Grant Park Farmer's Market

Stephen and I love buying local and organic food.  I've posted about the DeKalb Farmers Market that we try to go to at least once a month and we're always looking for healthy substitutes to our diet.  The park in our neighborhood, Grant Park, has a farmer's market every Sunday from 9:30am - 1:00pm in the warm months (April 29 - December 16).  Click here for the market's website.

source: grantparkmarket.org

Surprisingly, this week was the first time we went over to check it out.  It was pretty nice!  There were a large variety of vendors and there were tons of families out and about.  They even have a cooking demos by a local chef each week.  We caught the very end of the cooking lesson this week by Nick Melvin.  The chef demo on August 12 is on Quinoa Cuisine.  We're huge quinoa fans so I'm going to try to make it to that one.

The area where they host the cooking demos was gorgeous.  We plan to take some wedding pictures in Grant Park and this area is going to be 100% perfect.  I emailed the picture above to our wedding photographer right away.  Don't you love how the light comes through the giant trees to the stone arch. I'm pretty sure it used to be a fountain, now it's perfect for some wedding pictures.

We ended up buying some produce and some jam Sunday morning.  All of the produce that we needed for the week wasn't available at the market, so Stephen and I dropped off what we bought and headed to the DeKalb Farmer's Market to finish off our shopping list.  Great Sunday morning.

Over the weekend we also discovered our new favorite park not too far from our house - the South Bend Dog Park.  Yep, we found a legit dog park by our house.  I noticed the sign for the park a few months ago when we drove past on our way to a Dave Matthews Band Concert at Lakewood Amphitheater.  Now that Goose is old enough and fully recovered from his neutering surgery with all his shots we decided to take the pups out to see how they like it.  Obviously we knew Mabel would be in Heaven as long as we brought a ball, which we did.  Goose was pretty excited about his freedom off the leash.  He didn't quite understand fetch (he can do it in the house, but in wide open spaces he had no clue what to do) but he'd run with Mabel as she went after the ball.  The park is huge and they had tons of space to run.  We were lucky to be the only ones there on Saturday morning.  There are a lot of hills in the park so after 4 or 5 throws of the ball both pups were tired and we headed home.  We met another family on Sunday who come to the park all the time and they said work day evenings are packed.  We'll try to avoid those times because Mabel doesnt' always get along with other lady dogs.  The best part of the park - how tired they are when we get home.

Love Your Block: Peoplestown Neighborhood Clean-up

One of the best parts of being homeowners is loving our home and neighborhood.  We take pride in our home, want to protect it and continually to make it better.  Not every resident in our neighborhood feels the same way about their home.  Because of this lack of pride that some people have for the Peoplestown neighborhood, some of us neighbors have to step up and do more than others.  There are parts of the neighborhood that look horrible.  When guests drive by, I'm sure they're not impressed with what they're seeing.  It's also not a good look for house hunters who are drawn to the in-town neighborhood.  A possible new resident isn't going to buy the house next to an empty, over grown lot or buy a home after passing a street where the sidewalk is almost impassable because of overgrown bushes and weeds.

The Peoplestown Neighborhood Association, which Stephen and I participate in, received money from the Love Your Block program that gives money to neighborhoods to clean up problem areas.  We split into three teams and tackled three of the most important problem areas - across the street from our elementary school, a stretch of Hank Arron Drive that is the east border of the neighborhood and an empty lot that is surrounded by about 8 other homes.  The lot has been such a problem, this is the 3rd time the PNA has cleaned it up.

Stephen and I were in charge of the Hank Arron Drive, about 2 blocks worth of sidewalk.  This is how some of the sidewalks looked before our team got out there with rakes, shovels, weed killer and determination. 

Look at the trash and the dead leaves piled up.  If your not familiar with this road, it's leads right to Turner Field where the Braves play.  So many people drive up and down this road and it wasn't making a good impression.

Look at that, half the sidewalk is unusable because of the leaves.  Nice work City of Atlanta.  

It's not only the leaves on the ground, but weeds and vines from vacant lots are starting to take over the space as well.  You can barely see the sidewalk below.  One of the good parts about this area is how walkable it is - these sidewalks weren't helping.

So, a team of 6 of us headed out with our orange vests on and got to work.  After three hours of hard work you could actually walk down the sidewalk!  We filled more than 12 lawn and refuse bags from The Home Depot with lead leaves and everything else that we found while cleaning.  Some of the leaves had been there so long they had started to turn to dirt and there were so many bugs living there it shocked me.  I've never seen earth worms like the ones I saw on the sidewalk leaf piles.

Stephen took pictures while we were cleaning and of the finished product.  Three hours of work and we're very, very proud of what we were able to accomplish.  I wish we had been able to clean all day or had had a team of 10-15 people to tackle the area.  There was still a lot of work to do.

Don't you just love sidewalks that you can actually use?!  I'm so proud of all the work we did.  The other two areas that were cleaned also look amazing.  It's crazy what just one morning can do when you dedicate some time to cleaning up.  Some areas only needed a quick pass with the lawn mower.  That's it!  But for some homeowners that seems to be too much.  We drenched the weeds that were growing down to the sidewalk with weed killer, I can't wait to see all of them die!

Save our School: How APS is harming children & our neighborhood

Our neighborhood isn't the one you picture when you think of upperclass, suburban neighborhoods.  That's because we aren't.  You won't see home after home with white fences and BMWs in the driveway. We are a diverse neighborhood with working class families.  Many of our homes are single parent homes working hard to make ends meet.  Our homes aren't cookie cutter duplicates of the one next to it - we have character.  And the neighborhood is changing.  The crime is seeing significant drops, houses are being sold and young, married couples are moving in.  They city just spend millions of dollars to build a new park just a few blocks away.  It just opened in March.

Atlanta is in an education crisis.  It seems everywhere we look the city is trying to cut costs and close the most important aspects of the community.  Just yesterday MARTA released that they will have to make some significant cuts in the upcoming year, eliminating a lot of coverage and service.  What major metropolitan city can survive without public transportation?  Atlanta is also planning to close 10 public schools.  Atlanta Public Schools (APS) has been planning to close schools for months, the initial plan was announced in May 2011.  These schools were identified as having low enrollment therefore they aren't able to get the funding that larger schools receive and they are draining resources that could go to other schools.  They claim that each closed school will save $500k that will then be used to support the schools that remain open.

Since last Spring, neighborhoods of the schools that have been identified as ones that will be closed have been rallying together to convince APS to keep the schools open and to identify ways to keep them open and reduce costs.  There are some great plans out there - making schools more green, adding pre-K classes to schools to increase the numbers of students in attendance, and so many other plans.  The final decision to close the schools will be made on April 10, only a few days away.

The shocking thing, is that on April 1, the elementary school in my neighborhood was added to the "cut" list.  Never once had it been identified as an at-risk school.  Never once had parents of children in our neighborhood been given a reason to be concerned.  Never mentioned on a single list, the neighborhoods of Peoplestown, Summerhill and Grant Park didn't have to worry about DH Stanton Elementary School.  Until April 1, a Sunday, during Spring Break.  That's 10 days before the final vote.

APS is doing our neighborhood a disservice and acting unethically.  They say that the decision is based on economics.  This can't be the case - it wasn't the case for the past 10 months there couldn't have been a new development in a negative direction overnight.  If the schools closing were based on purely financial analysis, there is no way a school could be added at the 11th hour.

I had a Realtor friend of mine pull some numbers for the area zoned to attend DH Stanton.  In the past 24 months, 108 homes have been sold.  In the past 12 months, 54 homes have been sold and 16 homes are currently under contract or pending.  The neighborhood is growing, not declining, which means there is no way the financial situation in our neighborhood is declining.  Additionally, the 2012 census shows over 500 4-year olds in our zip code.  500!  Those are all upcoming Kindergardeners.  Our house doesn't have children yet but we'd love to send our kids to the school 2 blocks away.  I'm sure we're not the only household in this situation.  In fact I know we aren't, I met other couples like us last night at the rally to save our school.

I plan to stand up and raise my voice to try to save our elementary school.  This isn't a black or white issue, it's about classes.  Of the school closures, most of them are on the south side of town, the lower income areas.  These schools around me will be closed to help fund the schools further north, the upper income areas.

I plan to stand up against APS' plan to close DH Stanton Elementary School.  As a single, affluent, childless woman,  I want my future children to have the opportunity to walk to school.  I want them to be able to know the kids in houses around them; driving down the street any afternoon will show you that there are plenty of kids.  I want my neighborhood to be thriving in 5 years, it's definitely on it's way now, why stop it.  We have a new, state of the art park in the neighborhood where students of DH Stanton can play.  We don't have school bus traffic up and down our streets each morning because kids can walk to school.  Just last month we had a representative from the Governors office come to the Peoplestown Neighborhood Association meeting to talk about their plans for the neighborhood.

I hope that the board and Superintendent of APS hears our voices.  I hope they see the support the school has from the parents and neighbors in the area.  We are willing to support the school, please don't take it away from us.  Let's give our kids the chance to grow up knowing and loving their neighborhood.  The only way they will grow up to understand the importance of community is to show them what a community is.

Save D.H. Stanton Elementary School.

UPDATE:  I forgot to mention above that APS does not have a single plan in place for what they will do with our school once it's closed.  The very last thing we need in our area is a large, vacant building to be a home for illegal activity.  If the school is going to be maintained yet vacant, I don't see how that is saving money.  It will still need security, maintenance and utilities to run the maintenance.  If the school is closed and shut down completely, it will cost even more to get it up and running again.  Yet another example of the poor decision making of APS.