Summer!

My computer is being a pain, and won't let me move most of the pictures! So they're stuck at the top. But I'll label them, and then you can read about them. :P



Red Barn Lavender Farm

The smell of all this lavender was heavenly!

The farm had their own bee hives, and they sold their own lavender honey.

My gardens.

Blueberries for the freezer.

I hope you have all been having a GREAT summer, I know I have! I was reading a friends blog where they had a link to my blog, and it said the last time I had posted was 4 weeks ago!! So I thought I had better do good long post. :)

These last few weeks have been filled with gardening, canning, and flowers! All things that I love.

Thanks to Craigslist, I have found some very inexpensive ways to put up preserves for this winter.
we found a U-pick, organic blueberry "farm" out on the Hannegan road, where you pick what you want, and then pay what you think it's worth!

It's by donation, and they provide buckets for you to pick into, and plastic bags to take them home in! So we picked for 45 minutes, and brought home 3 gallons of berries! The bushes are just loaded.

Then I put an ad on Craigslist for sour canning cherries, and a lady off the BirchBay Lynden rd. said she had a tree that had tons on it, and that I was welcome to have as many as I wanted!

So dad and I went out and picked nine quarts of pie cherries!

(dad said he thought it was worth picking when he thought of the pies he would get out of it later!:)

It took me 2 1/2 hours just to PIT all those cherries! But like dad says, it will be worth it!

Some friends brought us a huge flat of great, big raspberries, so I made jam with those. (Ali's favorite:) And the Green Barn had apricots on sale, so I was able to make apricot jam too! Yummy!

But I think the highlight of all this, was the Red Barn Lavender Farm.

http://www.redbarnlavender.com/

It is located in Ferndale, on the Thorton rd, and I would recommend visiting this place to anyone! It is so beautiful out there, and the rows, and rows, and ROWS of lavender are absolutely spectacular! Mom and Ali and I went, and we were so impressed by the lovely gardens, and the sweet, friendly people there. They even have a place with picnic tables set up so you can bring a picnic lunch!

And for $5 bucks, you can bring home a giant bunch of lavender to dry, and then decorate with, or make sashets with!

Sweet peas are climbing all over my fence, I think they might be my favorite flower, but it's so had to pick!

So these are just a few of the things that have been keeping me busy, and keeping me from blogging! But I promise I'll blog more this fall, in between batches of cherry pies and blueberry scones! :)

Summer Blessings,

~Emily