Monday, June 1, 2020

Quarantined In April

Posted:  June 1, 2020                                              Most Recent Posts:
About: April 2020                                      Tossed Out of Kathryn Abbey Hanna
Charlottesville, Virginia                            March 2020: Anastasia and Its Market



Quarantine means no haircut.  I’d been waiting to get back to Virginia for it.  Clearly I’m long over due.  Tough luck for me.  For how long?  Am I too old for pony tails?  How about the two tones?  I guess if I cut it short, I’ll be all gray.

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I don’t usually return to Virginia until mid or late April when spring has really begun.  This year I get the end of winter, the gray skies and leafless trees.  I stay in town with Winnona since the farm road needs work again before I can get her out there.  It has ruts and probably will require one more culvert.  Plus the trees all along the farm lane have to be trimmed back.   I  need to arrange for that and then I can  dewinterize the farm house.


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While March was bleak and dreary, in April spring does arrive, the leaves come back on the trees.  Charlottesville is absolutely beautiful when everything is in bloom

While I’m in Charlottesville I take advantage of  walking the neighborhoods and enjoying the spring beauty.

The city itself has planted some beautiful color all around and most of it is in bloom in April for the annual Dogwood Festival but, you guessed it, that was cancelled this year.

Still I can enjoy the beauty on a walk to our downtown mall pretty much all of which is also closed.


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Virginia Blue bells

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One of many signs in the windows of the businesses facing the bricked in pedestrian walk way.

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I love to attend the live performances and vintage movies at the Paramount.  But not this year.

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Pink dogwood and rose azaleas at the house in Charlottesville where Winnona hangs out currently.



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On other days, my walks took me to the beautiful gardens behind the Lawn at the University of Virginia.

The neighborhood yards on the way to the gardens are beautifully planted.   Charlottesville is really in bloom in April. 


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The intricacies of Iris amaze me as do the variety of their colors.

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I have posted about the UVA Gardens before in more detail so if you’d like to see a map or how they are located behind the Pavilions along the Lawn of the Rotunda, here are some links to previous blogs.  I come here every time I return to Charlottesville so these are only two of the posts I’ve done.  They are more detailed than this one.

The Not So Secret Gardens of UVA                     The Not So Secret Part II

The gardens’ entrances vary.  This one is through this white wooden gate along the back of the stone wall which encloses the garden.  Once inside, it feels like another world which I greatly appreciate at this time.

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The gardens are all different.  Some are very formal.  All have benches of one type or another.

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The smell of lilacs is one of my very favorites.

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The gardens are in two or often three levels running from the Pavilion house on the lawn.  You can see the top patio of one of the pavilions at the edge of  this photograph of yellow jonquils.


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In a lower garden is this profusion of Native Wild azalea.

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The Pavilions are connected to the lawn rooms running down both sides of the lawn from the Rotunda.  A professor and family live in the Pavilions and students compete to live on the lawn.  All of these buildings were constructed in 1817 and their architect was, of course, Thomas Jefferson.

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The lowest garden of the above pavillion has the Merton Spire. The three-ton sandstone block once adorned the 15th Century Merton College Chapel Tower in Oxford, England and was gifted to UVa in 1927.  It has a ring of wildflower gardens around the outer edge of its path which includes the May Apple seen below which is in bloom.

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These May Apple are usually seen in dense woodlands but obviously like it here.

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The May Apple is interspersed with Virginia Blue Bells.

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The May Apple flower is hard to see as it come out from the central stem under the large leaves.  Hard to photograph too.

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This pictures shows the serpentine walls of the gardens as well as a lane leading up to the lawn for maintenance vehicles, originally horses and wagons.

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I don’t often get to see this Toad Trillium in bloom.  It’s my lucky day.

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Most folks know that I am a Winnie the Pooh fan.  He has traveled with me for the past 10 years and has been part of my life for many years prior.  He’s quite a sage in my opinion.  My friend Pam sent me this and I pass it on to you.  In these uncertain times, I’m trying to keep my chin up like Pooh.


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Next up, the month of May and like everyone else I’m getting pretty seriously tired of Quarantine, even with Pooh’s sage reminders.  Still  I’m lucky enough to have a beautiful secluded place to be.  My next post will feature pictures of it.

18 comments:

  1. Ah the Virginia Blue Bells. We used to enjoy seeing them when we camped at Bull Run Regional Park. Nothing like that here in SC, so I'll live vicariously through your pictures. :c)

    We're pretty tired of the stay in orders, too. Thankfully here in SC things are starting to be allowed to open up, with careful distancing. Hope we're seeing the end so life can get back to normal.

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  2. Great flower pictures! Doesn't the downtown mall look spooky with nobody on it?

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  3. What lovely gardens! Would be nice in these troubling times what with the virus, the riots and looting, Calgon take me away! On a brighter note, our haircut salons (Great Clips for me) open tomorrow! I think I'll give it a week and let the crowds die down :)

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  4. Thanks so much for the wonderful spring flowers...stunning!!! Must say, Spring in Virginia is pretty spectacular. Have to remember that;-)) I do remember May in the Smokies and beautiful wildflowers. You and David taught us so much about the wildflowers!!!

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  5. Sure miss the North East spring. It's always so beautiful. Probably because winter is so bleak making the contrast so spectacular. Here in Texas, while there is a lot of beauty in the spring, the contrast is not so spectacular. Thanks for sharing.

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  6. The flowers are spectacular. Fall is beautiful, but I am so taken with spring bloom and your area of Virginia does it up beautifully. Sherry...explain to me how in the world I missed that you have a home in Charlottesville????? I just thought you two had the farm. That means you have two houses to care for and maintain now? What did I miss somewhere??

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  7. Looks like Spring was beautiful in Charlottesville! We had a beautiful Spring too. Now the roses are in bloom. We have a lovely Yorkshire rose in our garden which scrambles through some honeysuckle and its doing beautifully this year. Its a white rose - a white rose is the symbol of the county of Yorkshire (where my husband came from) and a red rose is the symbol of Lancashire. Henry VII was from the House of Lancaster and he married Elizabeth who was a Yorkist. He created the Tudor rose design to symbolise the joining of the two houses. Here endeth the history lesson!

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  8. Isn't nature wonderful, how does it know to make the beautiful Iris and other flowers?? each to their own. Lilacs are also a fav smell of mine... I have Three large trees in my yard... one reasons i loved this house.

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  9. Beautiful pictures today. You live in such a pretty place.

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  10. Wow, Charlottesville sure is a colorful place in the spring. Oh how I miss the aroma of lilacs and wish for a scratch and sniff screen. I love the wisdom of Pooh.

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  11. Just love all the colorful flowers everywhere in Charlottesville

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  12. Oh so pretty. Nice you have great places to walk and get out of the RV.

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  13. Wow, what a beautiful spring flower show Charlottesville put on for you. Pooh and his friends always give good advice.

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  14. What a gorgeous festival of spring flowers! I want so much to experience spring in Charlottesville one of these days...and even better would be to have you as our guide. I love Pooh's wisdom, and it was just what I needed to be reminded of right now. OX

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  15. Oh, and I meant to say I love your pink dogwood photos...it's one of my favorite spring blooms. But above all, the wild azaleas steal the show for me...the fragrance is intoxicating.

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  16. Sacramento has a lot of colorful blooms in the spring but nothing like the east! I do have oleander, which is gorgeous right now.

    Be careful when things start "opening up" because they might just as quickly go back to "closing down". We aren't going to get a long reprieve with this virus - it's coming back down on us in my opinion. I'm just planning to stay home for the most part and not mingle.

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  17. Stunning flowers in the neighborhoods, and I'm so happy to get to spend more time in the university's gardens. Such a special place and what a blessing for it to have been a wonderful part of your life. April went by fast in hindsight, but it sure seemed to go on forever as each week the shutdown was extended. Now we know it's going to be a much longer stretch before we see any semblance of our past world.

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  18. Beautiful flowers. Reminds me to go to these gardens more.

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