On Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, the community of Sequim has made a name for itself as the lavender capitol of North America. With the rich, fertile soils of the Dungeness Valley, and a growing climate similar to that of the Provence region of France, many hardworking folks have done their part to save farmland from development by planting acres of this wonderful herb. In 1995, a group of ...
Dreams
A Good Foundation Lasts Forever
As many of my readers may know by now, I am in love with old homesteads. There is something captivating about coming across the remnants of someone's hard work and dreams from days long gone by. I always wonder who they were and what their life must have been like. Did they sit on these front steps at the end of a long, hard day's work and dream about all the possibilities of their land? I ...
A Waldorf Education
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -William Butler Yeats This past week we joyously enrolled our children in the local Waldorf school for the coming school year. It has been an arduous path, wrought with twists and turns, and we are so very happy to have arrived where we set out to be, and at the beginning of a new journey. My discovery of ...
A Field of Dreams
This weekend, our neighbor came over with his tractor to till our garden cover crop under, and, as a huge bonus, he plowed our South field! Our neighbor, who is uneasy about heights, is happy to do work trades with my husband to help do things up on ladders in exchange for tractor work. It's a beautiful arrangement! And, we now have a field! I always imagined that one day I would grow fields of ...
Rainy Morning Daydreams
Some people have amazing vivid dreams that they are able to recall and retell like stories. My children are like this. My friend Taryn is like this. I am not like this, but I am a daydreamer. Sometimes I'll realize that many minutes have passed while I was lost in a stream of thought. Sometimes I like to entertain "winning the lottery and what I would do with the money" daydreams. I have noticed a ...
Of Love, Dreams and Old Farmhouses
"Just an old house with the roof fallin' inStandin' at the edge of the fieldWatching the crops grow like its always done beforeNobody lives here anymore....Old memories come whistling like the windThrough the walls and the cracked windowpanesAnd the grass is growing high around the kitchen doorNobody lives here anymoreOnce there were children and few hired handsA hard working woman and a bone ...