busy weekend

this past weekend was a really busy one.

we began saturday with the tenney-lapham tour de coops. the tour brought us into 5 of our neighbors backyards to view some small-scale urban chicken operations.

coop #2 was a re-purposed children's play house.

marta checks out the specs of coop #4

some mighty beautiful layers

this coop is just a few houses down from us, and is built into the side of a garage.

the tour left us totally inspired. we are planning on setting up our own coop and getting chickens next spring.

after the tour we headed over to matt and lia's for an afternoon cookout and the first annual salad toss-off salad competition.

our pistachio/bacon ambrosia wasn't able to win us the sweet/non-vegetarian category, but we were able to take home the crown for the best overall/most unusual salad. here are all the winners (sweet/non-veg, savory/non-veg, best overall/most unusual, sweet/veg, and savory/veg).

following the salad-off, we took a horrible drubbing at bocce ball.

then it was off to reed and molly's for their annual rhythm and booms party.

rhythm and booms is madison's independence day celebration, and it always takes place the weekend before the 4th. the fireworks were postponed until sunday due to foul weather (storms which never actually materialized). in lieu of the big show, reed and molly put on a splendid pyrotechnics display in their front yard.

buddy, riley, and maddie watching the show.

we kicked off sunday with some yard work.

sunday afternoon we took a trip out into the countryside to enjoy some shakespeare at the american players theatre in scenic spring green.

we enjoyed a lovely picnic beforehand...

...and then headed into the hilltop theater to enjoy a comedy of errors. we would highly recommend both the play and the venue.

we got back to madison just in time to watch the rescheduled fireworks from across lake mendota.

that pretty much brings us up to date. i feel much better now.