Dear Friends and Families,

I was on my usual business trip to Lynchburg, in Southern Virginia and had time before my 9pm flight back to Germany, so I took the opportunity to visit Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello. This part of Virginia is littered with old presidents' old homes, but Monticello may be the most popular. I had been avoiding it because of the ever-present crowds but, on this cloudy and gray Spring day, things were relatively peaceful.

There was a one-hour wait for the house tour, but that allowed a casual stroll through the two-hundred-year-old garden and vineyard. The garden was a perfect plat, 1,000 feet (300 meters) long, carved into the side of a hill. The lower side of the plot was supported by a long stone wall, assembled by Mr. Jefferson's slaves. The American president was quite out-spoken against the practice of slavery, but his beloved home would have been impossible without his 100 or so workers. Just below the stone wall was a vineyard and orchard. The old posts and rails of the vineyard planted a seed about gardening back home. We'll see.

The house tour was great, except no photography was allowed in the main house. (See the website for details: http://www.monticello.org/house/roombyroom.html) It's a fascinating story of Jefferson as an "early adopter" of the latest technology, much of it brought back from his tour in Paris as the American ambassador.