It’s been so busy that I sat down today and realized it was already halfway through September. And the start of the third week of school for the boys. August slipped by quickly.
I showed up a couple times at the South Whidbey Tilth Farmers Market.
With freshly dried herbs from our farm.
I really do. I think that is obvious 😉
For the first time in over 3 years we had no forest fires marring the sunsets, nor the air. It was a great feeling to be able to work outside in the evenings, and be able to breathe.
A flower I encountered and need to grow next year.
A bonus from our 18 month long thinning of forest. This was left behind by the previous owners, and it didn’t bloom last year (far too much shade from Hemlocks and Cedar trees). With the pruning and thinning, this year it shone.
We had a good berry year. Every day we’d pick like this, and fill up with plenty left over.
Another bonus of the thinning? The Evergreen Huckleberry plants thrived this year, with so much sun for the berries.
I love late summer sunsets over the Olympic Mountains.
I believe these were the new Ivory strawberry we grew from seed this year. It is smaller than White Soul.
Feverfew flowers.
Bee Balm coming into bloom.
Marshmallow flowers.
We took time off to attend a forest conference on the mainland. Lots of classes to be taken, this one was on the layers of soil.
Bonus was one class was a guided walk through the experimental forest.
The star of our flower gardens was the Strawberry Calendula. It never quit blooming, produced a ton of seed and the flowers were bee magnets.
When a tomato grows through hardware cloth….
Soapwort flowers.
First of the Oregon Spring tomatoes, an F1 hybrid I grew from Ed Hume seeds. I will grow these again. They produced nicely sized, full flavored tomatoes.
This was a neat find: in the main strawberry bed of 225+ plants, I found this variegated one.
And to end August: It was warm, but not hot, with some mornings cloudy. It was like how August used to be here in the PNW. We harvested lots of produce, did a lot of work, did some markets, spent a lot of time with our boys, went camping and was just out there!
~Sarah