How to Celebrate George Washington's Birthday

There's nothing wrong with one President's Day holiday in February, but our first President was born on February 22 and he deserves a day of his own - and you deserve another cause for a celebrating during the grayest month of the year.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Famous & Historic Trees Catalogs
• Revolutionary War-era Recipes
• Washington Biographies
• Period-garden Books
• Flower Seeds
• Party Drinks
• Party Food

1. Curl up in a cozy chair by the fire and read a recent biography of George Washington. If your overriding image of him is that of a grim-faced man standing up in a rowboat, prepare to be surprised - and inspired.

2. Visit some of the places associated with Washington. If you live anywhere in the Northeast, you're close to his beloved Mount Vernon, to battlefields of the French and Indian War and the American Revolution, to churches, taverns, forts, farms and houses.

3. Sign up to work on an archaeological dig at Mount Vernon. Since 1987 archaeologists have been exploring the site and they welcome volunteers throughout the year.

4. Plant a living connection to George Washington: a descendant of a tree that grew at Mount Vernon. You have your choice of several trees - including a tulip poplar Washington planted in 1785 - propagated from cuttings by Famous & Historic Trees.

5. Throw a party and serve food and drink popular in Washington's time. You'll find ideas and recipes in colonial and early American cookbooks.

Tips & Warnings

• Sites associated with George Washington are situated from Boston to the East Coast, as far west as Pittsburgh, and from Virginia north to the Canadian border.
• Like his fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson, George Washington was a passionate gardener and a great tinkerer with plants of all kinds. If you're really inspired, you could plant a whole garden filled with the shrubs, flowers, fruits and vegetables he grew at Mount Vernon. You can order seeds for many of them from the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants in Charlottesville, Virginia (call 804/984-9816).
• To find out more about places where Washington fought, worked, spoke, worshipped, ate, drank - or simply slept - contact tourism offices, particularly those in Virginia, West Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

on 3/20/2006 The only tip our family has is to read George Washington by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire. The D'Aulaire book is printed with lithographs and absolutely beautiful, and must have for every child or art sensitive adult! Search for it, seek it out, it is so worth the work to find.

on 11/22/2005 I am surprised to see that cherry pie is not on the list of ways to celebrate George Washington's birthday. I have been baking a cherry pie on his birthday every year for decades. I think it is a poetic way to celebrate Washington's birthday.