Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Susan Reimer

Garden Variety took the day off Monday to play tourist with Nancy, my best friend since the seventh grade, and her husband, Mark, and daughter, Heather.

Nancy and Mark had driven from Seattle to Baltimore to bring their daughter some furniture and stuff for her new apartment and her new life on the East Coast, and so Heather and I showed them the sights in Baltimore.

(Mothers, it can be said, do so much better when they have mental pictures of their children's lives that they can occasionally "take out" and find comfort in. I call them "visuals.")

Anyway, I wrote on Monday about the trips Nancy and I have taken over the years with Connie, my other best friend since the seventh grade, and a particularly memorable time on Whidbey Island, off the coast of Washington State, and the flowers there.

I vowed that I would find some gardens for Nancy, even if it was November in Baltimore.

Here is some of what we saw on, of course, Federal Hill.

So Heather's new life in Baltimore now has some structure to it, including a new kitchen island. And Nancy and Mark have begun the drive back to Seattle, racing against the oncoming winter weather.

Drive safely, my friends.