The wife and I wanted to get outside this weekend, but the heat and mosquitoes make it difficult to do too much during the day. So we decided to visit the walking trails at nearby Conestee Park early on Saturday morning. At some point in the near future, the Swamp Rabbit Trail will connect with the Conestee Trails and the area will be filled with bikers, hikers and dog walkers. But for now, the area is pretty dead. The way I see it, that’s a feature and not a bug.
The wife’s been trying to talk me into getting a few chickens for a couple of years. We already have a garden in the backyard and she insists that other homes in our neighborhood have much more developed backyard gardens complete with rainwater catchment systems, bee hives and chicken coops. As part of her sales pitch, she bought tickets to the first annual Greenville Urban Farm Tour.
The wife and I are lucky enough to have a well-kept State Park just five miles from our house. The weather was great on Sunday, so we decided to hike some trails at Paris Mountain.
As I mentioned before, I’ve completely changed my meal planning practices. I used to buy meat in bulk at the grocery store and then plan my meals accordingly. Ever since we moved to Greenville, I’ve gone in the opposite direction. First, I hit one or both of my farmers’ markets and buy whatever looks good, then I go to my butcher, and finally I hit the grocery store to fill in the gaps. It might sound overly complicated, but everything is pretty close to home. It’s much cheaper than shopping at the grocery store and it means that I rely on produce to drive my meal planning. As a result, the wife and I only eat meat about half the days of the week.
It was unusually cool on Saturday morning, so the wife and I decided to ride a dozen or so miles on the Swamp Rabbit Trail. It’s been expanded since the last time I blogged about it. I promised to post some pictures, so here they are.
I mentioned a while back how much I enjoyed reading Frank Stitt’s cookbook. I actually lugged the giant tome to and from the beach over a few days. For my recent birthday, the wife bought me Soby’s New South Cuisine Cookbook so I could keep learning. Who could blame her? She eats the food.
The wife and I stumbled upon a Shriner Parade early on Saturday morning. In case you didn’t know, the Shriners are officially called the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. They’re an offshoot of the Freemasons and sponsor a 50-bed pediatric orthopaedic hospital here in Greenville. I don’t know why they didn’t hold the parade around lunchtime when downtown is bustling, but they got lucky with a surprisingly cool breeze. I was hoping for more fezzes and tiny cars, but it was fun nonetheless.
When the wife and I moved to Greenville, SC from Washington DC, we didn’t really know anyone. I set a meeting with mayor to talk about the city, the local economy, and get a sense of what’s in store for the metro area. We spoke for almost an hour and I enjoyed the conversation very much. I didn’t think my meeting request was weird at the time, but everybody now laughs at the mere mention of it. Anyway, I told the mayor that the main reason we chose Greenville over other cities across the southeast was the city council’s commitment to urban redevelopment and the relatively low cost of living. He suggested I write a guest column for the local paper about our decision-making process, so I did.
I was in the process of deleting old pictures from my phone when I ran across some pictures of Greenville after a brief snowstorm a few months ago. I think all the snow had melted by mid-afternoon, but it was pretty while it lasted.
I already posted some pictures of Greenville after a recent ice storm, but I thought I’d share these as well.
In case you were wondering about the picture at the top of this website, it’s the Liberty Bridge in Falls Park in downtown Greenville:
The park’s most striking feature is a unique pedestrian bridge that curves around a waterfall on the Reedy River. Named the Liberty Bridge at Falls Park on the Reedy, the 355-foot (108 m) long suspension bridge is supported by cables on only one side, giving an unobstructed view of the falls. It was designed by Boston firm Rosales + Partners with German firm Schlaich Bergermann & Partner as structural engineers and completed in the fall of 2004. It was awarded the Arthur G. Hayden medal for innovative design in 2005.
It’s pretty impressive, but you don’t have to take my word for it. Browse through this gallery to see more pictures of the bridge and the park:
