We went to the Dane County Farmers' Market early this morning. Rewarded for our efforts, we came home with the quintessential cheese curds made that very morning, a colorful mix of purple, yellow, blue, and white potatoes, ground emu meat, and parsley pine-nut pesto. A good haul, but it wasn't a pleasant stroll around the Capitol Square as usual. After all, we're in the second week of November - it was cold and snow flurries were spewing from the gray clouds. It only makes sense that this is the last market on the Square for 2008. But wait!

Looking for great food, a fun place to explore, and a menu featuring the best of the Midwest, plus other food favorites from the open road. Look no further than Motor, the restaurant at the Harley Davidson Museum located just south of downtown Milwaukee. We made plans to visit the museum in August, but by the time we drove to Milwaukee from Madison, we were hungry.

Cranes and cranberries. Two great reasons for me to take a day trip to Necedah to attend the Crane Fest this weekend. On Saturday, the whooping cranes were flying early in the morning, practicing behind their "foster mom" ultralight airplane, and showing off for the crowd that gathered to watch their wing formations. Then in the afternoon, it was the cranberries turn to attract attention.

The Seth Peterson Cottage sits on a bluff overlooking Mirror Lake near Lake Delton, Wisconsin. It was one of Frank Lloyd Wright's last commissions, and was completed in 1959, the year of Wright's death. Very little was published about this building when it was originally constructed. However, when the building was rehabbed in the late 1980s, the work was acclaimed as one of Wright's most architecturally significant designs.

I love gardens. All kinds of gardens. Flower gardens, community gardens, butterfly gardens. And a recent visit to Old World Wisconsin near Eagle, Wisconsin sparked an interest in yet another type of garden - the heirloom garden.

Old World Wisconsin , one of the ten Wisconsin Historical Society's sites throughout the state, sprawls on nearly 600 acres of rolling countryside in the Kettle Moraine area, about 35 miles southwest of Milwaukee and 55 miles east of Madison. It features a slice of life out-of-doors museum re-creation with working farms and settlements established by immigrants to Wisconsin in the mid- to late-1800s.

I received a creative response from a WisconsinNative reader and photographer to a question in my last post regarding art in Milwaukee. Marty Knippel sent me a photograph to make his point regarding the steel orange sculpture, The Calling, and its potential conflict with the extra-ordinary view of Calatrava's architectural sculpture known to most Milwaukeeans as the Milwaukee Art Museum.

In his photograph titled The Blocking, Marty gives his succinct opinion. Behind his close-up photograph of the sculpture, The Calling, are the barely visible wings of the Art Museum.

What do you think?

Another one of my visits to Milwaukee produced some photos of one of the cities’ main and oldest streets, Wisconsin Avenue. This huge sculpture is at the top of the street near Lake Michigan, and stands across the street from the Milwaukee Art Museum. When it was erected by American sculptor Mark di Suvero in 1982, it overlooked the street and set off a nearby blue building, and also complemented the blue/green shadings of Lake Michigan.

Since the construction of Santiago Calatrava’s addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2001, opponents have occasionally asked that the steel orange sculpture be re-located.

Milwaukee is rumbling with the roar of motorcycles, and within a few days, the noise will be deafening. More than 500,000 bikers are taking part in "Ride Home" to Milwaukee, originating in 105 designated cities throughout the US. They will be in the Milwaukee area to celebrate Harley-Davidson's 105th anniversary this coming Thursday through Sunday.

Have you ever wandered in Wisconsin's woods or meadows, and wished you could grow the flowers that you admire in the wild in your backyard garden? Well, if you were ever a Boy Scout or Girl Scout, or you were a visitor to a State Park, you probably learned the basic rule for peaceful co-existence with nature. "Leave only your footprints; take only memories and photographs." But those wildflowers are so pretty!

Well, now you can keep the wildflowers in their natural habitat and still enjoy these beauties at home. How?

Only a few days ago the fans of the Green Bay Packers said good-bye to perennial favorite Brett Favre as he left Wisconsin for the bright lights of New York City and the Jets. Many of us were sad to say good-bye. Though some of us never really forget our favorite Packer quarterbacks.

Bring back Bart?