Invasive Japanese honeysuckle is an old problem—it is "well established in many remote places" in Lester Ward's 1881 Guide to the Flora of Washington, DC.

Invasive Japanese honeysuckle is an old problem—it appears in Lester Ward's 1881 Guide to the Flora of Washington, DC., "Well established in many remote places."

The Purple Patch streatery, the last one remaining on Mount Pleasant Street, is coming down. The new DC rules and fees have just about wiped out expanded outdoor dining across Ward 1. www.popville.com/2026/07/purp...

"Old Bay Omelette, Crab, Chilli, Ginger, Seaweed Butter Sauce £25.0" is worse than the Escoffier–English interpretations of "Maryland fried chicken."

Scallop trawler, beached next to a marine railway in Digby, Nova Scotia.

I keep hearing about "faculty lounges," but American dismantled its faculty lounge (it was just a room in the MGC anyway, though with a nice ~$14 buffet), and the Corcoran's Burleith campus maybe had a microwave in a basement.

There is an effort underway to remove references to outdated filing and notification methods in New York State law. (like requirements to use telephone, telegraph, mail, or fax) www.nytimes.com/2026/07/08/n...

I do like a deeply indented coastline. This is Academy Pond in Wickford, Rhode Island, an arm of the town's harbor. The building out on stilts is the Kayak Centre.

Someone really has it out for side-gable Craftsman bungalows.

Rain and the world’s worst visitors are trying to find shelter in DC; the skies have cleared in NYC and a celebration goes on.

Holding a lavalier mic in your hand --> instant block.

A handsome patch of wild bergamont (Monarda fistulosa) along Rock Creek in the National Zoo. The willow may have been planted for bank stabilization — this area was eroding badly a few years ago.

In Baltimore, an Italian American organization plans to replace a Christopher Columbus statue that protesters destroyed in 2020—but with a new statue of an Italian immigrant family. baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/ital...

Putting the…stalls?…at Pisspot Poundbury on the gravel walks was one of many strange choices.

1/2 Former Home Building Association Company bank Architect: Louis Sullivan, 1914 Newark, Ohio

FreeDC put together a guide to the shoulder sleeve insignia worn by National Guard troops in DC, and they want you to email in any sightings of Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, or Maryland personnel away from the Mall.

An eye for fine grading — Shaun Hancox began his career moving earth for golf courses and landfills but has parlayed his skill into a practice of building ponds for habitat and rewilding projects. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A very nice cloud. Assateague National Seashore, mid June.

A UH-1 from the USAF 1st Helicopter Sqn has set down in a wheatfield near Union Bridge, Md., an apparent emergency landing. Photos over on Reddit. www.reddit.com/r/maryland/c...

The NYT heat tracker lets readers switch between Fahrenheit and Celsius. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

There are a lot of out of state cars in Adams Morgan, far more than I’d expect after the zoo closes. I counted eight plates from outside DC/MD/VA, parked in four quiet residential blocks. Typical is none.

Pieces of long-lost Louis Sullivan building revealed on Chicago’s south lakefront (gift link)

Wooden geological models. Striking that Sopwith kept the wood’s color and grain.

It's rare that I've been concerned for a Washingtonian writer's safety while they were reporting a story, but there's a part in this piece where a food truck operator recounts being stabbed in the face w. a screwdriver, and DC inspectors worry about illegal operators armed with. guns and machetes.

NPS has little expertise in running urban parks, which staff and leadership see as incongruent w. the agency's mission. Compare Ottawa, where the National Capital Commission runs public sites; that org has its problems, but at least it's focused on the particular requirements of a capital city.

Inner Harbor at Baltimore, with INS Sudarshini at right and BAE Guayas in the left background, sail training ships from India and Ecuador. Sail 250, with its international bent, seems like a much better way to mark the US anniversary than the mess back in DC.

Port anchor of HMCS William Hall, a Canadian offshore patrol ship visiting Baltimore for Sail 250. She's a bigger ship than her type would suggest, at 6,600 tonnes displacement. I do quite like the RCN's slightly greenish gray hull paint.

A crackling interview in a really extraordinary pattern room.

Following a Toronto stream. (Toronto has a complex hydrographic past, well honored with walks, permanent trails along former streams, and world-leading daylighting and restoration projects.)

In design classes, there’s occasionally that one C- student who does most of the work but gets ahold of a terrible idea and cannot be dissuaded from it and also somehow gets lost while making the final version. Well, here they are, on a national stage, failing upward.

Around 2010, there was a conceptual architectural competition for what new monuments might look like. One of the winning entries reimagined Hains Point as a monument to climate change, planting rows of new cherry trees in a way that would see their ranks steadily drowned by rising waters.

QT b/c I can't reply—the idea is delightful but the pipes across most of the Tiber Creek watershed now drain to the Anacostia, and I suspect flows are usually low. A fringe of wetlands, on a gradient between the Tidal Basin and the pool's edges, would be fabulous though.

The Sitka deer at Assateague are not easily diverted from their grazing.

Train arrival signs are live at the Silver Spring Library Station, but the headways are terrible.

Looks like a flight of B–52s, apparently out of Barksdale, now approaching DC from the south.

The National Geographic museum is open again, and it features an exhibit of the organization's most significant photos. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/25/a...

Did I just see a fuckin' B–2 go up 16th Street? We're doing random Wednesday evening flyovers now? Is the aircraft going to turn around and come back so that it feels like the USAF has more of them?

On every Reflecting Pool story they publish, the Guardian is adding a day-by-day visualization of the water's color. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Kite aerial photography at Assateague National Seashore. (Images are dutched b/c I couldn't find my good picavet rig and had to build an expedient stabilizer using a yogurt container.)

I'm enjoying Blake Smith's construction videos. This is one of the best, concise explanations of balloon framing and its fire risks that I've ever seen. A fine piece of information design. (And we get fire! What more do you need?) www.instagram.com/p/DYA4VqXvgNx/

A re-grading of the 800 block of E St., NE left this house perched on a new hillside, a good 25 feet proud of the new street level. I'm always struck by how much earthmoving we've had here in DC. (Via Library of Congress.)

Time is a flat circle.

The National Guard presence in DC is dangerous and illegal, but aside from that, it looks like there is no one in charge. We've just got individual guardsmen running around an open field like they're playing capture-the-flag, except these soldiers are carrying sidearms.

Oddly, I'm delighted, not bothered, by the brighter-than-real-life displays of plastic sushi and plastic food that were once so common in Japanese restaurant windows. Maybe that's because of the evident skill required and because the replica food isn't trying to be more than plastic?

What bothers me is the lack of care—you didn't need to hire an illustrator, you could just have taken a bagel out of a rack, set it on a plate, and taken a photo, and that would have been more genuine. Instead we get Twisty McMangledarm and his overflowing bag of deformed bagels.

From a DC bagel shop, this horror show of an AI-generated flyer. This isn't new in design—it's on a continuum w. $5 stock photos, a way of working that devalues skill but also has no soul. Go out front, stand in the shade, put a bagel on a plate and take a cellphone photo. That would be better.

The Patrouille de France, the French air force display team, does a flyover across DC on Monday around 10:20 am, from Mt. Vernon to Arlington National Cemetery to the Mall. (A departure from the recent bombast!) www.facebook.com/franceintheu...

A delightful gallery of sands. (I am 90% sure these are all at the same scale, which is key.)

The directory on the Canadian Border Services Agency website uses an azimuthal projection rather than Web Mercator, which makes a lot of sense for Canada's northern areas.