News and notes from Reston (tm).

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Open Thread: Gone Fishin'

Screen shot 2010-07-06 at 2.35.54 PM.jpg
To celebrate the 4th of July, your favorite "web logger" decided to get out of Dodge. In our defense, we had to leave before next weekend's Ukulele Festival, but we'll be back in time to step over all those snapped strings.

If you're still in town, please document any atrocities from next weekend's Reston Festival or the aforementioned ukulele nightmare in the comments below, or just let us know if Reston melts into an earth-toned blob in the heat. And courtesy of our favorite correspondent, The Peasant From Less Sought After South Reston, please to be enjoying this video about what makes Reston (and America) great: midscale retail and dining opportunities:


(photo from this person's Flickr feed.)

13 comments:

  1. It is soooooo hot!

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is one of the great joys of living in Reston: the outdoor pools. I'm taking a couple of hours of leave so that I can take the kids over to Lake Newport. We're really into diving these days.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Pools = awesomeness.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Especially on these dog days. Besides, I'm working on a flip. I can do it from the low board, but I haven't mustered the nerve yet to try from the 1 meter board. A belly flop at 1 meter can be pretty painful and discouraging.

    ReplyDelete
  5. OK, Rod Koozmin, better 'fess up!

    Just received my copy of the Reston Connection, and you have a letter to the editor on page 19 about the poison ivy along Glade Drive, accompanied by a photo of a sign warning passers-by of the overhanging poison ivy vines. You wrote that a "citizen has put up his own sign trying to warn pedestrians just walking on the sidewalk who will be exposed."

    Now, unless my eyes are deceiving me, that sign looks to be on the same lemon yellow paper and with the same type font as those "Google Restonian" signs that magically popped up all over Reston a while back and which many of us suspect you posted. But hey, no need to be modest this time about claiming the poison ivy warning sign as your own - you were doing a good deed and your civic duty, so thank you!

    And if this was by the Dogwood School, could I say "Elementary!"?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Even better why didn't he just help out and trim the vines himself. His campaign was centered around mobilizing citizens to help out.

    Making signs and writing letters to the editor is self serving...helping eliminate a problem yourself is real action

    ReplyDelete
  7. Where the trail borders my property I visit it every spring with a whiff of RoundUp. I call it Poison Ivy Patrol.

    Poison Ivy is not really robust. It is easy to kill. Much easier than writing letters to the editor.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Isn't "landscaping" on Reston property a violation of the RA regs? Do you have RA's permission?

    ReplyDelete
  9. RA asked us to pull out English Ivy (non-native evil plant) in our yards . . . and I'm doing it. But most of it comes into my hard from . . . RA property! So am I not allowed to pursue the vine wherever it takes me onto RA property for a search and destroy mission?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Peasant From Less Sought After South RestonJuly 9, 2010 at 8:18 PM

    ...or you could just smother the ivy, English and poison alike, under a thick layer of aesthetically pleasing red mulch.

    On another matter, I noticed this morning by the Lake Audubon boat ramp near Twin Branches what appeared to be a couple of small barges and a steam shovel. Anybody know what's what -- is the lake being dredged again? I thought streambed restoration of the Snakeden and Glade was supposed to make that unnecessary.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Pour weed killer all over the place.

    ReplyDelete
  12. 2,4-D is the principal ingredient in most broad lief weed killers. In order to spray it in a public place commercially you are required to have a applicators license...I think. 2,4-D is considered a carcinogenic but if you have the proper gloves, goggles, respirator, boots and coveralls and spray properly as prescribed it should be safer to do. It just needs to be done on a organized basis.

    If a four star organization took over Reston they wouldn't want people running into branches of whatever every so many feet. Some might say we don't want Reston to be four star or it's more natural to have plant material on the pathways. I have a dream of being able to walk from one end of Reston to the other without having to look out for tree limbs obstructing the walkway and just have to look down to avoid the dog leavings.

    One person said poison ivy berries feed birds. Maybe so but do birds need to eat them on the sidewalks?

    A lot of the reason why you have to walk single file on much of the sidewalks is because home owners have just let them grow up. Perhaps some think it's valuable to have a large bush even obstructing the sidewalk. Or they might say RA doesn't maintain it's pathways in four star condition so why should we?

    My point is we have just got used to plants over walkways. I used to know someone that had overgrown bushes covering their front door. You'd have to actually hold them back as you opened the front door! They had got so used to them they never thought of pruning them. When they did they did finally prune the bushes were much happier.

    Welcome back Restonian. Did you catch any fish?

    ReplyDelete
  13. Yes, Rod, Restonian caught some fish and he's hung them from all those overhanging limbs to cure them, so watch your head.

    ReplyDelete

(If you don't see comments for some reason, click here).