Every Tuesday and Thursday, we run down what’s going on in local Internet discussion groups.

Brookland
Just because your strawberry plants mysteriously left your front porch doesn’t mean they left your neighborhood, according to Joel near 20th and Kearny. In a post regarding the “perennial problem” of plant-nappings, he says he and his wife were working on their roof last Saturday when they spotted some of their own plants in a neighbor’s back yard. (They’d had $300 worth of greenery pilfered back in April, he says.) Soon, with the help of a neighborhood police officer, “we had our plants back, looking a little worse for wear and in need of a good watering.” Sldicke seconds the poor care taken by neighbors who—ahem—borrow azaleas and the like: “I just found my stolen hanging flower baskets on the porch of a house near 20th and Jackson streets. I don’t want them back (they’re looking a bit sad at this point).”

MPD-3d
It seems the District’s public-safety activists just can’t satisfy the demand for color-coded ball-cap neighborhood safety patrols. With crime “on the rise in the 3rd district” and civic-minded folks “at a loss as to what to do,” Kenneth announces the unveiling of a new “Pink Hat Patrol” to supplement the current brigade of orange-hat and blue-hat patrols around the city. True to its hue, the pink hats, comprised of young women who are “former or potential gang members,” will spend their time patrolling crime-prone pockets around town and passing out literature to at-risk kids. “The ultimate goal of this effort is to assist in deterring crime,” he writes. Unclaimed colors for your own neighborhood hat patrol now include yellow, green, and magenta.

tenleytown
Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Avram Fechter has devised a novel method for determining the worth of D.C. Council candidates: “At the Ward 3 candidate’s forum last night only Sam Brooks and Robert Gordon would promise not to litter our public spaces with their campaign signs.…Candidates who are unable to gain the name recognition they need without littering our neighborhoods do not deserve my vote.” Mel, however, finds Fechter’s anti-sign invective to be somewhat undemocratic: “Campaign signs in public space have been part of the American scene since the earliest days of our democracy. I have no objection to the ‘visual pollution’ at election time.” Matt simply finds it ironic: “In light of [Fechter’s] message below, I [was] amused yesterday to see a Robert Gordon sign affixed to the public space in front of the Tenleytown metro, where Mr. Fechter was passing out literature on Mr. Gordon’s behalf.”