Not Oakey-fenokee

Dumbarton Oaks, just beautiful enough in memory to register every spring, just far enough out of the way that it had been over five years since I last visited. The beginning of warm means tulips, the advent of hot means roses. A friend and I visited last weekend, the yellow budded forsythia are out, the cherry blossoms were bursting forth, there was a romantic field of ground-close violet flowers, and the hope of azaleas to come. An added bonus is the pre-Colombian artifact exhibition in a series of glass cylindrical galleries so positioned that from the air would look like a perfect crystal daisy set in the garden's green hills. From the galleries, one is cleverly seeing the art within, the garden without, and being seen as if through a terrarium glass.