Butterfly Tent Closes + Oaxacan Octopus

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What's up, neighbors!

There's a countdown running out at the Chattahoochee Nature Center. The Butterfly Encounter, that walk-through tent in Roswell where hundreds of live butterflies drift around at your eye level and land on your shoulders, opened June 8 and closes for good on Sunday, August 30. After Sunday afternoon it's gone until next summer. Me and my wife have been putting it off since June. Not doing that again.

Saturday morning has a can’t miss event, too. The Sandy Springs Civic Roundtable is taking over the farmers market at City Springs from 8:30 to noon, and they went all in: face painting, crafts for every age, a bubble machine, giant Connect Four, cornhole, and a Community Passport your kids stamp at nonprofit booths for prize drawings. Grand prize is four tickets to City Springs Theatre Company's run of Anastasia in December. And it costs nothing to walk up.

Before any of that, I owe you a dinner tip. Casi Cielo on Roswell Road has been sitting on a 4.7 doing Oaxacan food alongside what they claim is the largest mezcal collection in Atlanta. The grilled octopus is the thing people won't stop writing about. I've got thoughts below.

Keep scrolling for a Cocker Spaniel named Chip who had a rough start, a Dunwoody showcase home worth guessing at, and 206 trees in Brookhaven that just put 100 neighbors in a room.

- Andrew

When was the last time you actually looked at your homeowners policy?

For most folks in Atlanta and the Perimeter area, the honest answer is "when we bought the house." Which would be fine, except home values around here are up $150K to $200K+ since 2020. If your policy hasn't kept up, your dwelling limit is probably short of what it would actually cost to rebuild today. That gap won't show up on your bill. It only shows up when you file a claim, which is the worst time to find out.

Peachy Insurance is Atlanta-based and built to make this kind of check painless. No call center, no upselling, no runaround. Just a licensed local agent who looks at your full picture and gives you a straight answer on where you stand.

Three things worth a quick look while it's on your mind:

Takes about 5 minutes. Free, no pressure.

Get a free coverage review or text/call 770-520-7095 (Mon-Fri, closed weekends)

Chattahoochee Nature Center
9135 Willeo Rd, Roswell, GA
Friday, August 28 - Sunday, August 30, 2026
Fri and Sat 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Sun 12:00 to 5:00 PM
Tent closes at 4:30 PM daily
$20 adults, $16 seniors 65 and up, $16 students 13 to 18, $14 ages 3 to 12, under 2 free, and that same ticket covers the whole nature center for the day

The Butterfly Encounter isn't a permanent exhibit you can catch whenever. It opened June 8 and it closes Sunday, August 30. Soon, it’ll be done until next summer.

The setup is a walk-through tent where hundreds of live butterflies move around freely at your eye level, which is a very different thing from watching one through glass. They land on shoulders, and they land on hats. Kids stand perfectly still for longer than you thought your kid was capable of.

Go in the morning while the tent is warming up. That's when they're most active. The same ticket covers the river boardwalk, the animal ambassadors, and all 127 acres of the nature center for the rest of the day.

One practical note. Sunday hours don't start until noon, so if you're counting on Sunday you've got a five hour window and a 4:30 hard stop on the tent itself. Friday and Saturday both open at 9:00 AM, and Saturday is also the final day of the center's extended summer opening.

Pick a morning and get there early.

We walked in expecting a nice-enough Mexican spot on Roswell Road and got something a lot more ambitious. Casi Cielo does Oaxacan cooking alongside what the house calls the largest mezcal collection in Atlanta, and the room reads polished without being fussy. It works for a date night, a long patio afternoon, or a client dinner. That's a rare trick for one restaurant to pull off.

Order the pulpo. The grilled octopus reviewers keep describing as melting in your mouth. The tuétano, roasted bone marrow, is the other one people get emotional about. One reviewer said it tastes like nostalgia, which is a hell of a thing to say about bone marrow.

For tacos, the pollo caramalizado is chicken marinated in caramel and tamarind that comes out so soft it nearly collapses. The Huachinango Sarandeado is a charcoal-grilled red snapper under roasted tomatoes, cooked until it falls apart. The 16 ounce N.Y. Mexicano steak shows up with a chimichurri that holds its own against Buckhead steakhouse territory.

The drinks are interesting, too. The Chilerita is muddled orange with a grasshopper salt rim, and on a warm afternoon roughly everybody on the patio is holding one. Order a mezcal flight and a server walks you through how each one was made.

Price: $$ to $$$
Hours:
Mon-Thu 11 AM-10 PM
Fri-Sat 11 AM-11 PM
Sun 11 AM-9 PM
Website

Same owners, same corner on Houze Way, since 1987. That's thirty-nine years of fixing Roswell's bikes, and it shows in the part of the shop most people never think to look at.

The service department is bigger in square footage than most competitors' entire operations. The mechanics do nothing but fix bikes. They don't answer sales calls, they don't build new inventory, and they're trained at the United Bicycle Institute and certified by Giant, Scott, Mavic and Shimano. Out front there are 800-plus bikes built and ready to ride.

Buy your bike there and you get the Comp Tune free and unlimited, forever, no appointment, done while you wait. They also run a trade-in program: bring proof of purchase, they appraise your old bike, and the value goes toward a new one or a gift card.

The National Bicycle Dealers Association named it one of America's Best Bike Shops, and Atlanta Magazine called it the best bike shop in Atlanta.

The reviews keep landing on the same thing: people stay customers for decades. One guy described bringing in his son's new mountain bike alongside his own older Cannondale when service was already backed up weeks, and the staff insisted on adjusting the kid's gears and brakes on the spot anyway. A 4.6 across 246 reviews doesn't happen by accident.

One honest caveat. They only do full service and warranty work on e-bikes they sell, and they won't pull the wheels off hub-motor or throttle e-bikes to fix a flat.

Price: $$ (Basic Tune Up $60, Pro Tune Up $99.99, Complete Overhaul $349.99, suspension service add-on $150)
Hours:
Mon-Sat 10 AM-6 PM
Sun Closed
Website: roswellbicycles.com

6 Beds
6 Baths
5,301 sq ft

A) $1,595,000

B) $1,795,000

C) $1,975,000

D) $2,250,000

About 100 residents packed the third floor of Brookhaven City Centre at 4001 Peachtree Rd NE, Brookhaven, GA on August 18 to push back on the Windsor Parkway project. The plan turns the intersection at Ashford Dunwoody Road and Windsor Parkway into a single-lane roundabout and runs a 10-foot shared-use path along Ashford Dunwoody.

Public Works Director Littlefield laid out the safety math: 27 injury and property crashes between 2016 and 2020, and a projected 78 percent drop in injury accidents. Then he laid out the tree math. A detailed survey counted 206 trees affected, about 63 percent of them 14 inches in diameter or less, with replanting aimed at restoring the canopy within 15 years.

The cost has moved too. Assistant City Manager Patrice Ruffin told council in June that the original $4 million estimate has climbed to $7.3 million, driven by right-of-way acquisition as property values rose. Former Mayor J. Max Davis objected to the city adding the word safety to the project name. Resident Del Ross, circulating a petition with hundreds of signatures, put it plainly: the city says it heard them, but they want it to listen.

Cyclists in the room spoke in favor of the wider paths. Mayor John Park left the door open to changes, including possibly dropping the multi-use path, which hasn't actually been funded yet, and said the project set to begin in 2027 is now in a natural pause. Worth knowing: city officials have also said a long delay could put the matching funds at risk.

Sources: Rough Draft Atlanta, Aug 18 and Rough Draft Atlanta, Aug 17

If Saturday at 8:30 AM has never once worked for your schedule, this is for you. Sandy Springs is launching the Sandy Springs Night Market, running 5 to 8 PM on the first Thursday of September, October and November with more than 30 local farmers, food producers and artisans. Kickoff is Thursday, September 3.

The location is the tell. It's at River Springs Shopping Center, 8610 Roswell Rd, Sandy Springs, GA, just north of Hightower Trail on the west side of the road, behind the Sandy Springs Diner. That's North End, not City Springs, and it's a direct answer to North End residents who've spent years asking for city programming that doesn't require driving downtown.

The city describes it as extending the Saturday morning market into an after-work shopping experience, which is a polite way of saying they noticed who can't make Saturdays.

Source: Rough Draft Atlanta

DeKalb County commissioners recognized Sarv Dharavane at their August 11 business meeting, and the numbers are genuinely absurd. He's a seventh-grader at Peachtree Charter Middle School in Dunwoody, GA. He's won the Georgia State Spelling Bee three years running and represented Georgia at nationals three times.

At the 2026 Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington he placed third against 245 other state and local champions. That follows 22nd in 2024 and third in 2025. He also took first at the 2024 Georgia State Technology Fair.

District 1 Commissioner Robert Patrick presented the proclamation and framed it the right way: "Today, we are not simply recognizing a spelling bee champion. We are recognizing a young person whose curiosity, discipline and perseverance demonstrate what is possible when talent is matched with hard work."

For the record, Sarv also plays basketball and soccer, swims, plays clarinet in the school band and piano at home, and wants to be an entrepreneur or a roboticist.

Commissioners also honored Larry Scheinpflug for more than two decades on the DeKalb-Peachtree Airport Advisory Board, which he joined in July 2005 and chaired.

Source: Rough Draft Atlanta

Chip's story didn't start well. He came into Furkids as a stray after animal control picked him up, and it was obvious nobody had been looking after him for a long while: severe matting all through his coat and painful ear infections. The shelter's own words are that it was clear life hadn't been kind to him.

None of that dimmed him, apparently. Since the makeover Chip's turned into a seven-year-old Cocker Spaniel the volunteers openly play favorites about. The line in his listing we keep rereading is that he's the kind of dog who walks into a room, or onto a leash, which he does beautifully, and just makes everyone's day a little better.

He's easygoing and lively, about 21 pounds, brown and white, and he's already neutered, vaccinated and microchipped. One honest thing to know: Chip needs dental work in the near future, and Furkids covers the cost themselves if he's brought up to their Cumming headquarters for it. That's a fair deal, and worth asking about on the call, since the dog shelter itself is over in Alpharetta.

His adoption fee is $315 and you need to be 21 or older to adopt. Fill out the application and an adoption counselor gets back to you inside 24 to 72 hours to set up a meet.

One scam warning straight from Furkids: they'll never ask you to pay by Venmo or CashApp, only through a secure link after the meet and greet.

Furkids Animal Rescue and Shelters
1520 Union Hill Rd, Alpharetta, GA 30005
(678) 624-1003
By appointment only

🐟 X-Ray Vision: Fish Inside Out - Fernbank Museum of Natural History | 767 Clifton Rd NE, Atlanta, GA | 10:00 AM-5:00 PM | $25.95 adults, $23.95 ages 3-12 weekday online, $3 more at the door | More: fernbankmuseum.org
Forty Smithsonian fish radiographs, glowing eels and seahorses and all. Weekday tickets run two dollars cheaper, and the same ticket covers a giant screen film and the 75 acres of forest out back.

🏛️ Cyclorama: The Big Picture - Atlanta History Center Buckhead | 130 W Paces Ferry Rd NW, Atlanta, GA | 9:00 AM-4:00 PM, historic houses open 11:00 AM | $31 adults, $27 ages 4-12, under 4 free | More: atlantahistorycenter.com
Friday is the cheap day, four dollars a head less than the weekend rate, and parking on the 33-acre campus is free. The painting is 49 feet tall.

🚐 Atlanta RV Mega Show - Cobb Convention Center | 2 Galleria Pkwy SE, Atlanta, GA | 10:00 AM-8:00 PM | $10 adults online, $12 at the door, ages 16 and under free | More: atlantarvshow.com
First year for this one, nine dealers deep, and the kids can climb through every camper on the floor. Indoors and cold, which in late August counts for a lot.

💪 FIT4MOM 25th Anniversary Mega Class - City Green at City Springs | 1 Galambos Way, Sandy Springs, GA | 10:00 AM | Free | More: citysprings.com
A one-time national anniversary workout on the lawn with a 2000s playlist and giveaways. Kids are welcome, which is rather the point.

🎭 Worlds of Puppetry Museum - Center for Puppetry Arts | 1404 Spring St NW, Atlanta, GA | 9:00 AM-5:00 PM, last admission 4:30 PM | $18 adults, $16 seniors 55 and up, $14 ages 3-12, under 2 free | More: puppet.org
No stage show is running this weekend, so the Jim Henson Collection is the draw and the cheaper ticket. Kermit and Bert in the actual felt.

📸 Historic Roswell Photography Exhibit - Roswell History Museum | 950 Forrest St, Roswell, GA | 11:00 AM-3:00 PM, open Wed-Sat | Free | More: roswellhistoricalsociety.org
Juried photos of Roswell's historic sites on the second floor of the Cultural Arts Center, free to walk through. This is the second to last day of a run that started June 6.

💃 (MC)² Moving Culture, Moving Community Dance Festival - Roswell Cultural Arts Center | 950 Forrest St, Roswell, GA | 7:00 PM | $25.50 general admission | More: roswellcac.showare.com
Program A of a festival curated by George Staib, with Atlanta companies covering flamenco, Kuchipudi, Irish step and West African in one night. It only happens once a year.

🎪 Family Fun Day at the Sandy Springs Farmers Market - City Green at City Springs | 1 Galambos Way, Sandy Springs, GA | 8:30 AM-12:00 PM | Free | More: citysprings.com
The Civic Roundtable takes over the market with face painting, crafts for all ages, a bubble machine, and outdoor games like giant Connect Four and cornhole, plus a Community Passport the kids stamp at nonprofit booths for prize drawings.

🥕 DHA Farmers Market - Brook Run Park | 4770 N Peachtree Rd, Dunwoody, GA | 9:00 AM-12:00 PM | Free | More: dunwoodyga.org
Thirty to thirty-five vendors of pesticide-free produce, meats and ready-to-eat food, right across from the playground. Pair the two and you have burned a whole morning.

🥬 Brookhaven Farmers Market - University Baptist Church lot | 1375 Fernwood Cir NE, Brookhaven, GA | 9:00 AM-12:00 PM | Free | More: brookhavenfarmersmarket.com
Sixteenth season, rain or shine, a block off Dresden Drive. The smallest of the Saturday markets and the easiest to park at.

🎭 Worlds of Puppetry Museum - Center for Puppetry Arts | 1404 Spring St NW, Atlanta, GA | 12:00-5:00 PM | $18 adults, $16 seniors 55 and up, $14 ages 3-12 | More: puppet.org
Quiet Sunday hours and free onsite parking, which downtown almost never gives you. Five hours, one price.

🧱 LEGO Discovery Center - Phipps Plaza | 3500 Peachtree Rd NE, Atlanta, GA | 10:00 AM-5:00 PM, last entry 3:30 PM | From $24.99 online, $27.99 at the door, under 2 free | More: legodiscoverycenter.com
Two rides, a 4D cinema, build zones, all air conditioned, and Phipps parking is free. Book online and save three dollars a head.

🎡 Skyline Park at The Roof - Ponce City Market | 675 Ponce de Leon Ave NE, Atlanta, GA | 11:00 AM-9:00 PM | $15 over age 12, $8 ages 12 and under, under 3 free | More: poncecityroof.com
Rooftop mini golf, the Heege Tower, and a three-story slide with the best skyline view in town. Sunday daytime is the least crowded window all week.

🛍️ Ponce City Market Food Hall and Shops | 675 Ponce de Leon Ave NE, Atlanta, GA | Shops 11:00 AM-6:00 PM, food hall 11:00 AM-10:00 PM | Free to enter | More: poncecitymarket.com
Free BeltLine-adjacent wandering with a food hall that stays open four hours past the shops. Pair it with Skyline Park upstairs and you have the whole afternoon handled.

🛶 Date Night on the River - Chattahoochee Nature Center | 9135 Willeo Rd, Roswell, GA | 6:00-9:00 PM, arrive 5:30 PM, register by Thursday | $45, $40 CNC members, 21 and up | More: chattnaturecenter.org
A strictly adults-only guided sunset paddle on the Chattahoochee, two and a half hours on the water. Bring your own picnic and wander the grounds before the launch.

😂 Funny Fridays with Joel Byars - Studio Theatre at Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center | 1 Galambos Way, Sandy Springs, GA | 7:00 PM, lobby happy hour 6:00 PM | $37.71 to $53.88, ages 16 and up | More: citysprings.com
The Studio Theatre turns into an actual comedy club with a rotating cast of Atlanta's best. Get there at 6 for the lobby bar.

⚾ Bats and Bites - Truist Park | 755 Battery Ave SE, Atlanta, GA | 3:00-7:00 PM | $150, $125 for A-List members | More: batteryatl.com
A guided ballpark tour that ends with food samples, a former Braves player meet and greet, and batting practice from the outfield. Not cheap, genuinely memorable.

🤖 Robotics Adventure Camp for Adults - Mimms Museum of Technology and Art | 5000 Commerce Pkwy, Roswell, GA | 6:00-9:00 PM, ticket sales close Thursday at 6 PM | $50 | More: mimmsmuseum.org
Grown-ups build and program a VEX robot from scratch with instructors from STREM HQ, no experience required, surrounded by vintage supercomputers. Fifty dollars and three hours.

🎨 Amy Sherald: American Sublime - High Museum of Art | 1280 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta, GA | 10:00 AM-5:00 PM | $28.50 exhibition ticket, includes the whole museum | More: high.org
The High's headline show, and the exhibition ticket gets you every other gallery in the building. Friday is the calmer of the three days.

🧘 Yoga with Periwinkle Yogi - Spruill Event Studio | 5339 Chamblee Dunwoody Rd, Dunwoody, GA | 8:00-9:00 AM | Free, $5 mat rental on site | More: spruillarts.org
Slow-style outdoor yoga, no experience needed, and it costs nothing. The closest free thing to Perimeter on this whole list.

🥗 Peachtree Road Farmers Market - The Cathedral of St. Philip | 2744 Peachtree Rd NW, Atlanta, GA | 8:30 AM-12:00 PM | Free | More: peachtreeroadfarmersmarket.com
Seventy-plus farmers and artisans in Buckhead with weekly live music and a chef pop-up. The biggest market on this list by a wide margin.

🛒 Roswell Farmers and Artisans Market - Roswell City Hall | 38 Hill St, Roswell, GA | 8:30 AM-12:00 PM | Free | More: roswellgov.com
Farm-fresh produce and locally made goods on the City Hall lawn, April through October. Walk to Canton Street after.

🍎 Educator Saturday - Mimms Museum of Technology and Art | 5000 Commerce Pkwy, Roswell, GA | 12:00-5:00 PM, presentation and Q&A at 1:00 PM | Free for K-12 educators with school ID | More: mimmsmuseum.org
Teachers get in free to scout it as a field trip site. Narrow audience, but if that is you it is a genuinely free afternoon.

🎹 When Rivers Meet: The Black and Jewish Origins of America's Sound - Roswell Cultural Arts Center | 950 Forrest St, Roswell, GA | 4:00 PM | Tickets from $47.75 | More: roswellcac.showare.com
Vocalist Karla Harris and pianist Joe Alterman trace the line from blues to Broadway. A Sunday matinee that ends early enough to still have a night.

🛶 River Canoe Trip - Chattahoochee Nature Center | 9135 Willeo Rd, Roswell, GA | 6:00-9:00 PM, register by Thursday | $39, $34 CNC members | More: chattnaturecenter.org
A guided two and a half hour sunset paddle with naturalists, all gear provided. Six dollars cheaper than Friday's date night version and just as pretty.

City Green at City Springs
1 Galambos Way, Sandy Springs, GA
Saturday, August 29, 2026
8:30 AM to 12:00 PM

The Sandy Springs Civic Roundtable has been at this for nearly forty years, quietly propping up local nonprofits, and this Saturday they're taking over the farmers market and turning it into something a lot bigger than a produce run.

Here's what they built. Crafts for every age, face painting, a bubble machine, and outdoor games like giant Connect Four and cornhole, all running alongside the usual market vendors with produce, baked goods, and artisan foods.

The clever part is the Community Passport. Your kids pick one up, work their way around the nonprofit booths doing activities, collect stamps, and those stamps go into prize drawings stocked by local businesses and community partners. Grand prize is four tickets to City Springs Theatre Company's production of Anastasia, which runs December 11 to 27.

Volunteer Sandy Springs will have a booth explaining how families, students, retirees and corporate teams can actually plug in. That's the whole reason the Roundtable does this, and it's how they keep a network of nearly 40 nonprofit partners running year round.

It runs three and a half hours, it costs nothing, and you were probably headed to the market anyway. Park in the City Springs deck before 10 and walk over.

🚗 Click here to get directions on Google Maps

We're in the thick of Georgia's storm season, and every year the same argument plays out over a fence line: a tree comes down and nobody knows whose insurance handles it.

The general rule surprises people, because it usually follows what the tree hit, not where the tree grew.

If your neighbor's oak lands on your roof, you typically file on your own homeowners policy rather than theirs, and your carrier may go after your neighbor's only if the tree was visibly dead or dying and your neighbor was told about it and did nothing.

That last part is why a dated photo and a polite text about a leaning limb are worth more than most people realize.

One more thing worth checking before the next storm: whether your policy actually covers debris removal when a tree falls and doesn't hit anything, because plenty of policies cap that or skip it entirely.

Not sure what your policy does with a downed tree, or whether your debris removal limit is a real number? That's a five minute call with your Peachy agent. Ask us.