Joanne will be doing henna body art at the park from 3-7:00 p.m. for market goers. You can get a sneak peak at some of her designs here, which she’ll be doing by donation.
Nadia will be hosting a Kindermusik session at 3:30 p.m.
Nurses from Toronto East General Hospital’s Emergency Department will be on hand with some summer safety information.
Socktopuses! This weeks craft is super easy to make for all ages. Have any lonely socks laying around, sad without their partner? Give them a new purpose in life as cuddly, playable socktopuses. 4:30 with Mrs. Darling this week at the Market’s Kids Kourner.
Do you know the difference between good sugars and bad sugars? Well, Jay from Danbrie Farms thinks our neighbourhood is full of people who know the difference and that’s why he likes coming to our market. Jay brings us only the best sugars found in real maple syrup produced on his family’s sugar bush in Milton. He sells a variety maple delights, including maple syrup, maple butter, maple raspberry jelly and maple jalapeño jelly (which is apparently a great addition to a stir fry). He also sells beefy goodies from his father Jim’s farm in Durham – beef patties, ground beef and summer sausage – all grass fed. How about a little beef stir fry for dinner tomorrow?
Our Summer Class Pass season is running through July until Thurs. Aug. 30th. We are offering a variety of classes which you can drop into with a Class Pass. Drop into any class / any time all summer long! The benefits are great if:
You are planning a vacation this summer and don’t want to pay for classes you can’t attend;
You want to try out different classes (a great way to cross train and see amazing results);
You want to share your pass with a friend to save money. Passes are transferrable and two or more punches can be used each class if you want to bring someone.
Classes are located in the Danforth East and Upper Beaches area – East Lynn Park, Cassels Park and Monkey Magoo’s Indoor Playground.
You can purchase a 5 Class Pass ($90 + tax) or 10 Class Pass ($160 + tax) online. (Check website for other payment options)
We have just added a 2nd Mommy and Me Boot Camp class, and to celebrate, we are allowing you to try your first class FREE for the rest of July. Classes are Mondays at 3:30pm and Thursdays @ 3:00pm. For more information, please contact us here.
While we’re on the topic of health and fitness, here’s a list from Tara S. of a few other local places that you might want to check out:
What do you get when you combine passionate local volunteers with laughter, tears and votable motions? Well, that would be a DECA Board meeting! Our next bi-monthly meeting will be on Tuesday, July 31 at 7:30p.m., and we would love for you to join us! (Just joking about the tears!)
What happens at a DECA Board meeting? Our meetings are where we meet to chat, laugh, debate, brainstorm, share, and plan all of our neighbourhood improvement events and activities.
Maybe you don’t know us? Don’t let that stand between you and DECA. We are your neighbours, and truly, we believe that more is merrier!
Once upon a time we used to meet in each other’s homes but DECA folk are just too much fun for even the most sizeable East York kitchen, so we moved to a local restaurant! That’s right – you can order food and drink at our meeting to tide you over to the very last motion!
Our meetings are open to all DECA members, and/or to anyone interested in volunteering or helping out in some way. If you’re interested in attending the meeting, or if you have any questions about DECA, please email info(at)danfortheastcommunityassociation.com.
By the way, have you “liked” us on Facebook yet? Please click here to find our page!
Market this week: CornFest, Godelie Family Farms & Cooks
Time to celebrate all things CORN! It’s Cornfest at the East Lynn Park Farmers’ Market this week. Toronto’s famed storyteller Dan Yashinsky will be telling his stories at 4:30 p.m. and the music of Bad Dog will set the mood for market goers and picnickers alike starting at 5:00 p.m. Be prepared to sing along! And don’t forget your toonies as there will be cobs of boiled corn for sale at the DECA table.
Speaking of corn, I spent some time chatting with Harry from Godelie Farmily Farm last week. Godelie Family Farm owners Gary & Blanche Godelie have been one our market’s pioneers having been with us since the first year. Harry leaves the Godelie farm in Otterville at about 10 a.m. each week with corn, beans, cucumber, potatoes and many other fresh goodies that are picked daily. That means that the corn he sells at our market is picked at 6:00 a.m. and can be on your table at 6:00 p.m. Amazing! As people shopped last week Harry asked them how long they boiled their corn – most people said between 8-10 minutes. Turns out you only need to boil it for two minutes as it keeps the sugars from turning starchy. I can attest that the corn is scrumptiously sweet right now as Harry convinced me to try some raw last week. It was surprisingly delicious. Try it.
Volunteer cooks:We have over a dozen volunteers who cook dinner for our farmers each week. They do it as a way to say thank you to the farmers and makes it so they don’t have to drive home on an empty stomach. We have one volunteer signed up each week but given it’s peak season for the market we are looking for some additional volunteers to help with meals over the next two months to help distribute the load. If you are interested in helping contribute to a meal please contact Shelley – shelleydarling (at)yahoo.ca.
DECA Tree Group
The new DECA TREE GROUP meets this Thursday July 19 at 7 p.m. at Relish (back room). New members welcome! We are hoping to get the group started on some projects, big and small. If you have time before the group meets, please read Every Tree Counts: A Portrait of Toronto’s Urban Forest. This will help us make a plan for enhancing the tree canopy in our fabulous neighbourhood. If you can’t read it in time, please come anyway. There are many ways to get involved. We especially need to get water to our newest local trees. Hope to see you there!
Farmers’ Market this week: Cookstown Greens, Little Libraries and Kid Fun.
If you’ve ever wondered about the farms and farmers that bring you their produce each week, you’re not alone. We’ll be featuring snippets about each farm on the blog on a regular basis. Here’s some interesting facts about one of our vendors.
Cookstown Greens — The unique and rare array of organic vegetables from Cookstown Greens travel just under 100km to get to our market. Although they bring a different selection of produce each week depending on what’s in season, recently they’ve had Welsh onions, Roosevelt potatoes, baby fingerling potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes (which are apparently not from Jerusalem, nor are they artichokes), basil seedlings, pea shoots, micro-Asians, coriander seedlings, rainbow chard, baby salad greens and broccoli brassica. Cookstown Greens’ produce is available at a number of markets and retail shops in the GTA, but they love coming to our market because, as farmer Gilbert says, you can tell the community knows there is a market going on. So why not try some of their greens this week and let us know what you think?
Don’t forget to stop by the DECA booth. This week you can hear about the Little Free Libraries project. Maybe you’ll be the next person to open a library in Toronto?
For the little ones:
Kindermusick with Nadia will start at 3:30 p.m.
Crafts with Ms. Darling will take place at 4:30 p.m. This week Mrs. Darling is hosting a velvet art colouring party. Kids can make beautiful vivid, fuzzy greeting cards or bookmarks. Supplies generously donated by Silly Goose.
the gang from Silly Goose will be back at 5:30 p.m. for some fun park activities.
TEGH Open House
And if you are looking for even more to do on Thursday evening, Toronto East General Hospital will be hosting a Community Open House from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. Click here for more details.
Main Square Madness Party this Saturday
If that’s not enough community activity for you then you’ll want to check out the Main Square Madness Party on Saturday, July 14th hosted by Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon. The party includes bike tune up lessons from 32 Spokes & Bicycle Commons and the opportunity to help a gardening crew beautify the area, a local artist paint a mural and clean up litter with the councillor herself. Check out the flyer for more information.
Thanks to Sarah K. for this update from DECA Parks!
There’s a lot going on in our DECA-area parks this summer and we wanted to provide an end-to-end update for our park-loving readers.
East-End DECA – Stephenson Park
First up we have Stephenson Park (one block south of Danforth and one block west of Main) a little-known green haven just inside of DECA’s eastern border. This recreation space has a baseball diamond, a great playground, and a wading pool – there is as much fun to be had here as we would find in our beloved East Lynn Park.
DECA Board Member and renowned illustrator, Tak Bui, recently orchestrated a painting project on the wading pool surface, for which he generously volunteered his own amazing illustrations. The result is an ethereal watery illusion of sea creatures under the little ones’ feet – a perfect destination on a hot summer day!
This past winter, Tak also dreamed up a plan to transform a barren bit of tree-lawn on Stephenson Avenue into a mini-urban garden. The garden is now ready for planting, thanks to all the hard working volunteers who got down and dirty to make this project a reality. See the before and after pics below. Props go out to Danforth Lumber for donating materials for the project!
BeforeAfter
West-End DECA – Monarch Park
On DECA’s western border we find the beautiful and busy Monarch Park (at the south end of Monarch Park Ave). The biggest news of late is that the water slide has finally re-opened after lying dormant for many, many years. As the mercury rises, folks from other ‘hoods in Toronto will be jealous of our local attraction. If you are 43” or higher, this super soaker will have you cooled off in no time!
Speaking of Monarch Park, a group of local residents have organized a Friends of Monarch Park group that will be spearheading future improvements within the park. After two community meetings, a Steering Committee has been formed and a number of sub-committees have been created. If you are interested in volunteering with this group, please visit the group’s Facebook page and let them know. You can also email them at friends.monarchpark(at)yahoo.ca.
And we bet you’re wondering what’s going on behind Monarch Park Collegiate, right? Last year, the TDSB approved the lease/sale of their athletic field for the construction of a state-of-the-art athletic facility for both students and the community. Monarch Park Stadium will include a field, track, clubhouse, field lighting, and a winter dome – click here for more information. Tentative completion date is fall 2012.
Please leave a comment telling everyone about your favourite DECA neighbourhood park!
