Black Currants

I've been out picking this year's crop of black currants. They aren't really edible fresh but made into jam or added to raspberry jam or made up into juice as we mostly do, they are wonderful. We learned to love black currant juice in England where Ribena is popular. During WWII oranges weren't available there so tests were done on local fruits and berries for vitamin C content and it was found that black currants had more vitamin C than oranges. We can the juice in pint jars and when we want it we pour it into a half gallon jar, add 1/4 sugar and water and drink

Siri's home

Our youngest daughter Siri is home for a few weeks from New York where she is a student at Brooklyn College. She's working on San Juan Island but made it back to Waldron last week for a few days for a visit and to help get ready for market.
All through high school and for several years after, Siri was in charge of the cut flower part of the farm. She is a superb bouquet maker and we miss her expertise.
She met up with friends at the market on Saturday. It is so very, very nice to have her around for a bit. We do miss her.

New Scarves

I've been working on a new design for scarves using the knitted flower patterns I've been putting on my felted hats. And here are the first ones. They are knit of the 65% silk, 35% wool Chelsea Silk yarn that I make my non felted hats out of. I've gotten a lot of favorable comments on them, enough to make me plan to make a bunch more for Christmas sales in more seasonal colors like reds and greens.

It was chilly and windy out at the Roche Harbor booth today. It is often quite cold under the big trees with the breeze coming up from the water. Tourists are wandering around in shorts and bathing suits and we art vendors all have wool sweaters on.

Frog on Sunflower

Every year I grow lots of sunflowers for cut flower sales. I especially love all the new interesting colored ones. They come as singles, semi-doubles and fully doubled. This little frog was accommodating enough to let me go all the way back to the house for my camera and still be sitting on this striped sunflower when I got back out to the garden.

Summer Crafts Fair

If you live in one of the special parts of the world one of the realities is that you will be sharing it with lots of other people in the summer. That's the way it works. The only recourse is moving to someplace really ugly. That's an opening to my excuse for not having written in this blog for a week. We've had lots of company and really enjoyed all of it. Both older daughters came with families and friends, summer people finally showed up for the season, and friends of friends stopped by to buy vegetables. We had 25 people helping us harvest on July 4. We always go over to Friday Harbor on Friday night and stay on the boat. This being the Fourth we invited a friend aboard and went out into San Juan Channel to where we could watch the fireworks from both Friday Harbor and Lopez Island. It was great and we didn't end up with whiplash from moving our heads back and forth trying to see both displays at once. Our friend brought strawberry shortcake to eat while we watched. We had a really lovely evening.



The Sunday after the Fourth, that is July 6, was the annual summer crafts fair on Waldron. We don't have a huge population but they all come out for this event which is a fund raiser for community projects. We brought one of our canopies back over with us for shade and set up my weaving and knitting items. It was very successful both for me and for the community.

Swallowtail Buttterfly

As I was cutting lilies for the Farmers Market on Friday I saw this beautiful swallowtail butterfly on an orange Asiatic lily. I dashed into the house for the camera and when I came back it was still there. Thus I can share it with you.

More Roses

Years ago I fell in love with David Austin's English Roses. Crosses between modern tea roses and old roses for the most part, they have big beautiful flowers, healthy foliage, and usually form large shrubs. I have over a dozen of these roses. My favorite of all is Abraham Darby, above. it's color is a mixture of pink and yellow and apricot, it smells heavenly and has the hugest, most beautifully formed flowers.
Another favorite is Brother Caedfael, a true pink color. I'll admit I bought it because I love the Brother Caedfael books by Ellis Peters, about a monk in 12th century Shrewsbury. But it doesn't disappoint as a flower.
Buttercup is an English rose that I saw years ago on the cover of the magazine of the Royal National Rose Society in England. But only recently could I find it available in this country. It is a semi double flower which has the advantage of not getting moldy during a period of lots of rain. As much as I love Abraham Darby its huge very double flowers have trouble opening if they get rained on a lot.
And another of my favorites is Graham Thomas, a lovely yellow rose, not quite as large and full as Abraham Darby but truly lovely.