We got this email from Liam’s biology teacher yesterday about all the things Liam’s class has been up too. Its quite impressive! Hello friends, supporters, colleagues, family, inspirers, and community members, It is with great pleasure and pride that I write you with news on the outcome of the first Mycelia 2nd Semester Project that took place in my five honors biology classes over the past 15 weeks at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School. Our youth have been tasked with the responsibility of improving the world by consciously making insightful decisions and thoughtful actions which, in turn, improves the…

My plot in the community garden is on the right. I’m sharing this since I also have all the space in our yard for plants. Mine is the first third, up to the first wooden stake. [slideshow]

Last Monday was a national holiday, Memorial Day, so we had a nice extra day in our weekend. We started off with breakfast at Bite (Flying Saucer was closed) which turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. It’s been completely redone inside and has a new menu, not that it was bad at all before but it seems like a whole new place now. I had a green salad with brioche and the plumpest, most darling little poached egg perched on top. Then we went to Matthiessen State Park. It was really crowded because Starved Rock State Park, a…

Last Sunday we went on our first Bike the Drive, which is the Active Transportation Alliance’s annual event of riding bikes all along Lake Shore Drive. We drove our bikes to the lakefront and parked at Soldier Field. Then we rode north to Fullerton, turned around and went south to Oakland (39th Street) and turned around again, and went back up north to 18th Street. So we did the middle section of the route– you can also go all the way north to Hollywood or south to the Museum of Science and Industry at 57th Street. It was a great,…

The black-eyed susans are lovely but have been coming back in such force they needed some thinning and scooting over. Today I dug up a lot of them and thinned them out to other places around the yard. We also put some in front of Sergio and Beatriz’s house. The benefit to all this is that the space is organized much better now–in the picture below I’ve circled the area in yellow where there are still a lot of the black eyed susans, and I’ve put red arrows around the area that used to also have those plants. Once I…

We had a lovely visit from Mom / Mary / Nana / Gail last weekend! (Gail is the least known of my mom’s possible names, it was her nickname when we went bowling on Saturday.) We went to the Field Museum, saw a massive cold weather front hit Chicago while we were at the lakefront, went bowling and had lunch at the flagship Whole Foods. Great weekend! Second photo shows how at the Field Museum they’ve dressed up a pterodactyl and a part of the building ornament to cheer on the Blackhawks and Bulls.

A few weeks ago at breakfast Miles ordered the pancake flight, or assortment, and got this, the cutest dish of pancakes ever.

Summer. All of a sudden it’s summer–I only just turned off the boiler yesterday and the same day it was really tempting to turn on the air conditioner. Since my classes officially finished with the handing in of a project on Monday night, I have turned my attention to the garden big time. (If you want to check out my group’s final project, which was a digital library on community gardening, you can see it here: http://classrm03.lis.illinois.edu:9018/greenstone/cgi-bin/library.cgi?a=p&p=home&l=en&w=utf-8) I’m following the gardening method called “square foot gardening” this year. You mark out square foot sections (or thereabouts, one of my rows…

I’ve been meaning to post about the plant growing situation around here. This year I took a plunge into new territory–starting seeds indoors. I set up an area in the basement with florescent lights for the seedlings. Though some seeds didn’t really work out, I’ve had a lot of success and just hope everything survives another week or so so I can put them outside! Miles’s marigolds are already starting to bloom indoors. Though it’s too early to put the plants outside, I have started getting their beds ready. Today I went to Lake Street Landscape and got a half…

After much delay, here’s some photos from day 3 of spring break. We went bowling and had lots of fun. Miles scored the group high score, I think it was 101. We are not the best bowlers out there! But it was a good time. [slideshow]