Active Rain/Tomato Blog

For the most part, front yards do not exist in Old Town Alexandria. Instead, colorful window boxes, stately urns, clustered pots of flowers and geometric topiaries welcome visitors and home owners alike. Enjoy a “walk” on this Scenic Sunday through the streets of Old Town . . . For lots more pict...

\   for more, visit: Saturday Night at the Del Ray Music Festival

Local music offerings abound (like the Del Ray Music Festival). But if you’re looking for music AND a weekend getaway AND gourmet dining, consider driving about 4 hrs. west to Bath County. There, snug against the Alleghenies, you’ll find it all in a decidedly rural setting. In fact, Bath County h...

Music - and the Del Ray Music Festival - will take center stage on the fields of the Mt. Vernon Rec Center this Saturday, June 28 as part of the ongoing Town of Potomac Centennial Celebration that started in January. Actually, the full musical line up will take two stages with bands starting at 1...

Driven upward by food and energy price increases, the Producer Price Index (PPI) climbed by 1.4% and mortgage rates continued a slow move upward. Removing those two variables decreases the PPI to a more modest 0.2% but the annualized core reading is still sitting at 3.0% - well above nearly every...

As part of its sweeping Operation Malicious Mortgage, the FBI is finding that mortgage scams are just the tip of the iceberg. Reporting for National Public Radio’s Legal Affairs, Dina Temple-Raston noted that officials have started arresting people for scams tied to home equity lines of credit. R...

Proving once again that Del Ray is not just another pretty neighborhood, hundreds of residents turned out on a foggy June 7 morning for the 3rd Annual Kelly Cares 5K Run/Walk. Established in memory of Kelly Swanson, a 2005 graduate of T.C. Williams High School, the foundation was formed to suppor...

Over the past three days, the Washington Post has run an excellent investigative series - “The Bubble” - about what happened to the biggest housing boom in this country since the 1950’s. As much as I have railed about the seemingly endless BAD news about the real estate market in both national an...

Big, blowsy, and beautiful, hydrangea’s are the perfect long blooming summer flower. Del Ray is home to hundred’s of red, pink, blue, white and purple blossoms - here are just a few on this Scenic Sunday.                               For pictures of home and hydrangea's in Del Ray, visit: Hydran...

Veteran administrator Morton Sherman was selected last night in an unanimous vote to serve as the new superintendent of the 10,600 student school system in Alexandria. Currently superintendent of schools in Tenafly, NJ, Sherman was also a candidate for the LeHigh Valley School System in Pennsylva...