Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was perhaps the preeminent American poet of the 19th century, specializing in lyrical epic poetry. He is best remembered for writing “The Song of Hiawatha,” “Paul Revere’s Ride“, “Christmas Bells” (from which came the lyrics for the carol “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”), and a nursery rhyme:

There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.

Perhaps most interesting to modern scholars is “Evangeline”, one of the few English-language poems to have been written in heroic hexameter, (six groupings or “feet” of three syllables each, the first of which is accented and the other two are not).

This statuary homage to the poet who wrote, “Art is long, and Time is fleeting,” stands in a pocket park at the intersection of Connecticut Avenue and M Street N.W. Erected in 1909, it was sculpted by Thomas Ball and his son-in-law William Couper. Ball was a well-known sculptor who also created such works as “The Emancipation Memorial” in Lincoln Park and the statues of Daniel Webster in Central Park and those of Charles Sumner and George Washington in the Boston Public Garden.

From “A Psalm of Life”:

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Please stop by Rudi‘s, Sarah‘s, MsP‘s, and Hillary‘s blogs to see what they’ve got to show from My D.C. today. Mia, who normally blogs about My Frederick on Fridays, is on hiatus following the death of her mom earlier this week. Those of us in blogland send her and her family our deepest condolences.

Twenty-eight hours after last night’s overindulgence at a chocolate-themed restaurant and I’m still full. So this is what people mean when they say they feel like they’ll never want to eat again…

In the meantime, I offer you three other beautiful things from this past week. (The chocolate clearly needs to stand on its own in a post over the weekend…)

1. On my way into the Metro this morning, I see a man who reminds me of the head of math department when I was in high school. Mr. Munley was the stereotypical nerd: big glasses, short-sleeve dress shirts, bad comb-over, awful jokes. But he also had a big heart and was kind. He died while I was in college, so the sight of this unknown man (wearing a large hat and backpack and clutching a shepherd-like walking crook as I could totally imagine Mr. Munley doing while travelling) feels bittersweet.

2. Knitting typos make me giggle and I’ve seen several in the last week. I wonder if self-stripping sock yarn has tassles. And uprooting a ewe from an overly shady garden sounds traumatizing for everyone involved. Not only am I a geek and a knitter, but I’m a geeky knitter.

3. Because Rudi rides his bike downtown for the Friday jazz concerts, he, John, and I walk home together afterwards instead of taking the quicker Metro option. The three of us manage to make the four miles or so take about 45 minutes, so there’s plenty of time to chat. Sometimes our conversations revolve around our everyday lives or music or politics. But other times, the talk strays toward those late-night dorm conversations where you try to hammer out the BIG IDEA topics. John tends to take the more middle ground stances — very sensible ideas demonstrating a great deal of pragmatism. I, on the other hand, tend to make the impassioned arguments about how life *ought* to be irrespective of how it actually *is*. And Rudi falls somewhere in between. In the end, though, I’m always left thinking — sometimes for days — about issues that matter, which has to be a good thing.

From Powell’s guest blogger of the week, Stephanie Klein, author of Moose:

Life Isn’t Always Lived In the Details: Long Distance Friendship

Exactly. And it totally sucks.

The last panel makes it so, so D.C.

The garden is a work-in-progress and it’s been about a month since I started planted things. The beans and peas are climbing the tee-pee.

The broccoli is getting bigger.

The tomato plant has blossoms.

The squash (green and yellow) has sprouted and looks to be flourishing.

We also have peppers, cucumbers, bush beans, and strawberry greens growing in the garden. I planted cherry tomato and marigold seeds today. Later this week, I have four cherry tomatoes (complete with baby tomatoes already on their spindly stalks) and pumpkin seeds to put in the ground.

Because this May has been the wettest on record, I’ve had to do very little watering, which makes me happy. Gardening is much less fun when, as we had to do last year, you have to lug water half a mile from home…

In conclusion, I’m going to leave you with these shots I took of a vine that’s growing up the fence further up the community garden. I don’t know what it is, but its flowers are stunning.
[ETA: I love having smart friends. Julie has identified the mystery bloom as the Blue Passion Flower.]