Today was a very quiet day for me here in the DC-Baltimore corridor. Warmer than yesterday (high around 49 degrees F) but cloudy – total gray sky, no sunshine any of the hours I was awake.

I say ‘awake’ cause I wasn’t, much. On Tuesday when I took my brother to lunch (we went to a Denny’s in Laurel, south of here), I had a coke with my food. Don’t know WHY I haven’t learned this lesson in all my years of caffeine encounters. Sigh. I am one of those people who metabolizes caffeine very, very slowly. I had that coke around 12:30 p.m. … and, as a consequence I did not go to sleep until about 5 a.m. this morning. 😛 Which, of course, means I slept until I had to get up around 1 p.m. to take Kevin for his quarterly appointment with the podiatrist. Hopefully I can sleep better tonight!

Another thing I did when I was in Madison in September was to visit the Olbrich botanical gardens on Madison’s east side. I truly adore strolling through gardens, especially well-organized public ones. Olbrich was so pleasing I decided to buy a membership (worth it to support their efforts even if I only get to visit once a year:). Here are a few of the photos I took there on a beautiful early autumn day in September:

This statue was slightly taller than me and the symmetry pleased me greatly. I saw a lot of wildlife that day – many kinds of bugs, several birds and even a garter snake (no photo of that, it was moving way too fast:).

This fig tree was lovely – there is something about the shape of fig leaves that I find soothing. 🙂

My father was a beekeeper (like his father before him) and I always notice hives when I happen to find them. I bet these bees stay busy in this big multifloral garden! 🙂 There were a number of hives set off in a quiet corner lawn by themselves.

Just looking at these photos makes me feel better, here in the beige and gray (bleak!) early winter of my area.

🙂 Linda