Celebration: Being Friends With Someone Appreciative

Out of all the regular, free museum-like locations in Washington, DC, the one I have probably been to the most is the United States Botanic Garden. (Or maybe the Natural History Museum, but let's just say it's the Botanic Garden for the sake of this story.) This weekend I had to go back to the gardens to do some research on Brazilian plants for a story I am writing and my friend Emily (see here and here) went with me.

 These topiary bears always remind me of the book The Children of Green Knowe

There is something about going to the Botanic Garden in the winter that borders on magical. You walk in from the cold and are nearly overwhelmed with warmth and the smell of thriving plant life and COLORS. This weekend they were doing a show on orchids so the entirety of the main corridor was brimming with them. It was like scented happiness.

And the Chinese dragon added some color too

The Botanic Garden is the sort of place that can reveal who your real friends are (okay, okay, that's a big exaggeration/made up story). So far I've managed to always go there with people who like it as much as I do. This is key because otherwise they wouldn't understand why I would get so excited about the fact that the garden sports a real live mandarin orange tree:

Or that they have trees that look like hippy hair:

(Only, it's really lusciously beautiful hippy hair.)

Or plants as adorable as this:

(Don't you want to take it home and keep it for your very own?)

   

Emily and I had a lot of fun. At least I did and I'm guessing that Emily did because who wouldn't, am I right? I'm glad that she appreciates the same sorts of things that I appreciate. Being so far away from most of my family, it's nice to have good friends. 

Celebrate - Newish Friends. And also Cupcakes.

Recently I reconnected with Emily, the friend of an old friend.  On Halloween Emily dropped off these very attractive cupcakes. Now Emily and I are friends.

The moral of the story is, you do have to give presents to make friends.

(Confession: I wanted to be her friend before the cupcakes arrived.)