A treasure hidden in the bushes near the Dumbarton Oaks garden. Glad to have had an actual camera on me, for once.

Seen this morning on a walk down Rock Creek and the Potomac. DC is closer to nature than most people imagine.

I see these “Sysco” trucks all around DC, blocking driveways, hanging out in the middle lanes, making commutes and school dropoffs misreable. Lo and behold, their driving style matches their corporate mission. As if I needed another reason not to eat out.

We have recently bought a book full of photo prints of 19th century Washington DC. The city was founded in 1800 and was a bit of a backwater all the way until the Civil War and massive expansion of the federal government. “There was a time”, notes the introduction, “when cows grazed within sight of the Capitol.”

The farmers are out, but the city is still closer to its rural origins than a visitor — particularly someone from the thoroughly deforested and dewilded Western Europe — could imagine. Theodore Roosevelt Island is about a mile from the White House as the crow flies, and even closer to some other well-known monuments. ⊕ [Note: The island is the memorial to Teddy Roosevelt in the same vein as the more well known ones — Lincoln, Jefferson — or less directly the Kennedy Center for JFK or what the Epstein File Memorial Archive will be for DJT. But no one goes there to see the somewhat uncanny and Bioshock Infinity-like statue of Teddy; you go there for the nature. So, I would call it a success! ] We went there yesterday for an easy hike and some birdwatching.

That white building barely visible from behind the rich leafy branches across the open sewage canal sometimes called the Potomac river is the Donald J. Trump & John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, but could just as easily have passed as a photo from a post-apocalyptic capital city. I took the photo yesterday, and the 3-year-old iPhone camera doesn’t do justice to those greens which brought to mind Annie Dillard’s book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and the chapter on nature’s fecundity.

No cows on our visit, but one piece of wild fauna did quite literally cross our path.

Never mind the jab against my fellow Europeans up top, even Americans don’t know just how wild their cities can be. On our visit to Smith Island the otherwise wonderful boat tour guide thought we’d look in awe at a blue heron, which is in fact a year-round resident of downtown(ish) DC. You can see red-tailed hawks on top of traffic lights munching on rats, peregrine falcons circling playgrounds, deer walking down the street around Rock Creek Park and, further uptown, a whole bunch of bunny rabbits instead of the daytime/nighttime procession of squirrels and rats as downtown rodent representatives.

Best of all, with temperatures below 18°C — that’s 65°F for Americans — all week long, a magnificent thing happened. There. Were. No. Mosquitos. In the middle of the Potomac marshland. Truly incredible.

Spring 2026 in Washington DC: so far so good.

As seen in the restroom of our favorite non-seafood restaurant in all of Eastern Shore, The Irish Penny Pub and Grill in Salisbury, MD. It’s the perfect pit stop on the way to the beach, but really I’d drive 2.5 hours from DC just for their boxty.

А whole flock of cedar waxwings decided to perch on the courtyard redbud tree right outside our window. It’s times like this that make me chuck the phone and get back to my ancient Nikon DSLR.

Happy Easter! Христос васкрсе!

Early spring is the best time to be at the Tregaron Conservancy: all of the foliage without any of the mosquitos. Yes it was the NIMBY mindset that protected this piece of land from developers, but it wouldn’t be the first time crying out NIMBY was the right thing to do.

Spring has so arrived even the metro trains are in bloom.

Browsing the 2025 National Portrait Gallery Honorees I was saddened but not surprised to see this laudatory description of one Jamie Dimon

Jamie Dimon has long been a leader in the financial services industry, where his skill in assessing and managing risk has proven to be a defining feature of his career. As chairman of the board and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Dimon has employed a “fortress balance sheet” strategy in which financial strength and resilience are achieved through high liquidity, deep capital reserves, and low debt. The stability gained from this approach enabled Dimon’s firm to successfully weather the 2008 global financial crisis.

Whether JPMorgan Chase’s success in 2008 was due to Dimon’s “fortress balance sheet” strategy or a $25 billion bailout is for someone with more financial sophistication to say.

Look, I don’t mind that Dimon is there. There is also a bust of John D. Rockefeller a floor above and by all accounts he was an infinitely more sinister character. Not to mention the parade of narcissists — honorable exceptions like 1 and 16 notwithstanding — at the American Presidents exhibit. But note the brazenness of portraying a champion of financialization in a positive light in the context of the 2008 financial crisis. Is it a they-know-that-we-know-that-they-know situation or are people writing the text truly that clueless?

Which now makes me doubt every each and every one of those captions. Next thing you know they’ll commission Steven Spielberg’s wife Kate Capshaw to do his NPG portrait without mentioning in the text that they have been married for 30-plus years!

Felt a tap on my shoulder while sitting on a Mall bench and it was this fellow (gal?), hustling for nuts. Did not mind getting up close.