90ish days of summer

On Wednesday and Thursday, we explored the flora and fauna that Washington, D.C., has to offer.

Meaning, we visited the National Zoo and the U.S. Botanical Garden.

Jeff’s neighbor Adina joined us in going to the zoo. She mentioned she’d been to two zoos in Israel, which brought up a question I’ve always wondered but never bothered researching: What kind of animals do foreign zoos have?

U.S. zoos feature animals from other countries and continents, so what do other countries’ zoos have from the U.S.? I think it’d be so strange, as an American, to go abroad, visit a zoo and see a common animal like the white-tailed deer.

Anyway. At the National Zoo, we saw pandas.

Tai Shan - the baby panda in the National Zoo - approaches a red ball in his exhibit.

I must admit, I was a panda doubter. Pandas are basically leverage in a very political game between the U.S. and China, and for a while, I scoffed at the big fuss everyone has made over having pandas on this side of the Pacific.

Then I saw the pandas on Wednesday, and my heart melted.

Because, whether you can admit it or not, pandas are freaking adorable.

At the same time, it’s hard not to realize that if pandas weren’t so d’awwwwww cute, they’d probably be extinct by now.

We also saw Happy the Hippo, who is soon leaving the National Zoo because they need the space for more smellephants in the Elephant House.

Jeff has been sending me Washington Post articles about Happy ever since August when the zoo announced he would be leaving (see the link above). For that reason alone, I wanted to see Happy and wish him well.

Happy the Hippo!

I should add now that I forgot to convert all these files from Adobe RGB (1998) to sRGB. The photos’ color looks fine in Safari but terrible in Firefox.

The next day (Thursday), we visited the U.S. Botanical Garden. It’s not nearly as large and landscape-based/wow-factor-based as the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, but I was surprised to see the variety that was there.

I brought my strobe with me, and decided to make photography there into a challenge: Use single-flash for every single frame. Here are two that I kinda like:

I have no idea what kind of plant this is, but it definitely took me a lot of time and more than a few frames to expose correctly using the flash.

Also not sure what kind of plant this is. But hurrah for fill-flash?

Again — if these photos’ colors seem muted, I encourage you to view them in Safari. On that note, I’m not sure how they look in Internet Explorer or other browsers.

As always, more photos can be viewed HERE.

You can easily expect more posts in the coming days, with more photos from the Capitol Building, Library of Congress and the National Mall.