At the Restoration-In-Progress Café...

... you don't have to rest in peace. Talk about what you want.

(And if you have any shopping to do, please considering entering Amazon through the Althouse portal. It's the cost-free way to express appreciation for this blog. Thanks to all who've already done so.)

At the Birdhouse Moving Day Café...

... get all this crap out of here.

(Thanks to Chip Ahoy for animating of my photograph.)

At the Birdhouse Café...

... it's small but nice.

Late afternoon on the prairie.

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 But we're not out in the middle of nowhere. Civilization is just at hand:


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Quite lovely, I think!

Prairie sunset.

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Moonrise on the prairie.

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At the Prairie Café...

... reverie alone will do.

The prairie reverie.

There was a snowman the warm weather had made disproportionate:



And evil trees:



This one attempted to claw out my eyeball:



But these are all trivial details. In the end, it was mostly like this, which I consider essence of prairie...



... because, as you can see, there were no bees and no clover.

Prairie vortex.

Prairie.

(Enlarge.)

Skyline irony.

The Frank Lloyd Wright building revitalized downtown into putting up lots of taller buildings that diminish the impact of the architectural marvel that once dominated the view of Madison as you drive in from the south and look across Lake Monona:

"[T]he very downtown renaissance that it was meant to help induce has now rendered Monona Terrace smaller in proportion -- an irony that is doubled when you consider that the vertical backdrop renders Monona Terrace almost Prairie Style in its low, flat geometry."

The linked article really needs a larger photograph. I should link to a better skyline photograph -- or go take one. For now, here are some pretty cool 360° shots of the Wright building.

UPDATE: I did go take some pictures.

A prairie walk.

Take a walk through the prairie today in Wisconsin. The grass is seven feet high. I think about the settlers years ago who had to make their way through the sea of grass, as I walk on a path cut in the UW Arboretum.



Some of the flowers are nine feet tall:



Through the flowers, you can see the morning moon:



Thistles:



Trees, beautifully aged:



And beautifully dead: