It’s here, summer is here.



My foray into the garden at 6:15 this morning (I’m up early on my day off, but that’s probably because I fell asleep on the couch at Embarrassingly Early O’Clock watching Season Two of Arrested Development - more on that in a sec) yielded a glimpse of the season’s first Grandpa Ott’s morning glory, an annual occasion that, in 2008, makes me feel two feelings: Feeling One is oh! A Grandpa Ott’s! It’s well and truly summer then, and gee, it’s so purple and lovely, and I remember when I first planted these eight years ago when I was gardening at 1005 and Lilly was wee and we were homeschooling and, though broke, all seemed right with the world. Feeling Two is goddamnit, I’m never going to be rid of these things. WHY did I think it was a good idea to a) plant them in the first place here at 909 and b) let them go so vigorously to seed a couple of years ago? WHY? In a month their admittedly lovely deep purple blooms will mock me every morning from every corner of the garden - the beans, the neighbor’s fence (she hates them), everywhere - and I will have given up entirely on trying to pull them all out and then they will go to seed and the entire cycle will begin anew. ***** This past weekend (which is still on for me today, as Mondays are my Sundays) was exhausting. I managed my eighth market of the season this weekend, and while not completely snafu-free (starting things off with a pop-up thunderstorm at the 7 AM open was all kinds of oh, COME ON), it went well in the end. The Market part of my job is part publicity guru, part puzzle-master, and part mediator, and I love it. It can get stressful (I never sleep well on Friday nights despite an early bedtime, and I get up at 4:30 AM wondering why the heck did I ever want to do this, my gawd, but that wears off once I start loading my truck about half an hour later), and it can get crowded: It’s the fastest 8+ hours of work I’ve ever experienced, though. Anyway, the kids left Saturday for their grandparents’ for a week (!!) for “summer camp”, so Jim and I have been hanging out, doing what married people do when their kids are gone - you know, sleeping at odd hours, doing yard work, practicing with bands, sleeping some more, not eating meals, refereeing disputes between cats, watching soccer, drinking Fat Tire, and falling asleep DAMNED early watching TV on DVD after eating a little too much barbecue from L’il Porgy’s. SO CRABBY when I woke up to go back to bed. Anyway - Cody will be away for his actual birthday this week, though we’re celebrating with the whole gang on the 4th when we go fetch the children. My first baby will be 16, y’all; I started blogging in 2002, when he was TEN YEARS OLD. I think I’ll have to gather up a photo retrospective. He is such a tall, intelligent, handsome, savvy, and gifted young man, and it’s a privilege to be his mother. It’s time to take Monday by the horns. On the list, for all you listy folks out there:

• lots of laundry to hang on the line
• thoroughly clean kitchen
• vacuum and sweep all floors
• clean bathtub
• continue weeding garden
• ?

I love Mondays now.

Here’s how it all went down. 5:30-6:30 - Drink Blatz from a can to celebrate the 41st birthday of this guy and a bunch of his/our friends and their kids. Reminisce about the Days of Yore. Get our power destabilized by a young Power Ranger. 6:30-8:00 - Check out a talk by this guy, who is also my neighbor, called Unhoused, given in the living room of some neighbor artists/friends. Present this woman with some books and zines on loan. Leave a wee bit early with a six-pack of New Glarus Spotted Cow for my (meager) efforts during Continental Drift a few weeks ago. Make plans for dinner/collaboration this week. 8:15-9:00 - go retrieve bike from City Hall, where I left it after work due to rain. Go check on progress of setup for this event, taking place tomorrow. marvel at the fact I saw Lonnie Brooks, the headliner, at school in 1990. Home now. Am a little excited about the kids taking off for a week. Am also a little sad. Watching the fireflies. Wishing the Blatz had been the New Glarus. Your Friday’s my Thursday, and I’m going to be in about 20 minutes so I can get up at 4:30 and help get local food to the shopping masses. What I’ve been looking at on the internet: Mark Winne’s terrific talk about food banking and food access in the US Smile Politely City Repair

Hard to believe, but I am watering my garden while floods… well, FLOOD parts of my own damn state.


Here’s what’s happening outside this morning:








Cody and I picked these yesterday:


I am going in late today. It feels good to just be home in the morning.

The Wordy Diva family is available right now, today, this very second, for the (temporarily? I don’t know) low, low price of TEN BUCKS! You’ll get a slightly cleaned up version of Wordy Diva, the brand new Wordier Diva, and Lilly’s font, Li’l Diva, to use however you want! Cool fonts are indispensable for use in making flyers, doing zines, creating blog banners (see above, though I would never recommend any of my “banners” as examples of how things ought to be done, because… whoa), making menus for your awesome catering company, adding a little sass to yr reports at work, etc etc etc. Chank’s got everything you need to know right here.



[Full disclosure: Lilly gets a cut of the proceeds.]

I get up every morning determined both to change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day difficult. -E.B.White

The Market at the Square blog is up and running. Please broadcast and let people know? Pretty please?



Thanks! More soon.

Those who used to frequent the hipMama message boards back in the Early Naughties will remember Rant-o-Rama. Remember Rant-o-Rama, friends?? God, I used to laugh so hard - Triple P had some incredibly funny, sarcastic rants. I also loved to rant. In fact, I still do love to rant, though I’m not as good at it as she is.



I was going to rant here, but I’ve decided against it. Just know that I was grouchy and today, the awesome people of our community could not make up for a few of its shortcomings.







So - let’s talk briefly about a few things to counter that bad juju.



How about chard, a garden vegetable I fondly refer to as the Cockroach of Vegetables - it can survive just about any kind of abuse you throw at it? My chard is going gangbusters. Thank you, chard, for being so darn persistent and indefatigable and good for me to boot.



I’d also like to thank the most knowledgeable Ms. KW for her help at the bookstore today. She’s a rock star!



Thanks, Shoe Store Guy, for being patient with me while I dithered over three different colors of the same pair of shoes. Oh, and weather? You’re doing a fabulous job of making people forget this past winter, what with the new heat you’ve recently added. You’re doing especially well on that being nice Saturday mornings thing. I appreciate it! Thank you for being you! I don’t know what it is, Gerbera Daisies, but there’s just something about you that makes me wild. You’re so orange! I’d also like to thank my workhorse bike, the 1976 Earth Cruiser. You rule the road, EC, even when you don’t. You are going to be so stoked when I put on your new fenders and baskets this week! It’s because I love you. You get me to and fro. We have the best neighbors in the world. The two streets that comprise what I call the Neighborhood have: Brett and Bonnie, Ryan and Sara, Geoff and Jill, Dave and Co., S and K, Irene, Chris and Mel, M and S, Dan… and Ed, even though he lives on the other side of the road, so to speak. I loved coming home from a meeting on campus this afternoon to see an assortment of these folks drinking beer on our front porch. They grow gardens, make wine, participate in cool happenings, give their dogs blogs, go above and beyond, are funny, and are just generally a fine batch of folks. OK. Jeez, look at the time. Definitely time for bed. Monday’s over. It’s summer. Where are the fireflies?

This waking-up nonsense seems early for the weekend, anyway, but I got my 7.5 hours. So. Here I am.


Yesterday was excellent. After some wicked thunderstorm action Friday night and thick, heavy clouds greeting me at 5 AM Saturday morning as I “dressed” (crazy floral skort, T-shirt, kicks) for “work” (I still can’t believe I get to do what I do), the skies parted and the sun burned everything off by 7:05 AM. I saw friends, took photos, Jim and Lilly stopped by to pick up money for shopping, Cody showed up for a bit, my fears of disaster were unfounded, etc. It was extra-bonus, actually, because I spotted the The Sandwich Life and her family, plus Mrs. Chicken and her lovely Poo, neither of whom I’ve met IRL but recognized from their blogs. Of course I accosted them and probably freaked them out! It is my way!


I eventually ran into N the Future Blogger and we talked C-U blogging. My conversation with her gave me the idea to just start a blog for Market at the Square and transfer the content over if the Market’s page eventually gets some blogging capability, so I did. There’s no content yet. There will be tomorrow, I think. Maybe today. I don’t know.


Saturdays at work are the fastest work days I’ve ever had in my work life, which is extensive. It seems like we’ve just set up when it’s time to tear down. I am very lucky, indeed.


For Veganlinda: The only certified organic strawberries at the Market, as far as I know, are from Tomahnous Farm, and theirs will be more ready for the June 7 Market than they were for this past Market. I recommend arriving early.


I’ve been asked to speak at this series of events:

Continental Drift is an invitation to look at our collective existence on all the relevant scales: the intimate, the local, the national, the continental and the global. Continental Drift is a mobile assemblage of people presenting their projects, observations, experiments, discoveries and questions, and producing value through social exchange. Continental Drift through the Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor is a self-educating tour through our concrete world and its abstract representations, discovering distant lives in familiar situations, and embracing the interdependency that links what is usually treated as separate. Continental Drift is intended for anyone seeking to locate global economies, pressures and possibilities in daily life and to reorient aesthetic invention in response to an ethics of equality.

I’m excited, though it dawned on me yesterday that I’ll be leading a discussion in my neighbor’s backyard about food and localism and DIY food gardens, which means my backyard will be not just visible, but a possible focal point. There are some SERIOUS weeds that need pulling, the tomatoes need some mulch, arugula needs to be replanted, the beets and chard should have been thinned awhile ago, the beans need replanting because something is eating them, I keep forgetting to soak moonflower and cardinal flower seeds and - holy crap - all my squashes and cucumbers germinated. I can’t believe I’m trying to grow them again. I’m such a sucker. Anyway, I’ll be in the yard, and maybe I’ll get some snaps of how things are growing.


There is more - the Blue House of Sustainability and Gardening as Responsibility! - but it can wait until tomorrow.