In view of the title, Alexandria’s annual festival welcoming the beginning of the summer season, it seemed appropriate to adopt the above sunrise photo over Lake Darling – taken about a month ago and is my computer wallpaper – as the opening gambit.

Friday night’s ribfest, concert, and street dance on 2nd Avenue apparently was a success despite the downpour.  As fair weather fans, we were among the absentees.  But Saturday morning dawned bright and beautful – and despite forecasts to the contrary, remained lovely all day.  So we had breakfast with  Big Ole at Fort Alexandria . . .

[Museum volunteer extraordinaire, Laura McCoy, initially fought this photo attempt.  But I just kept saying, “Smile.”  And she finally did.]

[U-Haul was unveiling its national Alexandria ad campaign, as subsequently modeled by the supervisor from the free t-shirts available there.]

Tribune gave it kind of a “hoaxy” review:

http://www.startribune.com/local/122781194.html

And then we took a stroll to the back of the boat museum to check on the progress of the Maritime Gardens:

And signs of summer are finally here – we have leaves!  And flowers!  And boats!

Finally, for now, we went to the winery in the afternoon where we were joined by our most recent subscribers to the Camp Social Director’s missives, Sara and Jim Sevey, to see Matt Veline perform.  We discussed how fortunate we are in Alex to have access to so many talented musicans – such as when Funky Gumbo Trio blew the doors off SAWA on Thursday night.  Of course, Matt did not disappoint – and joined by his wife, Julie, on several songs, and a solo performance by his son, Daniel, had an SRO crowd rocking all afternoon.

[The supervisor, Matt, and Sara.]

[Matt w/son Daniel.  It was fun watching “dad’s” face while Daniel wowed the crowd.]

[Sara performing volunteer photography work.]

Julia & Matt performing Are You Strong Enough to be My Man?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEKgeCn56hw

Julia & Matt performing You’re Not the One for Me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByA6F0kQ4ww

Matt performing In Dreams – fuzzy focus because (?) it started with Julie dancing with her dad on his 79th birthday

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LonCsH_ZqxQ

Matt performing Take Good Care of My Baby

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi4nzsLDF2Q

Mikko is at the winery today – thus, more will be added here later . . .

Later – Sunday – was forecast to be the nicest day of the 4-day weekend.  Well, it wasn’t.  It was gray and drizzly off and on when we went out to see Mikko at the winery – nevertheless, he was performing outside.

[When we discovered Mikko was also a Vonnegut fan, I went and got my hat!]

[Remember when a guitar player would just show up with a  . . . guitar?  Here’s Mikko’s larder, which is now pretty standard.]

A favorite song from a favorite artist:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ruthobert#p/a/u/0/KlUZ9JcIalM

And Mikko would like us all to note the following:

Fiddlin’ Sam goes off to the University of Colorado next fall, and the feeling is we won’t be able to keep her down on the farm once she has seen Par-ee.