When they crossed the Potomac that humid August morning, its banks were ablaze in yellow and redblossoms, Lady Bird Johnson's lasting floral bequest to the nation before she and her husband had left the capital, disillusioned, with the country mired in an unwinnable war.
On either side of the river, however, running down the valley, there is a narrow strip of wheat fields and poppy fields, and for several weeks in the spring the poppies bloom: lovely, open-petalled white, pink, red, and magenta blossoms, the darker colors indicating the ones with the most opium.