Dahlia Show at Country Village

This last weekend, the Fuschia and Dahlia Shows opened on Saturday at Country Village in Bothell.  It was a chance to learn more about these flowers, and to talk with members of the Dahlia and Fuschia Societies.  We learned a lot about the dahlia bulbs we will be planting in the next few weeks.

Right now, we are busy preparing the soil for the correct pH (6.5), and need to amend the current soil at our planting site with bone meal, sand, and 4-10-10 fertilizer.  Once we get about 10 four-foot stakes to support these plants as they grow, we will be ready to put the bulbs in the ground.  It's going to be a great experiment!

 

 

 

 

 

The Kitchen Herb Garden

The winter cold was hard on my kitchen herb garden this year, so I went to McLendon's on Saturday to replenish my basil plants.  This purple variety should be as fragrant as the green herb, and I'm anxious to try it out in my spaghetti sauce this week.  The plants were beautiful in all of their containers at the garden center.

Begonia Basket

In the front yard at the side of the gravel driveway, I hung a large red begonia basket.  It's a nice addition to the quilted flag I have on the cedar fence from April through the Fourth of July.

This is a nice place to sit on a summer day in a comfortable lawn chair and enjoy the shady, quiet spot.

Fuschias in the Back Yard

Here are several fuschias in the back yard on the west side of the property.  We are working this year to clear out more garden area and plant a shade garden.  There will be lots of interesting plants to choose from for this project.

 

 

Kaila's 9th Birthday Party

We met Dave and Kaila at the Spaghetti Factory in Lynnwood this evening to celebrate her 9th birthday!  We had a lovely dinner, shared stories of our week, and watched her open her present and blow out the candle on her spumoni ice cream!  It's wonderful to have family together to celebrate these important milestones.

 

 

Plum Pies

We had an abundant crop last fall of Italian Plums from our two trees in the orchard.  We managed to wash and halve the plums and freeze them for future use.

This week, we made two Plum Pies, which are old family favorites from both of our childhoods.  They tasted great with Snoqualmie Gourmet ice cream!

Springtime at Flower World

I visited Flower World last week, and checked out all of their hanging baskets.  They did not have a lot to choose from, but I found two of the largest fuschia baskets I have ever seen!  They do not have any blooms on them yet, but once they do, these will be beautiful additions to the deck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Tulip Festival in Skagit County

It has been many years since we braved the crowds and drove up to La Conner for the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, but ventured out on a Monday morning to see if we could beat the crowds.  It was a lovely Spring day, and the traffic was light.  We managed to get one of the last parking spaces at Roozengaarde, grabbed our cameras, and headed out to the tulip fields. 

The tulips were in full bloom (a little late this year due to the cool and wet weather), but they were breathtaking!  There was every color of tulip imaginable, and we bought two bunches of coral-colored bouquets to take home (they were freshly-picked that morning).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coloring Easter Eggs

Saturday night, Dave and Kai came over for pizza and salad and brownies, and we colored eggs in preparation for Easter the next day.  We decided to try 'glitter' eggs, and it was messy work, but we managed to get them all dyed (it didn't help that Dave decided to punch out the egg rack on the box before I read the instructions!  They looked very pastel and spring-like, and they even had sequins glued to the top of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Easter Dinner in Snohomish

We had a lovely Easter Brunch at the Cabbage Patch Restaurant in Snohomish on Easter Sunday after church.  Mom spent the weekend with us, helping with coloring the eggs and visiting with Dave and Kai Saturday night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dinner to Celebrate my Last Day of Work!

After work, we went to Pen Thai in Bothell for Salad Rolls, Chicken Phad Thai, and Thai Iced Tea!  It's great to be back in my own neighborhood now, experiencing small towns and the companionable feel that goes with that. I'm ready to slow down, enjoy my avocations, and live the Slow Life for a few months.

Lunch at the Dahlia Lounge

For my last day of work, we went to the Dahlia Lounge in downtown Seattle on Fourth Avenue.  It's a Tom Douglas restaurant, with the finest food and ambience anywhere in downtown.

We had lovely (and hearty!) sandwiches, a special brew of Starbucks coffee made just for this restaurant, and homemade doughnuts with crème fraiche and blueberry compote for dessert.

It was a fitting farewell with good food, good friends, and good coffee.

 

 

 

 

 

New Coffee Masters at Work

The day before I left work, I was able to re-certify my two supervisors Liana and Dionna for another year of being a Coffee Master.  This is an important milestone at this company, and it will allow these two partners to continue coffee education for their direct reports, and will keep their coffee knowledge up-to-date.

I'll miss working with these two wonderful people every day.

 

 

Taking a Spring and Summer Break

The Slow Life calls me in different ways, so when I heard the call of Spring and Summer, I decided to leave my job at a Fortune 100 company, and take the Spring and Summer off.  In all of the years I have worked, I've never taken four months off for myself.  I decided that this was the time.

Stay tuned for what the Slow Life in Maltby really means.

New Potting Bench

I found this great potting bench at the Yakima Market last week, and brought it home.  It's made of salvaged barn wood.  It's over by the cabin, and this week, I'll be filling it with pots and my garden supplies.  It's in a great location, central to the greenhouse, garden patch and the cabin.

Ruby Red Rhubarb

The rhubarb is finally up after all of the wet weather!  It won't be long before we'll be having Strawberry-Rhubarb pie with our own rhubarb and Maltby Strawberries!

Heirloom Tomatoes

I picked up five heirloom tomato plants and got them into the ground over the weekend.  I dug down into the bed and added compost that had been 'cooking' over the long winter.  These plants love basking in front of the solar woodshed as the newest batch of green wood 'cures' during the summer.

 

 

Mason Orchard Bees

Our bees have come out during the last few weeks, and are pollinating a one-half mile radius from the woodshed.  Our trees and shrubs have many blooms this year, thanks to these industrious creatures.

A Day For Tulips

I bought the lovely salmon-colored tulips this morning in Woodinville, and they look lovely in my beautiful vase in the living room.  Later in the day, Kelly brought me this beautiful bouquet of tulips from the Pike Place Market.  My house is filled with my favorite flowers today!

 

 

Cherry Blossom Time

We have two cherry trees, and they have the most beautiful white blossoms and the sweetest fragrance on earth.  This year, the Mason Orchard Bees have done their pollination work well, as the trees are just loaded with blooms.  Aren't these stunning?

Spring at Crabtree Cottage

Here are some views of Spring's arrival at our Maltby home, Crabtree Cottage.  The camellia bush is loaded with blooms this year, and the weigela (second photo below) is almost fully leafed out.  The last photo is a new perennial I bought at the church plant sale last weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Deck Transformed

Last weekend, I cleaned off the deck with the leaf blower, and got my Adirondack chairs out of storage and back on the deck.  I raised the umbrella, made a few chair changes, got the cushions out of storage, and planted some primroses in the flower box.  I added a new wind chime from Country Village's White House Antiques, and put two pots of flowers on the white table.  Voila!

 

 

 

First Fuschia Basket of the Season

This is one of the first fuschias of this season, and I have four other baskets like it on the deck, in the front yard, and along the driveway.  I've never seen a plant with this many blossoms on it.  I'll be interested to see how big it will get by the end of the summer.

A New Birdbath

We visited Sky Valley Nursery recently, and we were looking for dahlia bulbs.  They didn't carry any dahlias, but we found this lovely glass birdbath.  I could just imagine it in the backyard.

Here it is in its temporary location--I need to live with these things for a while before I find the perfect place on our property for something new.

The birds love it, and our recent rainy weather keeps it filled to the brim.

 

 

Shopping for Flowers

I couldn't resist the call of spring any longer, so on one of my lunch hours last week, I drove to Home Depot and loaded up my car with flowers and flower baskets.  Here are some of the wonderful things I brought home!