Today was the first day of my artist residency here at Homestead National Monument. Started out with a stop at the visitor's center - learned so much that I had to call it quits about half way through. Save some for later! Then hiked most of the trails through the tall, reclaimed prairie land. Lots of birds. An amazing amount and variety of butterflies! It's a small park, by National Parks standards - 160 acres, but it's still overwhelming. Especially when you think about the amount of effort it took to produce a crop in the late 1800s. Free land is one thing, but making it a consistently productive and viable farm is another thing altogether!

Angry thunderclouds growl outside tonight. Somehow it's reassuring.

So, a very cool thing is that the park just wrapped up 'Art in the Park' week. Today was the last artist - Chris Witulski. He demonstrated how to make marbles. He had a pretty cool lampworking set-up.

Chris Witulski with his cool lampwork torch, making marbles