April 1 Sunday Day 35 Landover Hills MD Comfort Inn car problems!!!!!

April fools!!!!!!!!!!! jerr

Before I start I must say writing the blog at the end of the day is tiring, prone to mistakes and inadvertent missed good things. Yesterday I mentioned poppies and that should have been pansies. To top it off they are one of my favorite.

Today started at the day at Norfolk Botanical Gardens. Without saying we viewed beautiful color. Azaleas in full bloom, clumped together were whites, pinks and violet. The Plantation in NC was the largest plantings of azaleas and good color. Matching these I would say. This again was a free pass, we belong to the Minnesota Horticultural Society at the U. the garden had a bonsai demonstration. Many different kinds, one I may be able to grow a dandelion plant in a small pot. Other beauty’s also. We walked to the tram transport and took a look at the vegetation before we walked it. The azaleas were in full bloom, magnolias also. There were trees 15 feet high and full of blossoms, I said look at the clumps of blossoms, they look like snowballs, Shirleen agreed. The plantings were really planned out, many violas and pansies in the same pot. Large potted plans in brown, blue and a fish container. A neat use of the crape myrtle was when the espaliered them along a walk way. Again there was a generous use of bunches of pansies and tulips planted among them, blue pansies and yellow and red tulips. We have really seen a couple of nice gardens with sculpture contained within them; this was another of those gardens. A new plant we saw was a lobster claw blossom, yellow and light red thin pedals.

We then crossed the Chesapeake Bay, two tunnels and three bridges, a meer 12$. Neat way to get to the Virginias peninsula coast. We again traveled away from the center roadway and went occasionally to the coast side. You guessed it we were hungry. We found the Historic Eastville Inn Restaurant built in 1724 in Eastville Virginia. The dinning room was old style, high ceilings overhead, walls a yellow/orange color, fancy purple gathered drapes on the windows as if the colonial era. The sign on the front of the building said it was a National and VA Historic Register and was a SOCIAL MECCA and COURT LODGING. Find this place the food is beyond the normal fair. Shirleen’s said her coffee was flavorful and I had a chardonnay. Shirleen’s crab cake sandwich and marinated cucumbers were good, she said so continuously, different than normally. Turns out the cucumbers were marinated in there house dressing, must have been and oil, water and spice mixture. My crispy fried oysters were just as good. A must eat place.

The above put of the way place was again a place few would find. We continued up the back roads, some only one and a half lanes wide, no middle strip. Some of the trees alongside were marked like the European trees, painted white up the trunk of the tree about three feet high, so when the lights hit the white tree at night you can see what you are going to hit if you don’t slow down. Many houses reminded us of the slave houses, these were all the way from wooden to mobile homes. The homes were mostly in need of paint but, the cars alongside were well maintained and washed. Better than ours at this time. This again was America. Further on we came upon a seaside fishing village, nice old small and plantation sized homes with pretty flowering plants. We went down to the boat area and saw it was a clam and oyster business that was being pursued. Piles of shells, later we saw a pile of them for sale. We spied a restaurant “Stella Waterfront restaurant. It is used as a pathway in small gardens. As we went along the countryside we saw soft white wheat sprouting to three inches or so and right among these were old cemetery stones, three maybe five and a fence, sometimes the gravestones were right in the front yards of the homes, next to a yellow bell bush.

We checked in the Comfort Inn in Landover Hills Maryland, right outside of DC four miles to the next botanical garden. Makes you wonder about where you stay when the hotel clerk is behind bulletproof glass but, we did not have to have a passport or give our fingerprints. We ate at a nice Italian Inn next door, ordered a medium pizza and left half there. It was a thick crunchy crust with a mild tomato sauce with pepperoni and mushrooms. Another surprising and pleasant surprise. Out waitress Jan turned out to be a comedian and a couple years older than us. Her joke was: What did one wall say to another? I’ll meet you at the corner. Enough for tonight. jerr