Sunday, October 28, 2012

A Trip to the National Arboretum

On Tuesday, while my dad was in town visiting, we decided to take a ride to the National Arboretum. It was a beautiful, sunny day and the ride down the BW Parkway was just gorgeous.  I’ve ridden by the entrance to the National Arboretum on New York Avenue almost once a week for 2 or 3 years on my way into DC to pick up flowers. You’d think I would have stopped…just once even…to check it out.  But nope…I just kept driving right on by.

What was I thinking??? The National Arboretum is awesome! It is a truly beautiful space that would be enjoyable for anyone to visit. You can walk, run, picnic, explore and more!

The first thing we went to see was the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum. I don’t know anything about Bonsai (I cant wait for the winter to read books about Bonsai!) or Penjing (which I think is the Chinese version on Bonsai). Right now, the Autumn Bonsai Exhibit called “Beautiful Transitions” is in full “bloom”. It was incredible to see dozens of miniature trees and landscapes, some over 100 years old,  in full Fall color!

arbor 1

arbor 2

Next, we walked around the perennial gardens and herb gardens. Even though it was late in the season, there were so many things blooming-I could have spent hours just touching and smelling things…and writing down things I want our growers to grow!

As we were touring around, from a distance we could see a huge field of purple and gold flowers with large …columns.

arbor 3

The National Capitol Columns were the original columns from the East Portico of the Capitol building in Washington DC. When the Capitol was renovated in 1958, the columns were removed and put in storage. In the 1980’s, the columns found their permanent home on 20 acres of open meadow inside the arboretum. The view was stunning.

We finished our visit by driving around and looking at some of the other permanent collections (dogwoods, boxwoods, ferns) and making plans for a many more return visits!

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Night Time Progress Meeting in Charles Village

So…at the end of July, we bought a super awesome building in Charles Village that will eventually become LoCoFlo’s permanent home.  Luckily, I used to work in construction so we have some amazing folks working with us to this little warehouse into a “home”.  Tonight, Eric and I stopped over to meet with the project manager to see how things were going. Of course, as we were driving over there, we remembered… there are no lights yet.

So here’s what I could see in the dark.

New skylights!!

7D60A06D-6F25-49E5-96D8-391B74992AD1

The future location of the cooler…

B0F7B435-EC00-42D9-AD67-9AE23F7B81F1

And the new soffit! (bordering the new roof!!)

05C5C79C-54C4-4C8F-A408-9688CA6BF016

While it may not look like much, to us it’s progress!

Coming this week…a little “kitchenette” and a fabulous new cooler/coolbot!

Stay tuned!

Monday, October 1, 2012

Howdy Neighbors!

Even though we are still several weeks away from moving into our new home in Charles Village, we got to meet some of our new neighbors at the Abell Street Fair last week. We set up a table to spread the news of Baltimore's best florist moving in to the 'hood.

2012 Abell Street Fair Fun!

We gave away boutonnieres to some lucky and high-stylin' fair goers, we sold some beautiful bouquets of locally grown flowers and had a generally awesome time. We loved the children's parade, Jazz Lunch grooved hard, and The Black Marks rocked our faces off. Thanks to Drew Walker and the Abell Improvement Association for a great day!