Blackberries

It's 9:00 PM and this is my third batch of blackberry jam today. I won't have any time next week to deal with them and the blackberries are lovely right now. Usually they get ripe Fair week and I am scrambling to get a few batches of jam made and deal with the Fair. This year everything is late and so they didn't really start getting ripe until this week. They seem to have been happy with the extra rain and cool weather as they are big and lush and beautiful. Blackberry jam is one of our favorites. The bushes are really a noxious weed most of the time but I forgive them when the berries are ripe. Last year I also made a batch of blackberry whiskey from a recipe from The Weaver of Grass in Yorkshire. I'm going to do that again.

County Fair

We rushed home this evening from the San Juan County Fair so we can harvest vegetables tomorrow for market. I've been having a great time there. Joel and I entered a bunch of flowers and vegetables and weavings.
I picked the last spray of my beautiful Altissimo rose and won a Best of Class with it. It was quite a sacrifice but so many people stopped by the Wool Shed where I was working in the sales booth to compliment me on it that it was worth the sacrifice.
I also helped set up a loom for the public to weave on and this young man spent a long time making a beautiful mat. Then he helped another young man learn to weave while I stood back and watched. It was a great day.

Camping Adventures

With Siri home for a couple of weeks we took off Saturday night after market for a camping trip to the Canadian Gulf Islands. It turned out to be a ittle more exciting than we had planned on. We got to Patos Island, which is a US state park, fairly late in the day, watched a beautiful sunset and roasted hot dogs over a campfire in the dark. Siri and her friend, Raina laid out their sleeping bags under a nearby tree and Joel and I crawled into our old tent. In the middle of the night we all woke up to a heavy rain. We had brought along a couple of tarps so the girls laid one over their sleeping bags and Joel tossed one over the top of our tent. Nevertheless in the morning we were all WET. After a sort of damp breakfast we took off the a boat decorated with drying sleeping bags, pillows, socks, etc.

The weather for the rest of the trip was lovely. Sunny and warm. We spent the next night at Portland Island, a Provincial Park in the Gulf Islands.
But when we started home the boat engine started to overheat. We had picked up some seaweed in the intake for the cooling system. Joel spent 5 hours trying to get us up and running again and finally jerry rigged together an intake system out of a table leg, blue masking tape, a bunch of pieces of hose, a c-clamp and a tuna fish can which got us back across the border and home. More serious repairs will require taking the boat to the boat yard in Friday Harbor. The trip wasn't quite what we had planned but it will make for great story telling for ages.