What a week...

Until I started downloading my pictures from the past week, I didn't realize just how much we managed to pack into it.

I'll start on Saturday, the 20th. We were to be speakers at a family reunion in Shippensburg. The theme was colonial times, when the family had settled in the area and we were to tell them about the way the mother of the house would use herbs in her daily life.

If the weather had been more pleasant, it would have been a nice ride and a quick little gig. Unfortunately, it was raining and so, not very nice. It gave us some insight into how it must have felt to have been a pioneer woman out in the godforsaken wilderness. We entertained ourselves taking pathetic self-portraits!

The rest of the weeks seemed to be a celebration of lavender! We spent a few quiet evenings in the beginning of the week on Tina's deck making lavender wands.

On Wednesday evening, we headed down to Pottstown to visit with Sue Hess at Farm at Coventry, where we did a lavender distillation and made some lavender wands - also called lavender bottles and lavender baskets.

Sue's place is lovely and I took many pictures of the farm, from the welcoming vignette on the front porch (shown here) to the cats, the chickens and the gardens.

I can't post them all, but wanted to show the lavender treats we enjoyed on her always-beautiful table as a snack.

My son and I decided we needed to get moving and started walking each morning at our nearby community park. We discovered that the edges of the new park have been planted in wildflower seeds and I took a picture of the drift of wildflowers along the side of the trail.And one particular hill covered in many colors of yarrow with the large golden variety at the very top, reaching for the sun!The vistas are just beautiful!

We wound it up on Saturday at market with yet another lavender event. We had attempted to coordinate a mini lavender festival for market mid week, but had apparently waited too long!

But, on our own, we set up a lavender distillation (how essential oils and hydrosols are made) which seemed to fascinate patrons and other vendors alike. Here's Tina explaining the process to our market neighbor, Mary Prescott of Prescott's Patch (organic vegetables).

Tina had also baked some gluten-free lavender shortbread for everyone to try and we had piles of lavender so anyone who wanted to make one could try their hand at a lavender wand.
Somewhere along the line, I also managed to get orders out and make some flag beads so I will have earrings and necklaces for the 4th next week at market!