View Southeast from Washington Avenue Bridge

It's Light Out When I Go Home, Sometimes

One of the nice things about late February is that it's finally light enough in the evening that I can leave work while the sun is still in the sky and not feel like I just got there. It's also a nice photo time.

Third Roll of Film

My third roll of film came back last weekend. I'm really pleased with the results. Enjoy!

Emerald Ash Borer's Come to Town

The emerald ash borer, a nasty invasive insect highly effective at killing ash trees, arrived in Minneapolis and St. Paul a few weeks ago. Above is one of the traps they're using to try to determine how far it's spread.

After Dutch elm disease killed off most of the elm trees in the city, they planted another monoculture, this time ash. Brilliant!

We don't have any ash on our property (anymore -- one rotted out and fell due to other reasons a couple of years ago), so we're not looking at any personal losses. But, they're very common in the neighborhood and all over the city.

We have one apple tree, one buckeye sapling a few years old (planted after the ash fell), and one catalpa sapling one year old. The neighbor has a great big maple which gives us some shade too.

A Dreary Morning

This is all that's left of the Hulk Hogan's Pastamania building and its neighbor to the north. The lots have been seeded with grass, so I suppose there's no plans to build anything in the near future.

Out and About

Midnight Water Main Work

Last night, the city turned off water in our neighborhood from about 11pm until (they said) 3am. Here are some workmen down the block a little before midnight.

Neighbor Fail Double-Header

In Minneapolis, if you put bogus stuff out with your trash, you get one of these orange tags complaining about it. One of our neighbors attempted to submit some concrete pavers for trash collection, which are bogus. They received both this orange tag as well as a blue one. I didn't look closely and didn't see what the blue one was about, though, it seemed to be the same at a casual glance.

About a month ago, I complained about water pouring out of the ground in front of a different neighbor's house. Long story short (Erin queried not one but two city councillors), apparently it's the neighbor's problem, not the city's, even though somehow it's related to when the city turned off a water main???

Anyway, this is our slacker neighbor, who hasn't shoveled his driveway once in two years, almost never mows his lawn, and has ten-foot weed trees growing next to his house. So I was unsurprised when it wasn't until Monday when people came by and started working (and turned off our water at a different time than the door hanger said they would, but that's a different story). But now Erin's told by the city councillor's office that something went wrong and they're not coming back for another two weeks! Yeeesh.

Commuting Sunset

Couple of pics of downtown Minneapolis from this evening's commute.

Public Works Fail

This stream of water is emerging from the ground in front of my neighbor's house, since Friday at least which is when I noticed it. We called 311 and they told us that they'd "bid it out". It seems strange to me that the city does not have a crew of people on-call for these sorts of emergency repairs.

I wonder if Tim has any water in his house.

Project 100, #107.