Mother's Day Weekend - at home in DC

I spent yesterday with my mother since it is Mother's Day weekend, I am her only child and she is my only mother :). We started off the day with brunch at Lillies Restaurant and Bar, a wonderful little European-style Italian cafe literally 1 meter from my apartment building. I get a nice discount and they have a large and varied menu, so we returned to Lillies in the evening for dinner with my father after he came to pick up my mom.

While on the topic of food, I will say a few words about frappuccinos. I managed to go through the first part of my life without drinking any form of coffee, for the reason that I was quite sure I would become addicted to it. But then once when living in Zurich, Switzerland a drag queen came out of a Starbucks offering samples of banana-flavored frappuccinos. I just couldn't say no to that and ever since I have ordered coffee frappuccinos (since sadly the banana flavor was available only in Zurich) whenever I have the chance. I once even figured out how to make my own frappuccino in a small freezer powered by car batteries used to hold wild orangutan urine samples out of coffee grinds and powdered milk. My mother also loves coffee frappuccinos, so of course we had to order them on our day together.

They didn't quite get either of our names (Carroll and Meredith) right:

My mom in the early 90s & now. Hard to believe she is 72 years old!

After brunch at Lillies and before our frappuccino break, we walked up to the National Cathedral, a few blocks west of my apartment up a big hill. My mother is a member of the National Cathedral Association so we got in for free. Since we have both visited so often over the years (my mother heard Martin Luther King give one of his last sermons at the Cathedral and I have a small obsession with gothic architecture and gargoyles, of which the Cathedral has 112), we went inside only briefly to visit one of the gift shops and use the restroom.

I bought another small gargoyle (the snow globe) to add to my growing collection:

I also bought this little garden gnome. There was exactly one for sale in the gift shop. I once found one of these guys in a free pile when I was living in PA but at the time found gnomes to be a little creepy and gave it away. Then at the Cathedral it was like the gnome called out to me, so I just had to take him home:

…and then somehow as seems to happen with gnomes, a few more moved in…a second, larger German gnome:

…followed by a Swedish gnome from a wonderful English Etsy shop called "HomeOfGnomes":

We then visited my favorite spot in the Cathedral's Bishop's Garden:

I also like this little gazebo (Shadow House) and view of the Cathedral from inside:

I then showed my mom Olmstead Woods, a 5-acre old growth forest, recently restored and maintained by the All Hallows Guild volunteer organization. I have quite a fondness for Frederick Law Olmstead, a landscape architect who was responsible for most of my favorite buildings of the campuses of Bryn Mawr College (my undergrad alma mater) and Duke University (my grad school alma mater), as well as the site of the Smithsonian National Zoo's Rock Creek Park campus, where I currently work. Only recently did I learn that Olmstead also envisioned the Pilgrim Path through the Olmstead Woods, leading up to the Bishop's Garden, which he planned together with Florence Brown Bratenahl, wife of the second Dean of Washington National Cathedral.

We found this beautiful giant old tree fall in the middle of the Olmstead Woods:

After returning from the Cathedral we did some geocaching in the Woodley Park and Cleveland Park neighborhoods (follow the link): First Caches of 2015

It's so nice to have a mother who enjoys being in the forest as much as I do!