Mad Dabblings in a City Garden

In the part of Capitol Hill where I live, parking is rarely much of an issue. Maybe after a late night out we might have to wriggle into a space around the corner; hardly a hardship as we're still spry enough to hobble 50 feet or so.

It's a pretty street, lined with some of the oldest, largest elms in Washington, with neighbors well-trained by tickets to park far enough from intersections to avoid another. Actually, most of these tickets were routinely dismissed, since it seemed the neighbors were better able to calculate the proper distance than were the traffic gendarmes.

So perhaps it was this that compelled our fair city to create another make-work program for our, apparently, overstaffed Department of Public Works and stab in plug-ugly parking/no parking signs at each street corner and alley entry. For some of us -- at any rate, me -- destroying a perfectly lovely porch view of our elm canopy.

And so I was sent into a near swoon -- which was hard to do considering that I was jigging along to Anjulie's "Boom" on the ipod--when I noticed that someone on a near-by block, in a brilliantly passive-aggressive, lemonade move, had planted a twining totem of morning glories to smother the blight.

Swords into plowshares! Take back the streets!

Ah, YES. Next year... with moonflowers mixed in to cover the late shift.