Present Adventures in the City

We arrived in the city at 2:30 on Thursday afternoon for two hours' tour and work at the Heidelberg Project in Detroit, a neighborhood-sized art installation and an old friend of Summers-Knoll. (Read all about them at heidelberg.org.) Under the supervision of our old friend Margaret, Heidelberg's educational director, we weeded out six flower beds in the neighborhood playground and will return in the spring to plant flowers there and to paint the walls of the raised beds.

After heading back to our spacious attic in the Mexicantown guest house, we bussed partway downtown and then caught the People Mover for Ford Field, where we watched the world champion USA Women's National Team defeat Haiti by a tidy five-nil. Carli Lloyd, hat-trick heroine in the World Cup Final, repeated those heroics. The kids will remember that less than how minutely they calculated their ten dollars' per diem down to the last scrap of cotton candy. That was math in action.

Back in our attic, the kids were spotted ten minutes for an epic pillow fight atop our twenty mattresses, then half an hour for card games; then we read Detroit history aloud for another twenty minutes before hitting the lights and dropping off rather abruptly to sleep.

(Our guest house serves as the headquarters of a fantastic organization called Summer in the City, responsible for educational programs, social services, and fabulous murals all over the city. Ask Rachel all about it; she is a charter member--or check them out here: summerinthecity.com.)

The next morning we were up at seven, with Evan and Nik manning the bacon skillets, had breakfast at the house before heading back to the east side, where we put in a shift mulching raspberry, elderberry and mulberry bushes. We got a quick tour from Roxanne, the farm manager and another Friend of SK. Then we got back on the bus to get to Los Galanes, our favorite restaurant in the city. (Last time we were there, so was Terry Crews.) One neighborhood constitutional, one class session in the attic, one whirlwind clean-up, and two dozen tiny Mexican popsicles later, we were en route back home to Summers-Knoll.