One last weekend beauty

I thought I would leave you with one final glorious picture from this weekend. Our neighbor Margaret grows several patches of poppies along the west side of our yard. They are so ethereal and vibrant, flamboyant even, yet tissue thin. I adore them.

20110605-095820.jpg

We had a wonderful Sunday – shopping, gardening, cooking, dinner with neighbors (who brought a homemade strawberry-rhubarb pie warm from the oven!), lots of play time with Juliette and even enough time for some chores. Perfect, just perfect,


Tulip Festival Pictures

My best friend, Nancy, who lives in Washington now sent me these pictures last night of the tulip festival held in the Skagit Valley every year. I’ve been lucky enough to see the festival in person once, but these pictures do a pretty good job at relaying the magnificent beauty of the gardens that the tulips growers maintain and show off during the festival.

[album: http://www.fiberguy.com/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums.php?currdir=/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/Tulips2011/]

Pictures from jelly making weekend

Once again, we headed to Lutsen over the Labor Day weekend. This is our designated annual jelly-making weekend and it was a good one. We found some really good fruit and this batch is, perhaps, the best batch of crabapple jelly we’ve ever made. We made two kinds. The first couple of batches we “plain” crabapple jelly made from a variety of apples. The second added hot peppers to the jelly. The first batch we made we used just the fiery hot cayenne peppers that Karin grew this year, but when the batch was done, we decided it was a little tame, even to the Scandinavian palate, and so in the next two batches we added some serrano chiles that Helen had brought up. They are a real favorite of mine and I love their flavor. They were a welcome addition to the jelly. So without further ado …

[album: http://www.fiberguy.com/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums.php?currdir=/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/Lutsen September 2010/]

Garden Beauty

The first is of Iris “Beverly Sills” planted from a friend last year and look at how spectacular it is already!

[album: http://www.fiberguy.com/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums.php?currdir=/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/Beverly Sills/]

The second is of a fantastic white columbine that blooms white on one stalk amidst an otherwise purple bush. Very strange, but very beautiful.

[album: http://www.fiberguy.com/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums.php?currdir=/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/White columbine/]

The last is of the poppies beginning to bloom in my neighbor’s yard. They make me so happy to behold.

[album: http://www.fiberguy.com/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums.php?currdir=/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/Poppies/]

Today’s Bit of Beauty – 06/19/09

How can you not love this elegant beauty? It’s from a small bit of peony taken from the Hall family homestead up in Lutsen. It’s really taken off in our yard and this year is full of blooms. We don’t know exactly what type it is, but then again we haven’t done a whole lot of research to try and find out. Harald’s mom says it’s probably at least 50-60 years old. And best of all? It’s a fragrant variety with a sweet, old-fashioned rose scent. Heavenly!

Update: After checking out several peony farm web sites, this peony looks amazingly like one known as “Gay Paree.”  How apropos.