Hot on the heels of returning from Ashland, we dove into an event we'd been planning with a couple other islanders - The 3rd Annual Vashon Winery Folk Festival. Held this past Saturday and Sunday, it was a great way to celebrate music and Vashon. Folks from all around Puget Sound brought their lawn chairs and love of big bold reds and settled in for the day or weekend.
Thanks to pals Shelley and Jan for helping and to Vashon Winery proprietor Ron Irvine for a great idea and a great venue!
Jan made sure summer flowers brightened up the place.
Happy gals enjoying good music, wine, and company!
It's tough, really, to convey what it takes to leave even a silly little farm like ours for a week. Lots of planning, good fortune, and the gift of a nana on board and good local people who know one end of a tomato plant and/or ewe from another. Priceless.
Here's to Nana and Camille, without whom our 1 week vacation to paradise would not have been possible in any way. Thank you for giving us the break from our daily chores, our rock, our life we dearly needed. We are restored! For now...
Photos and captions herein... More on Ashland and the need to get out of the rain later....
View from our hostel room, evening...
Dylan catches me feeling satisfied after a long climb to Garfield Peak, on the rim of Crater Lake.
According to a talk Dylan caught as we were heading back to the car, Crayola has spent 60 years trying to develop Crater Lake Blue...unsuccessfully.
The countryside surrounding Ashland is more Northern CA than Oregon.
Mark checks in with work from the front porch.
Dylan's newly-invented sushi napkin fold,
developed at Kobe Sushi Bar our last night.
Our lasting take-away - Dylan's new rock collection, the result of hours in Ashland's fine mineral shops....
Congrats to Dylan and 3 island pals who completed 3 weeks of commuting and study at the UW! And to the other mamas who traded 3 weeks of island life for shuffling their increasingly exhausted 12 year olds to and from the campus. Each of our kids participated in a different class, with Dylan working in the fields of physics and astronomy 5 hours a day.
He was treated to many distinguished guest speakers, plenty of hours in the UW's planetarium, and even a nighttime tour of the university's 125-year-old observatory (and his mom got to go along to that - fun!).
After a casual potluck on the "front yard" of the physics and astronomy corner of campus, the last day's final presentations were held for the parents in the beautiful, dark, and silent planetarium, with each student informing us about a particular constellation's mythic background and particular attributes - amazing!
Super proud of you, Dylan! (and thanks to Mark for holding down the SSF fort all the while!). Now, we're back to tomatoes and puzzles in our new favorite place...
It's been a long, cold spring that has stretched well into summer. But, that favored season is finally here. This fact, coupled with the existence of our beloved greenhouse, combines to bless us with sweet offerings few others on our little rock can claim.
Our pots of basil are brimming, our tomatoes are beginning to get heavy with fruit, and our peppers are developing. Meanwhile, in the open air garden, garlic, onions, and potatoes are literally bursting from the ground. The weeds bring us down, but yanking onions and garlic from the ground each night and rooting around for those stunning creamy fresh potatoes remind us that we haven't totally lost 2010.
But, yesterday was strange. The day dawned shrouded in a strange mist, a mist that stubbornly remained for the bulk of the day, eventually casting a strange glow over the farm even as it disapated. My various family members went off to their own magnets and I was left in the kitchen, prepping dinner and making bread while getting my daily Bourdain fix. I couldn't help but snap about 100 photos of that amazing light. Wow.
