A little more than a week ago, I took a short vacation in Washington, D.C., on what turned out to be sort of a busman’s holiday. First, since I’m a journalist of sorts, I went to the Newseum, the new museum about journalist and the news (including the “funny papers,” as my parents called them). It’s an amazing place, very state of the art with a decent café (food by Wolfgang Puck).
The second part of my busman’s holiday was pure serendipity. We were walking near the White House when a park ranger urged us to get our free tickets for a tour of the White House gardens. I had no idea there was such a thing, but the gardens are open to the public for spring and fall tours, and we just happened to be in the right place at the right time. 
(If you want to go on a garden tour, keep in mind that there are no tours of the White House itself when the gardens are open to the public.)
Washington, D.C., has endured a rather cool spring, so most of the flowers were the tulips that were so abundant during this year’s Easter egg roll. I have to confess that I admired the Rose Garden without seeing any roses.
The trees were the big stars this year, with many of them coming into bloom. John Adams was the first president to start a garden and Thomas Jefferson drew up elaborate plans, but John Quincy Adams was the first to establish a program for landscaping at the White House. An American elm planted by John Q. Adams in 1826 survived until 1991, when Barbara Bush replaced it with another American elm. However, a Southern magnolia planted by Andrew Jackson in 1835 still thrives on the White House grounds.
An old custom – the official tour brochure doesn’t say how old – is the planting of at least one tree to commemorate each president’s term in office. Presidents are not limited to just one tree, and even one-term presidents have planted several trees at the White House.
As I said earlier, this was a busman’s holiday, so I took some pictures of the grass on the South Lawn. Some areas of the lawn have plenty of clover and dandelions, and the rest of it doesn’t look so great either. Even my lawn looks better, although my lawn is admittedly much smaller. Of course, the White House had also recently hosted an Easter egg roll with a few hundred kids and their families. And it’s a lawn, not a golf course – except for the putting green. I can only assume that the White House is setting an example for the rest of us and has a pesticide-free lawn.
Other points of interest on the tour have been in the news lately—the Obama girls’ swing set (guarded 
a by a suitably bored-looking Secret Service agent), the new garden for the White House kitchen, and the President Obama’s very small basketball court.
Visiting Washington, D.C., is always an inspiring experience for me. No matter how many times I go there, I come away impressed with the monuments and the museums – nearly all of them open to the public at no charge. I feel like the Ukrainian comedian Yakov Smirnoff: “What a country!” I wish that every school-age child in the U.S. could visit our nation’s capital so they could take with them the same sense of pride, wonderment and appreciation.
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