Molnticello and Charlottesville.

5-3-19 WASHINGTON, VIRGINIA: Last night we had dinner in Flint Hill at the Blue Door Kitchen. We ate outside on the deck. The hip waiter picked right up on the fava bean reference and said he had an excellent Chianti to go with them. The meal was fine and less intimidating than the previous night’s marathon meal.

This morning we had another great breakfast at the Inn—yogurt, fresh fruit, granola, croissants, juice and coffee. We were on the road by midmorning headed for Charlottesville and Monticello, about an hour away. Traffic was light and we rolled through rural, pastoral Virginia, passing pastures bordering forested land, lots of cattle, mostly black angus, horse farms, small villages and four-rail fences paralleling the road and marching up and down over the hills and valleys. The countryside has gentle hills with streams between the rises and the Blue Ridge Mountains to the west.

As we neared Charlottesville, it became more suburban. Monticello, Jefferson’s plantation, is just outside the city on top of a mountain. We had tours of the gardens before our house tour. It was all very interesting. Jefferson was brilliant and innovative, but was a man of his times. He wrote of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ in the Declaration of Independence, but owned slaves and fathered the children of slave Sally Hemings, his diseased wife’s half-sister. His life has much to admire and much to condemn.

He was quoted as saying, late in life, that he was an old man, but still a young gardener. I assume he meant that he had yet much to learn about gardening. I empathize.

After Monticello we went to visit the U of VA. The campus by the Rotunda, which looks like Monticello, is green and brick and swarming with white columns.

Back in Washington, VA we ate at Tula’s a block away from the Inn. There was a T-storm while we ate. The food was great. Back to NJ tomorrow.


An Eastern Bluebird visited Monticello while we were getting a lecture on the gardens.

The front of the house seen throiugh the trees.

The back of the house overlooking the big back yard encircled by a winding garden path. The tulips are mostly done and the tulip bulbs are being dug up and annuals are being planted. They give away the tulip bulbs after they are pulled.

A huge linden tree near the entrance to the house. There are many huge trees surrounding the garden path, some native and some exotic.

The back of the house opens onto the garden path.

Veggie gardens have a southern exposure.

The U VA rotunda. Does it have a familiar look?

U VA green is surrounded by many, many columns.