I like Artown. The problem is I never get around to attending all the events that sound interesting. Yesterday I did make it to two of them.

My first stop was "Art in the Garden" on Monroe Street. I attended that a year ago and returned just because I like the garden so much. The L shape of the house forms a kind of courtyard behind it. The surface is mostly paved, but there are lots of trees and planters. The owner is very gracious, both for opening her garden to the public and in visiting with the strangers that swarm all over it.

From there I went to Lavender Ridge's "Art on the Lawn" because I've been interested in whether the people who started the lavender farm on West 4th Street could be successful. Apparently hordes of other people (mostly women) were interested, too. My assessment is they are not so much farmers as marketers. I don't think they've missed an angle, from the large gift shop with both lavender and non-lavender items to the rentable events building. They seem to embrace the low-volume, high-profit marketing philosophy ($8 one-gallon lavender plants), although I could be wrong about the low-volume part judging by all the credit card flashing I observed. Not everyone is as cheap as I am.

I wish I hadn't been too cheap to attend the Rockin' Docs concert at Wolf Run last night. Dr. Louis Bonaldi, a member of the band Rejuv a Nation and a plastic surgeon, is a genuinely nice guy. He performed a couple of skin grafts on scar tissue for someone I know in the 1980s. After the surgery, Dr. Bonaldi continued to see the guy for years for the problems that necessitated the grafts, which had nothing at all to do with plastic surgery. I'm not sure he even charged him or his insurance. Last night's concert was a benefit for the UNR School of Medicine's Student Outreach Clinic for the uninsured and for Renown's Healing Arts Foundation.

The good news is Artown is only half over!