how now brownpau
Saturday’s hike through Rock Creek Park started from the Melvin Hazen Trail near Cleveland Park, down Rock Creek itself, past the zoo, below Woodley, and up through Montrose Park to end in Georgetown, where we ate fish for lunch. It turned out to be too early in the Spring for much of the foliage or canopy to have bloomed, but we did happen upon a few flowers and the dried-up remnants of mushrooms from last year’s hike. As usual, more photos in the Flickr photoset.
The Tidal Basin is the focal point for DC cherry blossom activity, but cherry trees are planted all around DC, with an especially lovely grove right near the Washington Monument — where you can relax without the pressure of the crowds all flocking to the Tidal Basin at peak bloom. As with most panoramic shots, this one from the grove is best enjoyed at full size:
I’m especially proud of this shot of the Washington Monument, caught last Sunday just as the sun shone through a break in the retreating storm clouds, to light just a tip of the obelisk:
We went to see the Cherry Blossoms last Sunday, just in time to catch an afternoon of decent weather as a storm system left: patchy cumulus clouds with sunny breaks and bouts of strong, refreshing wind. The blossoms around the Tidal Basin were still a few days shy of peak bloom, but certainly more than nice enough to be picturesque. Tourist volume was heavy, as usual, but not as bad as in previous years, and we had no trouble navigating the crowd to nice photographic vantage points.
Highlights of the day: man in kimono with bunny-eared dog, equestrian park ranger talking to landscape painter at easel, and of course, the cherry blossoms themselves. Full photoset here.
Tourists at the DC Cherry Blossom Festival, taken at 2 second intervals from various locations around the Tidal Basin and Jefferson Memorial:
Update, April 2: Okay, those of you who hate stupid April Fools Day web pranks can come out now; the Skittles Twitter Search plus MormonJesusRoll gimmick is over. I’ll do an actual redesign sometime soon; CSS Naked Day 2009 is right around the corner, after all.
You may have noticed that How Now Brownpau has been languishing of late — I rarely post, the design is stagnant, and I have yet to turn comments back on. I’m reluctant to move forward till I have improved my site as it currently stands (a classic case of the perfect as enemy of the good) but all my internet time is taken up these days by “microblogging.”
Obviously it’s time for a change — one which folds my site into the Twittersphere, where most of my web presence now resides, and where conversation can continue. So say hello to my new website, how now @brownpau.
By pointing to a Twitter search for my username, both my posts and my friends’ replies and mentions join the stream, filling the role of comments and providing an ever-present rainbow of conversation. The nav box at upper right provides links to the old, deprecated sections of the site, plus a recent Flickr photo.
I hope you enjoy the new HNBP, a bold new step out of the Blogging Age. If you have any feedback, well, just leave me an @reply on Twitter.
(If you’re reading this in a feed reader, you’ll need to visit how now @brownpau to get the full effect.)
Some photos from the last few weekends, as Spring made itself felt across our latitude. I especially like that I was able to get photos of Bradford Pear buds and the flowers that bloomed from them a week later. And squirrels on the National Mall are always eager to come right up to you, hoping that camera is full of nuts.
Above: photos of the Capitol taken over the course of a picturesque spring week. (Click for larger photos on Flickr, of course.)
Here is Pandora, looking hopefully to the future — or perhaps looking dazedly at our five-headed floor lamp with its daylight-like full-spectrum CFL bulbs. (Three Caturdays in a row means three otherwise weeks of unjournaled web ennui. Sorry.)
You can tell I’m either really busy or really unmotivated when you get Caturday entries in a row from my never posting. Anyway, here’s Bootsy, a neighbor’s cat whom I have been petsitting for the week. I love the blurry shot, caught mid-meow.
So how close can we get to Pandora while she’s sleeping? Today, pretty close:
