With a day off ahead of me this morning, I decided I’d take a ride down to Minnehaha Falls before Minneapolis hit 90ºF. I had almost reached Minnehaha Park when I came upon an unattended yard sale. I strayed from the path to take a look at the few items on offer, one of them being a small, three-legged table—a class of tables for which I have an unusually strong attraction.

I liked the table, but without the homeowner to talk to, there wasn’t any way to have him or her hang on to it for me until I could return with the car. A sign read “SALE. Please place money in the mail box.” I was disappointed to read it and realize there was really no one there. But then, I haven’t touched my car since last Saturday, so why use it now? The table was pretty lightweight. How much was this table, anyway? A dollar, it turns out. AND, I had a dollar. How was I supposed to pass up a $1 table? Maybe it could fit in my basket? Yes. Of course it fit in my basket. Everyone knows a Brompton fits anywhere, but as it turns out you can also fit just about anything in a Brompton. Expand that a little bit and you’ll have a new version of my father’s oft repeated, “Everything fits in a Volkswagen.” Here’s proof that just like we don’t need to burn gas to get to work, go to the store, or get to the farmers market, you don’t need a car to go trash picking garage sale-ing.

So I didn’t make it to Minnehaha Falls, but I did I make it all the way home without a hitch and even got a salute from the Flanders team for my nice ride and nice furniture.

Is it still not farmers market season yet? It feels like it’s been warm enough for a month now — with the occasional frost thrown in for variety — but our market still won’t be open for weeks.

To help manage the market jones — or, I guess, to make it much worse — Martha and I headed down to the Mill City Museum tonight for the opening of ‘Growing Strong’, an exhibit highlighting Minnesota farmers markets and their impact on our community. The exhibit was put together by our friend Mr. Farmers Market David Nicholson.

The exhibit itself consists of a series of panels hanging in front of the wall of the lobby of the Mill City Museum with text and photos highlighting aspects of farmers markets in our state. Each panel fell into one of four main topic areas: Healthy People, Fresh Food for Everyone, Economic Opportunity, and Urban-Rural Connection. We were about halfway through ‘Fresh Food for Everyone’ when the program began.

First up was David, who spoke about some of the work that went into the exhibit, thanked the sponsors, and introduced Dr. Marc Manley from sponsor Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota.

Dr. Manley opened by stating that he had hoped to open his speech with a joke about farmers markets. This drew nervous laughter, I am assuming because farmers market people generally take the markets way too seriously to be making jokes about them. Dr. Manley was forced to resort to the Internet for comic inspiration, where he found this diamond in the cow pat:

Two cows in a field…
“Daisy, have you heard?”
“Moo. Heard what Buttercup?”
“There’s going to be a Farmers Market at the town hall next week.”
“That’s good, let’s sell our farmer and see if we can get a better one.”

Unsurprisingly, this got more groans than laughs, providing a nice segue into the more serious part of his talk — about how important a role farmers markets can play in encouraging healthy eating in Minnesota. Apparently, only 15% of Minnesotan adults eat a healthy amount of fruits and vegetables. To change this, Blue Cross has been supporting programs to allow farmers markets to accept SNAP/EBT benefits and to provide extra incentives for people to shop at markets. Our own market, Midtown Farmers Market, has benefited greatly from those programs, with EBT usage (and therefore customer counts) increasingly significantly since the Market Bucks incentive program was introduced three years ago.

After Dr. Manley concluded, we were treated to some quick, off-the-cuff remarks from none other than Minneapolis mayor RT Rybak, who got things off to a good start when he deadpanned “Hi, my name is RT, and I’m a market-a-holic.” He then explained he and his wife Megan’s weekend schedule, which involves visiting just about every market in the city.

The mayor’s priorities for Minneapolis markets? Use markets as places of education, let markets define a sense of place for our city and region, and make sure markets are structured to provide good economic opportunities for farmers and producers. These priorities echoed the themes of the exhibit.

Overall the exhibit did a great job of explaining the important role farmers markets can play in improving our communities, beyond being the sort of Yuppie playgrounds they are so often caricatured as (though, don’t get me wrong, they are still very much that too). If you’re in the area of the Mill City Museum, stop in and check it out (the museum itself is also well worth a visit). The Growing Strong exhibit runs through July 22.

Today is the last day of January. I am happy to say that I have walked every weekday morning this month since January 3 (with only one exception) and most weekend mornings. I never would have thought I had time before work to take a walk, but it turns out it was just a matter of forming the habit, one day (and one step) at a time.

In early December I started reading a blog called Zen Habits by Leo Babauta after a coworker sent me a post by email. I’d been reading it for about a month and had become something of a Zen Habits evangelist when, at the end of 2011, Babauta published what he called “A Compact Guide to Creating the Fitness Habit.” This has been one of my favorite posts on the blog, especially since while I know exercise to be a good thing, I’d never been able to make it a part of my routine beyond the occasional weekend walk, taking the stairs, or through bike-commuting to work. A key part of the piece, given its late-December publication, was its declaration that resolutions never last and are perhaps best avoided:

“Instead of creating a list of resolutions this year, create a new habit.”

I like the idea of giving up on resolutions. “This is going to be the year I ______,” doesn’t ever get me very far. Leo also shared his “top principles” for forming habits:

• Make it social.
• Do one habit at a time only.
• Make it your top priority.
• Enjoy the habit.

I took these to heart and decided to apply them to improving my mornings by taking a walk before work. My old morning routine went something like this: wake up, shower, dress for work, eat breakfast with Tom, say goodbye to Tom at 7:15, read the internet until it was time to leave for work at 8:00. The order of this varied depending on my wake-up time, but the point is, I was reliably wasting 45 minutes staring at a screen (by myself!) each morning.

I chose to modify my morning, rather than my afternoon, based on the idea that this had to be my top priority. I knew that if I aimed to take a walk after work that I would be inclined to make excuses to avoid doing it at the end of the work day. I also wanted to make it easy. This meant that I had to make it hard to not walk. Thus became the new routine: wake up, shower, dress for a walk, eat breakfast with Tom, walk out the door as Tom is also leaving, set a timer on my phone for 10 minutes, walk until the timer goes off, walk back, change into work clothes, leave for work at 8:00. My walk is different from day-to-day. I walk in whatever direction I want. Sometimes there is a “purpose,” e.g. a walk to the store for an item for dinner. Some mornings I walk and talk, which is helping me to kick a *bad* habit—talking on my cellphone on my commute to/from work. Mostly I am walking to walk. Going back and reading Leo’s post again, I realize that this habit is very zen indeed:

“So enjoy the habit change, in the moment, and don’t worry what the outcome of the activity is. The outcome matters very little, if you enjoy the journey.”

During my second week of walking, I started to take pictures on my walk. I’m not lugging a camera around, so they are always on my phone, but this practice adds to my own enjoyment and causes me to be more aware of my surroundings and thus more present, too. Taking photos is also a way to make it social—I’m using Instagram to take and edit my photos and push them to Flickr and sometimes Twitter. There’s no hard rule that every walk has a photo to go with it, but I like the idea that these pictures become a record of my walks—the weather, the light, where I went and when.

I haven’t yet decided if there will be a new habit in February (tomorrow!) or what that might be, though I have a few ideas. One thing’s for sure: my morning walks will continue. I’m hooked.

Tom and I walked at Wood Lake Nature Center on Sunday. This was our second time there, the first over Memorial Day in May 2011. There were no turtles in sight yesterday (they are in brumation this time of year, so I learned), but we did find an array of winter textures and a few chickadees.

Tom and I spent Memorial Day visiting Wood Lake Nature Center in Richfield (a first ring suburb of Minneapolis). The weather had been off-and-on all weekend and when it began to clear up on Monday we headed out, not wanting to wait too long… considering the sky might turn on us again. When we arrived our car was among few in the lot; when we left the lot was nearly full—a sign that others had also decided it was safe out, finally.

I’ve been wanting to visit Wood Lake ever since I met Karen Shragg, a naturalist/activist and Wood Lake’s manager, a couple of years ago. And, as with many trails in and around the Twin Cities, visiting the area left me and Tom with that why-haven’t-we-been-here-before? feeling. With three miles of trails, the center is a great place to walk and most of its trails are wheelchair accessible. Because of the way the trails loop in and out of Wood Lake’s wetlands, woods, and meadows it’s easy to take in a variety of habitats in a short walk and hard to miss the animal life. We saw five turtles, a muskrat, and one Baltimore oriole. Butterflies, ants, bees, dragonflies, turtles, and other birds also greeted us along the path. Missing from my photos are the birds: red-winged blackbirds, geese, and others whose names I’m not sure of were all around. If you’re into trail running, light hiking, or birding—this is a fantastic spot. For those reading locally, you’ll find the preserve just off Lyndale Avenue at Lakeshore Drive, a few blocks to the south of 60th and highway 62. Don’t forget your binoculars!