First: happy Orthodox Easter. My favorite part of Orthodox Easter is the Easter egg duels. If you’re not familiar with this, go out right now and find an Orthodox family to spend Easter with. They’ll teach you how to duel with eggs. Find an honest family; some competitive types try to gain an advantage by tilting the egg. Come back and report to me how much fun you had.

I have a question: why do Greeks use the Julian calender to celebrate Easter, but revert to the Gregorian calendar for Christmas? Most Orthodox branches stick to the Julian for all holidays. I think it has something to do with moveable feasts but I don’t feel like looking it up. If you know the answer please share.

Second: things are still blooming in Washington DC. About a week after the Yoshino Cherry trees finished blooming, the Kwanzan cherries started. It can only be described as a spectacle. I had to turn the saturation down on my camera because the colors looked too unreal to me. Yes, that’s right: I dialed down reality.

I took these cherry tree photos on the grounds of a church in NW Washington DC. While I was photographing, an elderly man came out of the rectory and said, “The Bishop asks that…XXXXX XXXXX”

I didn’t catch the last part of his sentence so I said, “Hello sir, I’m sorry… would you mind repeating that?”

“The Bishop asks that you not eat the flowers.”

Overall, it was a day of heightened reality.

Admittedly though, that’s the most awesome thing a Bishop has ever asked of me.

Besides the Kwanzan, we have dogwoods in DC — a lovely and delicate four petal flower that seems to float in midair…

Tulips…

Redbuds…

And wisteria, the flower of remembrance. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but that’s how wisteria strikes me.

This is my last flower post for a good long while. Promise…

I love flowers, but I never spend the time needed to edit the photos. I end up posting them straight out of the camera and then I get embarrassed later.

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So here’s the thing with Yoshino cherry blossoms — they’re too ephemeral. Like young love, they’re here and gone so quickly, they only ever really exist as memories or photographs.

Maybe I’m over-thinking the whole blossom thing. This need to possess and hold on to beauty is a kind of character flaw, but can you blame me? For a few weeks out of the year, Washington DC becomes the most enchanted place on earth.

Trying to predict when the magic will happen is rather tricky, though. I took these photographs on 20 March — at the peak of the bloom — by 25 March it was all over.

The tidal basin is swarming with people at this time of year. It’s a virtual assembly line of people posing in front of the most picturesque blossoms they can find. The moment you pick up your camera to take a shot, 20 other people will follow suit. Early morning is a good bet for avoiding the crowds. You could also venture to these areas beyond the basin:

The Kenwood neighborhood in Bethesda, Maryland, just north of DC. An erstwhile secret cherry blossom viewing spot, but someone let the cat out of the bag. Still worth the visit though to see 1,200 trees in bloom.

The National Arboretum. Go here if you’re serious about avoiding crowds. Its vast park-like setting offers over 2,000 cherry trees of 200 different varieties, as well as magnolias and other blossoms. They don’t all bloom at once, like on the tidal basin, but I go here for the quiet and the japanese pagoda.

Upper Georgetown-Glover Park. My stomping grounds, and to me, the most beautiful area of DC. I’ve posted pictures of the giant weeping cherry trees before — truly a sight to behold.

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I was walking down the street, minding my own business, when all the magnolia trees in Washington DC decided to bloom at the exact same time.

It’s like a great magnolia conspiracy. They’re total show-stoppers. You can’t help but stop and marvel, because they’re almost too good to be true. Magnolias not only have beautiful tulip-like petals that carpet the ground when they start to drop, but they also give off a lovely perfume that infuses the entire city.

Beauty alone wasn’t good enough for the over-achieving magnolia.

I’m not going to go crazy posting 100 photos of magnolias like I have in the past. I understand that not everyone shares my obsession. There were some other blossoms too.

If you do share my obsession, magnolia blossoms are at their peek about 7-10 days before the Cherry Blossom Festival. The best places to see magnolias in Washington DC are:

Bryce Park in upper NW DC.

Rawlins Park on 18th and E St.

The Treasury Dept’s front yard.

The Obama family’s back yard.

John F. Kennedy’s burial site at Arlington National Cemetery.

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It was a sunny 82°F/28°C in Washington, DC today. For the past three months, we’ve been waiting for winter to arrive, but winter never made an appearance… which made it difficult to enjoy, sort of like that Becket play, “Waiting for Godot”.

The Cherry Blossom Festival organizers are several different shades of worried, because — as you can see from my photographs — the blossoms are blooming, but the festival doesn’t even start for another week… and it lasts for six weeks… because this is the 100 year anniversary of the festival.

The Japanese ambassador is praying for rain and snow, but as much as I admire crazy optimism, I think it’s time to accept the reality of global warming and early blooming.

Now we can ice skate…

…and stroll around in shorts on the very same day.

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