Hyacinth

“If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft…and alone two loaves are left. Sell one and buy hyacinths to feed thy soul”

~Sheikh Muslch uddin Suzdi Shinazi, Persian poet, 13th century

Tree on the ridge...after the storm

2 x 6

From SMITH: readers were asked to come up with their life story in six words:

Ex-wife and contractor now have house - Drew Peck

Found True Love, Married Someone Else - Bjorn Stromberg

Little Bit Lucy, Tempered by Ethel - Tami Maus

Took Scenic Route, Got in Late - Will Blythe


From Freakonomics: readers were asked to supply a six word motto for the United States

Caution! Experiment in Progress Since 1776

Just Like Canada, With Better Bacon

Our Worst Critics Prefer to Stay

Butterfly

At the new butterfly exhibit at the Museum of Natural History

Orchids

On display at the Botanical

Gardens on the National Mall

Presidents

“I may be President of the United States, but my private life is nobody’s damned business.”
~ Chester Arthur

“A good leader can’t get too far ahead of his followers.”
~ FDR

“I never given them hell; I just tell them the truth and they think it is hell.”
~ Harry Truman

“If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: “President can’t swim.”
~ Lyndon Johnson

“What I’d really like to do is go down in history as the President who made Americans believe in themselves again.”
~Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan said:

"I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress."

"It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first."

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."

"No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women."

Brown-eyed Handsome Dog

Sky

More from Hunter S. Thompson

"Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish—a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow—to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested . . . Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll."

~Hunter S. Thompson

Lincoln Memorial

In 1917, just after construction, alone in a swamp

and today