My last visit to the Farmers' Market on the Square

Time is counting down until I'm outta here...  I knew that I was working a bit today, so I thought I would go to the Farmers' Market first.  The Farmers' Market is held on Saturday mornings on the Capital Square.  It's the largest producer-only farmer's market int he US.  All items are produced locally by the vendor behind the table.  It's nice to know that you aren't going to see a huge corporation with a table set up.

this is actually a photo.  a photo that was heavily edited, but a photo nonetheless.
Madison, Wisconsin capital building

I hadn't been to the Farmers' Market since before the whole Recall Scott Walker thing happened.  That whole situation really ruined the capital for me.  Why do you think you need to hang out up there and sing?  It's not doing any good, and you're just annoying people who would have a neutral opinion about it in the first place.

*sigh*

So it had been a really long time since I'd had hot 'n spicy cheese bread from Stella's.

So off I went.  Left the house around 7AM, which is a little late since I like to be there before the huge crowds, but I went nonetheless.

First stop:  hot 'n spicy cheese bread.  Straight from the oven.  So good...  so much cheesy goodness...

hot peppers.  I never would have known if there wasn't a sign on them.

Next stop:  cream cheese croissant from "the far corner".  I don't know what the bakery is, but I always park in the same parking ramp, and I get the same croissant from the same vendor, once I'm halfway around the square.

While I was sitting on the bench eating my croissant I heard "What are you doing here?"  I looked up and saw one of the girls that I went to high school with (2 hours south of Madison), and worked with one summer at the campground where Nate now works.  Holy cats, imagine seeing someone who lives that far away at a fairly well populated event!  Crazy.

Then:  Jam.  Jam from The Summer Kitchen.  I am not regularly a jam/jelly kind of girl.  But oh my gosh hand me a spoon because this stuff is amazing!  I bought Maiden Blush (ingredients:  Macintosh Apples, Strawberries, sugar, natural pectin, no additives, no preservatives).  I put it on my hot 'n spicy cheese bread for lunch and it was delicious!

After Jam was cheese curds.  Always good, but not as good as the curds at Cheesers.  I think buying cheese curds at the Farmers' Market is just me on auto-pilot.  I ate some while at work, then gave the guys who were on lunch when I left the rest of the bag.

My final purchase was plums from Door Creek.  These little bitty plums.  So small and cute.  About the size of a large cherry tomato.  And yummy too!

All in all, I was there for about 30 minutes.  It was good to go one last time.  Now I'm ready to see what the Wednesday Farmers' & Craft Market is like in Glennallen next summer...


And FYI - all those photos are from my phone.  Not too shabby, if I do say so myself...

pretty pictures

Over the years the landscaping around the condo has been worked on and has really been maturing.  After the rain on Friday night, everything seemed vibrant on Saturday morning.

I just loved those water droplets on the leaves!

And boy, did these flowers look super vibrant!  The color does not always pop like that.

The lily photo was from a dark evening, where the flash ended up making the photo really nice, in my opinion:

Photography Challenge Day 28: Flowers

Oh, so many flowers to chose from.  Let's go chronologically...

2010, Washington DC

2011, my wedding shower

2012, Anchorage Zoo

2013, just outside my engraver's shop

2014, a living wall at a seminar - so cool

Doomed crab apple tree

We have a couple of crab apple trees out front of work that will be removed.  They have such pretty blooms right now, I couldn't help myself from bringing a branch in after lunch...

Purple Lilies

Its that time of year when I really start seeing - and wanting to see - flowers.  Well, I tried to photograph the daffodills out front of work, but no dice.

Which is why it was so nice that an employee gave Lois a pretirement* gift:  purple lilies.

check out the green outline of the flower....

*Pretirement:  the time before you retire when you DAILY remind people how many word days you have left....

***Reminder:  Please vote daily for Rhy!  See more info here!***

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We saw two real polar bears in Alaska!

Why, yes, we did go to the Alaska Zoo!  How did you know?

We had some time to kill the day we picked up the rental vehicle in Anchorage.  We had Burger King for lunch (Jeff likes it and has it as a rare treat sometimes b/c there aren't any convenient to us.  Did you know that they have Bacon Sundaes?  Just sounds gross), and were trying to decide what else to do, when we remembered the zoo!

The Alaska Zoo was really very easy to find and it's interesting.  It's not huge and crowded, like the Brookfield Zoo.  It's smaller, and with few enough people that you can see what you want and won't get crowded out.  Like the Vilas Zoo.  I liked that.

Apparently back in the 40s or 50s there was a contest where you could win money or an elephant - because the people who did the contest figured "No one will want an elephant!"  Wrong.  The winner wanted the elephant!  An elephant was found, and a few years later, after acquiring some other animals, the Alaska Zoo was born!  Hmmm, maybe I should have taken a picture of the sign of that story so I could have told it better here...  Next time.

A lot of the animals at the Alaska Zoo are rescue or hurt animals, which is cool.  What else is cool is that the zoo is in a wooded area.  Lot's of hills and bridges and trees.

this is in the zoo - so pretty!

I really liked it.  Too bad my feet didn't want to work that day.  Darn you Mother Nature and your monthly gift!

So, yes, we did see polar bears!

And snow owl...

And snow leopard...

hi kitty mow!

D'aw!

And bear...

look at him eating his cantaloupe!

And so many pretty flowers...

do you see the stamen on this flower?!?!?!  So freaking awesome!

taken just after a light rain shower and the sun came out

So, to sum up, you should put the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage on your "must visit Alaska" list.  :-)

See the full itinerary here...

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We've since moved to Alaska!  Read about Our Alaska Life here...

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