden, a natural ravine designed to look as wild as possible. I’m glad I could see it as it’s just coming alive to spring.
The Kentucky Derby is the first Saturday in May — but in Lexington it’s the second Saturday in April when all eyes turn to the track.
That’s when the three-year-old Derby hopefuls race in Keeneland’s Blue Grass Stakes. Yesterday’s winner, Dance with Fate, may not race next month, but that didn’t dampen turnout — it was the second largest crowd in history. The 77-degree temperature didn’t hurt.
So there were picture hats and tailgate parties and that familiar damp smell under the grandstand. There was the fine dirt flying up from galloping hooves down the back stretch. And there was the crescendo roar from the crowd when the thoroughbreds crossed the finish line.
Not that I was there. I’m just imagining it.
It was the end of a long day, a long week — and it was a long walk, too. But I left the office yesterday a little before 5, cruised through Judiciary Square, the Penn Quarter and onto the Mall. By that point the mood was decidedly celebratory.
And even though I said I wouldn’t do it again, I walked all the way around the pink-petal-rimmed Tidal Basin, joining the throngs on one of the first warm days in the nation’s capital.
It’s worth noting that unless you want to rent a paddle boat, strolling is the only way to see the cherry trees in their glory.
So I did. As did everyone else. Babies in prams, bikers in spandex, bureaucrats in blazers — we were
all ambling for one purpose: to see the cherries in peak bloom and welcome the
spring.
It has been such a hard winter … but now it’s over.
Hallelujah!
This is not a sports blog, of course, but I must say a few words about the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team. They lost last night 54-60 to the University of Connecticut Huskies in the NCAA final.
The team’s energy felt different right from the opening buzzer. Key players seemed off, were in and out of the game. Free throws missed as often as they hit. The Cats had finally met a team that closed as strong as they do. Stronger, in fact.
If this was a decade ago, we’d be shaking our heads at what they could do next year, this young, freshmen team. But this group is a one-year wonder. Most of them will be gone next year, in the NBA, most probably.
It’s hard to say that “one and done” is a failure when this team made it to the finals. But it’s not the kind of basketball I grew up with.
Still, I have to say it one more time: Go, Big Blue!
(A UK dormitory building snapped from the UK Library.)
My suburb is quiet, given its proximity to a major international airport. But when a wild wind barrels in from the west, planes are routed over the house and the sound of jet engines fills the sky. The harder the wind blows, the more planes there seem to be. Just the opposite of what one would like, of course.
Last night the airliners seemed to be using Folkstone Drive as a runway and skimming the tops of the tall oaks. The fact that I was dodging limbs and crunching over downed tree branches on the drive home only heightened this impression. I was glad to pull into the garage.
But this morning the wind still roars and the planes still circle. Winter is back, and it wants us to know it.
Any walker will tell you which way the wind blows. Whether it roars in from the west or brushes up from the south, all soft and warm.
Often it makes the difference: How long I walk or how far.
On a route I’m getting to know here in Lexington, the west wind smacks me in the face every time I turn a corner. I know my directions here, so that helps. But I think I would know the west wind anywhere. It is not timid or subtle. It takes my breath away.
But oh, the joy of having it at my back. It pushes me all the way home.
Lexington is an insider’s town. The one-way streets, the unmarked country lanes, the walled gardens — they come from long knowledge.
I noticed this yesterday as I was driving a route I hadn’t driven in years and on a hunch found the way to Old Vine. Not new Vine, the yin to Main Street’s yang, but Old Vine, which veers off its namesake at an improbable angle.
Inner cheers when I found this shortcut. The raised fist of victory. But I knew it wasn’t my superb navigational powers that led the way. It wasn’t a hunch as much as it was a long-buried map of the city that I carry around inside me.
I found Old Vine because I grew up here.
The flight left at 5:30, which seems insanely early even for an airplane, creature of the sky that it is. But powered by humans, of course, humans who must sleep.
Still, it did leave and it did arrive, and before 9 a.m. I was already where it normally takes me all day to reach by car. And so into my life the gift of time has fallen.
What have I done with it so far?
I’ve written, read and snapped some photos. I’ve looked at snow on mountaintops and marveled at the thin pink line where earth meets sky.
I’ve seen my hometown from the air — there’s Keeneland Race Track on the right.
I’ve slipped quietly into this other life.
Living in a company town produces some funny situations. Like today. The federal government is closed and so is my university. No complaints there, although deadlines being deadlines, I’ll be working anyway.
The funny thing is the unanimity of opinion. And the reliance on experts, in this case meteorologists. There’s not a flake of snow flying but we’re all hunkered down. The reason, of course, is traffic. In the last few years late-breaking snow storms have produced jams of biblical proportions, people arriving home seven, eight hours after they left for what they thought would be an hour-long commute.
So we’re taking no chances. We’re playing it safe. We’re grinding the wheels of government and commerce to a halt. We’re calling it a snow day.
Now all we need is the snow!
Walking the roads and paths of this suburban land, I think often about belonging, about whether I do or do not. At this point, it’s a moot point. I belong, whether I “belong” or not! Our children have grown up here; this is their “hometown.”
But still, I often compare the way I feel about my home in northern Virginia with the way I feel about my hometown of Lexington, Kentucky. No matter how many walks I take, shortcuts I learn or people I know — this place will never be that place, the place where I grew up, where I first came alive to the world.
On Monday, the last day of a week-long trip to Kentucky, I spent a few minutes snapping photos at Keeneland. I remember going to this gem of a racetrack as a little girl, smelling the beer-and-cigar-laced air of the cool, dark area under the grandstand, watching the jockeys mount their horses in the paddock, joining the throngs screaming at the rail as a 99-1 shot pulled off the impossible.
Seeing it alone, in midwinter, stripped of the crowds and the thoroughbreds that bring it life could have been a melancholy experience. But it wasn’t. I have Keeneland right where I need it to be; it’s part of me now.