Totally Texas -- Seize the weekend at Cottonwood Park

Richardson’s Cottonwood Art Festival

Cottonwood Park

1321 W. Belt Line Rd. (between Coit & Waterview)

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The Weather Channel’s predicting sunny skies, gentle winds, temperatures in the 80’s and low 90’s: a perfect weekend to spend outdoors. Like at Richardson’s Cottonwood Art Festival this Saturday and Sunday.

Twice a year (repeating the first weekend in October), shady Cottonwood Park is transformed into a colorful tent city as more than 240 juried artists display their work in a variety of media. This year’s featured artist is Minnesotan Carl Zachmann, whose kinetic sculptures explore the designs and textures of America’s industrial past.

My family regularly strolls through the booths, samples the food booths, sways to festival-long music from local entertainers, and maybe, just maybe, finds time to feed the ducks at Cottonwood Park’s lake.

Most of the professional artists pitch their tents on the lakes’ east side. At ArtStop on the west shore, kids can work in plaster, collages, and clay sculpting on a potter’s wheel.

Festival hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission and parking are free. This year the festival has expanded parking to the Richardson High School’s football stadium parking lot. A free shuttle runs both days, 9 a.m. - 9 p.m.

The artists’ works are available for purchase, as are food and beverages, and some children’s events require a fee. Festival merchandise vendors and most artists accept major credit cards. ATMs are located outside the permanent pool house by the concession area on festival’s main street.

See www.cottonwoodartfestival.com for more information--and to download the festival’s free app.

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Need more outside time? Celebrate Native Plants and Prairies Day Saturday, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m., at the Bath House Cultural Center on the shores of White Rock Lake, 521 E. Lawther Drive in Dallas.  Free.  See
www.ntmn.org/ for additional event information.

　

And visit ten backyard urban coops at the annual Peep at the Coops tour Sunday, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m., in East Dallas features ten backyard urban coops. Besides chickens, this year’s tour includes duck and bunny coops. Maps are $10 (only one needed per group), available at tour headquarters, Stonewall Gardens, Stonewall Jackson Elementary School, 5828 E. Mockingbird, Dallas. Drive or join the bike tour of the nearest coops, leaving the gardens at 12:30 p.m. Sunday. See www.apeepatthecoops.org/.

(Next Friday: Promise mom a rose garden--and more--for her special day.)

Totally Texas -- Cottonwood Fest springs anew

Richardson’s Cottonwood Art Festival

Cottonwood Park

1321 W. Belt Line Rd. (between Coit & Waterview)

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The view out my window as I wrote this was a cold spitting rain. Now it’s sunny and the Weather Channel forecasts temperatures for this weekend in the sixties to seventies -- great weather for the spring session of Richardson’s Cottonwood Art Festival this Saturday and Sunday, May 4-5.

My family has attended Cottonwood happily even in the rain, and even if the breezes are still chilly, a brisk walk in the park should get things warmed up. Cottonwood Park, that is. Or get out of the wind under tents with the art, sip something warming in the Lakeside Courtyard while listening to day long music by local entertainers. And bring treats for the park lake’s fearless ducks and geese, who gobble treats no matter what the weather.

With more than 240 juried artists exhibiting, there’s something for everyone to like. The boys are partial to giant animal sculptures, preferably moving ones. Most of the art is on the east side of the lake. Across the bridge to the west is the ArtStop children’s area, with arts and crafts activities for children, including a chance to sculpt clay on a potter’s wheel.

The festival is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. Music is 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, 10:40 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.

Although admission and parking are free, you will need money for food, drinks, some children’s activities, and of course, art. Vendors generally take credit cards.  ATMs are available at nearby shopping centers. Park on side streets or behind Cottonwood (where the playground is always open). Best parking is early in the morning, but whether you come early or late, you’ll do a lot of walking, so wear comfortable shoes.

More information, entertainment schedule and list of participating artists, see www.cottonwoodartfestival.com/.

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Also this weekend -- Sunday’s A Peep at the Coops tour of urban chicken keepers. Maps of tour sites are available for $5 at Stonewall Garden, Stonewall Jackson Elementary School, 5828 East Mockingbird Lane in Dallas, beginning at 11 a.m. Sunday. Tour proceeds benefit the school’s learning garden. For information, including tips on chicken etiquette, see
www.apeepatthecoops.org/.

Totally Texas -- A peep at the coops

East Dallas Urban Coop Tour

Stonewall Jackson Elementary School

5828 E. Mockingbird Lane,

Dallas, TX 75206

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For a city known more for big business, big oil and big hair, Dallas has become “a hot bed of chicken keeping.” That’s from Mariana Greene, Dallas Morning News Garden and Home editor, who brought her “Tales from the Hen House” to the Dallas Arboretum earlier this year.

At this weekend’s East Dallas Urban Coop Tour -- A Peep at the Coops -- those of us who keep chickens, who are thinking of keeping them, or just remember the joys of hunting fresh eggs with our grandmothers, can get an inside look at what it takes to have farm-fresh eggs in our own backyards.

This year’s annual tour of 13 East Dallas chicken raisers is this Sunday, May 20, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., rain or shine. (After all, hens don’t take days off for rain.)

Headquarters for the tour is at the Gardens and Outdoor Science Lab of Stonewall Jackson Elementary School, 5828 E. Mockingbird Lane, just east of Central Expressway. The only charge is $5 for maps of the sites, available the day of the tour. Cash and credit cards accepted, and the maps can be shared by members of the same tour group.

The tour’s site, ww.apeepatthecoops.org/, states the first 750 people to buy maps also receive a reusable bag from Central Market with magazine, coupons, chicken info, and more.

Proceeds from maps, as well as from a raffle for a mobile chicken coop and sale of T-shirts, benefit the Stonewall Gardens. I first got to know these wonderful teaching gardens as a volunteer tutor at Stonewall more than a decade ago. The local Stonewall community values them so highly that when the Dallas ISD cut funding for the garden instructor position, volunteers established a non-profit organization for their support.

Also at the gardens, local chicken expert Dan Probst and Custom Coop Company owner Bob Richie, will present seminars on the hows of raising backyard chickens.

Food trucks from Easy Slider and Rock and Roll Bake Shop will be at Stonewall, so you won’t need to miss Sunday dinner to take the tour.

I haven’t seen a list of sites, but I hope one of them will be Ms. Greene’s own backyard chicken coop, whose bantam hen residents Thelma and Louise posed for the picture accompanying this post.

Please see the Peep at the Coops website for additional information, including parking, sponsors, and the etiquette of visiting the coop sites.