I just completed this piece, a mixed media piece for the upcoming Minnesota Opera gala.

It’s day two of the Lola Art Crawl! Yesterday was a lot of fun… Met some new people, got to show off my art, and even got a visit from the cutest nephew ever!
Stop by today between 10 and 5 if you can…

We’re back home now. But we had a lovely stay at the Cathedral Hill Bed and Breakfast. Here are a few last photos. And then I’m off to get the house ready for the Art Crawl.

I’m as busy as a bee getting ready for the LoLa Art Crawl!

Enjoyed a lovely morning at Longfellow Garden with other LoLa artists. Many thanks to Anita.

Argyle, from two days to three months. Looking forward to seeing him (and his parents, of course!) next week for the big birthday bash.

A couple of weeks ago, I talked my darling wife into venturing forth into the unknown to a tiny little park I had found via Google Maps. The park is Seven Oaks Park maybe a mile from our house. It made for a very nice leisurely bike-ride on a sunny afternoon.

I had done enough research after finding the park to know that it is a legitimate park maintained by (or at least listed on the website of) the Minneapolis Parks & Recreation Board, but that it has no amenities. No building, no picnic tables, and certainly none of the new-fangled fancy stuff like a wading pool. I wasn’t surprised by that, since it takes up less than a square block in an odd little oval of land right in the middle of the Cooper neighborhood. What I didn’t know was what we would find when we got there, besides, most likely, some oak trees.

We biked up to the site and found a small grassy area and, yes, a lot of trees.

It took some looking, but we found a street sign to lock up to, then headed down into the park. That’s right, down. The park is essentially a bowl, a little valley carved right out of Longfellow-Cooper. You descend down a pretty steep slope, which made the wife fairly nervous, and there you are.

At the bottom of the path down was a sweet rope swing with a board for a seat. When we were on our way down, there were a couple of kids playing on it, showing off for grandma.

Once at the bottom, the dappled light played across what has clearly been used as a fire pit by neighborhood youth (or not-so-youth). I imagined them coming here on summer nights to build fires and smoke cigarettes where their parents, or kids, wouldn’t catch them. If you sit on one of the smooth fallen logs at this fire ring, you can see no sign of civilization. No power lines. No street lights. No roofs. Only by turning your head and craning your neck can you glimpse the corner of one roof through the trees (a cape cod, sadly, and not a mansard).

Then we went walking up the other slope towards something we had seen on our way down. It looked like an enormous, crazy nest or something out of Where the Wild Things Are.

It was a bit of both. It looks like countless kids, or maybe just one determined individual with a flair for the dramatic, created an amazing fort out of fallen branches and limbs. It has a door that leads to an entry room with a window, then a main room with a sunken floor and a “skylight”.

Amazing!

Right next to the Fort was a tire swing, which my wife gamely leapt onto for a few pictures. Or because she loves swings. Take your pick.

It was a wonderful afternoon, and such a gorgeous little oasis of calm. We will definitely visit again!

At the beginning of the month, Eli and I ventured South to our CSA, Big Woods Farm, for their annual Midsummer Farm Festival. We had a wonderful time, visiting with our farmers and their family, as well as some of the other families that are members of the farm (even one other member family from the Twin Cities!).

As everyone gathered, we chatted and introduced ourselves, then began shucking corn for the potluck dinner. The corn from Big Woods is so delicious, even fresh-picked and raw. We found that out our first year at this festival, when David brought us out for a farm tour and had us eat ears of corn right in the fields. I had never known that you could eat corn raw! But it was amazing: so sweet and cool and crisp. Quite a fun new experience!

This corn, however, was destined to be cooked for dinner. And there was plenty of it!

David also cooked up some hot dogs over an open fire, and there was an amazing spread of dishes to choose from for the rest of our meal. From salads to coleslaws, lasagnas to New Orleans-style dirty rice.

It was so wonderful to see how many of the dishes were made with ingredients grown right where we were gathered, and by people who cared so deeply for the land and for local food.

And did I mention there were tons of freshly-picked cherry tomatoes?

And then there were desserts…

We brought my curried zucchini bread, there was a delightful fruit crisp and some tasty cookies. And there were s’more fixings for later.

But frankly, I was so full after eating my dinner that I didn’t have much room for dessert.