Mayday, Except for Not

Peanut was up and about this post-Mayday, Mayday. Ready for breakfast, which is no different than lunch or dinner.

While Brooke made her mashed quinoa porridge, I caramelized some bananas and drizzled the concoction over old-fashioned rolled oats.

 

I've been getting back into sprouting. I like to do it in the winter as it's fun to see things grow. After failing miserably at chickpeas the only thing I usually do are mung beans. I want to start trying other things. I found a granola recipe that had sprouted buckwheat and quinoa. These were much easier to sprout. Unlike mung beans which take a few days these guys only took about a day and a half.


Brooke met me outside. It was already in the 70's, so we ate next to the garden.
 

My breakfast was apple slices with almond butter, hot lemon water, and leftover quinoa that I mashed a banana and cinnamon into. 

Scott was upset that I was spending too much time eating instead of helping him work.

I was probably more upset because I had already tilled the garden a few weeks back. We were just planting the vegetable garden the second week of May. This meant I had to do it all over again.

 
Brooke snapped together four paint sticks with clothespins to create a template for each square foot. Though we are not partitioning off the squares, like true sqaure-foot gardening, we still needed something to keep track. 
 

After a lot of arguing we got about half the garden planted before having to leave.

Brooke considers any question an argument.

We usually don't agree when it comes to deciding where to put things.  


Once we found our spot along Bloomington Avenue in our old hood a lady gave us paper to draw on. This year's Mayday parade theme is transition towns. We were supposed to draw a picture of what we would like on our side of town. Brooke drew a food co-op and I made some indecipherable markings that were supposed to be light rail or trolleys.


Once the parade started we were bombarded by robots, outlets, beavers and other assorted masked creatures. Every year the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre's papier-mâché, stilt and puppet masses march down South Minneapolis's Bloomington Avenue the first Sunday of May. We've now went to the Mayday parade four times since living in Twin Cities.
 

The parade was supposed to happen last week when Blake and his friend came down, but torrential rain washed out the festival grounds. 

I was okay with that, except for Blake not being here. The weather was perfect. 

 


Neighborhood bohemians and craftspeople always join the parade with their home-built creations

Here are those stilted people I promised.


A lady came through and blessed the parade goers. This mayday celebration is equally indebted to the pagan and socialist Maydays.

It seems like every Southsider is accounted for from hippy to immigrant. There are always traditional Aztec dancers along the route.

Bumblebees are also a mainstay.

This group of crusty punks crashes the parade every year. At first it was just one large vehicle.

Now its become a veritable punk bike-train. A few years ago someone got run over by one of their contraptions. This year I think the only victims were smoke inhalers.

Once the free-speech (mostly politicians, some crusty punks) part of the parade made it to us, we walked toward Powderhorn Park. Nunchuck-boy was way into the parade. 

Here's a house that some of my friends used to live in. It's good to see its even more overgrown with hipsters.


We ate brisket nachos and a reuben from Stanley's On Wheels. This may have been my first food truck meal. Scrumptious food trucks like this have only been around for the last year or so in Minneapolis.

At the park the puppet theatre puts on their big show with the aforementioned bumblebees.

At the end a great spoken word artist extolled the virtues of an earth without nations. It was radical.

Once the show was over we picked up some kale and broccoli. 

They were handing out free seedlings after the ceremony. I wanted to take one of each, but that would have been too greedy. 

This broccoli-boy was having issues with his costume as we made our way to our bikes and home.

We headed to Tyler and Emma's where Brooke and Ems played with the little tyke.


They were having their house worked on for lead contamination so we took Honey for the week.

Then we headed home.

The kids were excited to see Honey again.

While I cleaned up Scott gave the kids a lesson on weed pulling.

I've been tricking them into helping every day the last week.


Then Blake showed up with a bottle of maple syrup.

He's living with us part-time until tourist season hits in Duluth. 


Romeo helped Brooke cook dinner, which I have no pictures of.


Meanwhile little Will tried to take photos of me.

And after 5 months I'm still not close to being done. I originally started this as something to do on boring days in the winter.  Now that it's warmer out I'm afraid I won't get as much done. Scott says I have to be done by August.

Then we watched the last of Daria; a short movie called Is It College Yet. I wish there were more seasons of the show.

We will miss Daria.