I don’t have a reason to visit College Park, Maryland all that often, even though it’s only a handful of miles away from my current home and hosts a major academic institution. But when I do visit, the small city reminds me what an outlier it is: a freestanding municipality encompassing a major flagship university,
Biking along the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) in the final days of summer yielded some unexpected opportunities for leaf-peeping. The GAP, a massive rail-trail conversion linking downtown Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, allows uninterrupted bike/pedestrian access from the Steel City to Washington DC, by means of a transfer onto the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal Towpath
I’m not an entomologist—not even of the armchair variety. Nor am I a conservationist, or a meteorologist. My schooling in ecology does not extend beyond a single graduate-level course that dealt with how urban development disrupts various animals’ habitat and migration patterns. And it is that course content that I can apply against a backdrop
A new day, another update from a very, very recent post. I don’t normally do this, but it’s been a very busy month, so it’s tougher for me to devote the time to five entirely new topics. Barely a week has passed since I covered the travails of old Stumpy, the Yoshino cherry tree at
As spring begins, I’m going to use the changing seasons to pivot toward a recurring theme in my articles: scraggly trees in Washington DC. The first article—which went to print right before the official start of winter 2023—focused on a white mulberry tree (or two) near Washington Monument that depended on braces and scaffolding to
The two gnarly white mulberry trees (Morus alba) in the photos below don’t look like much, and they certainly aren’t much aesthetically—at least if one’s aesthetic standard for a tree is something tall and strong and sturdy and proud. Not these guys. The tree in the foreground is a wee bit tilted; it needs a
It’s a busy time of year and I need to meet my monthly blogging goals, so I’m going to cheat a little bit and piggyback on my previous article. To be frank, it’s a double-cheat, since I usually try to avoid featuring the same state for two blog articles in a row. But here I
The eastern seaboard—and certainly the Mid-Atlantic—has dodged most of the winter bullets that hit the Midwest, the Great Plains, and even California (!) these past few months. Washington DC did not receive any snowfall that lingered more than a few hours. I espied the first blossoming trees on February 19, and though the blossoms at
With another year coming to a close, and ushering in what will be the start of my fifteenth year at this blogging venture, I decided to attempt something that is mostly good for a laugh: a ranking list. A listicle, if you will. Since this is a blog whose most loyal followers are relatively few
Take a look at the eyesore there in the center-left of the photo, there with the “FOR LEASE” sign draped across the third floor. Such a humble, ugly little building…and what a contrast to everything else around it! I first explored this derelict structure over five years ago, in the terminally transitional Columbia Heights neighborhood
I don’t have a reason to visit College Park, Maryland all that often, even though it’s only a handful of miles away from my current home and hosts a major academic institution. But
Biking along the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) in the final days of summer yielded some unexpected opportunities for leaf-peeping. The GAP, a massive rail-trail conversion linking downtown Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, allows uninterrupted
I’m not an entomologist—not even of the armchair variety. Nor am I a conservationist, or a meteorologist. My schooling in ecology does not extend beyond a single graduate-level course that dealt with how
A new day, another update from a very, very recent post. I don’t normally do this, but it’s been a very busy month, so it’s tougher for me to devote the time to
As spring begins, I’m going to use the changing seasons to pivot toward a recurring theme in my articles: scraggly trees in Washington DC. The first article—which went to print right before the
The two gnarly white mulberry trees (Morus alba) in the photos below don’t look like much, and they certainly aren’t much aesthetically—at least if one’s aesthetic standard for a tree is something tall
It’s a busy time of year and I need to meet my monthly blogging goals, so I’m going to cheat a little bit and piggyback on my previous article. To be frank, it’s
The eastern seaboard—and certainly the Mid-Atlantic—has dodged most of the winter bullets that hit the Midwest, the Great Plains, and even California (!) these past few months. Washington DC did not receive any
With another year coming to a close, and ushering in what will be the start of my fifteenth year at this blogging venture, I decided to attempt something that is mostly good for
Take a look at the eyesore there in the center-left of the photo, there with the “FOR LEASE” sign draped across the third floor. Such a humble, ugly little building…and what a contrast