An Afternoon in Provence

Ever since we arrived in Washington, my SIL Helen and I have been making plans. Turns out there's all sorts of fun things to do on the Island, and not just during the summer. Today, we made good on one of those plans: we attended a local lavender festival.



The festival was held at Lavender Wind Farm, near Coupeville. I prayed for sunshine, but alas! every cloud in the northern hemisphere visited the farm along with us. Maybe clouds are big lavender fans, too.

At least it didn't rain.

Lavender has long been my favorite flower. When I lived in the desert, it was one of the few plants I ever grew successfully. I love the smell, I love the color, and today I discovered I love the taste, too. Helen and I shared a lavender & blackberry muffin, lavender lemonade, even a lavender ice cream bar, dipped in dark chocolate. Mmmmm!

The lemonade was my favorite. I was skeptical at first, but it turns out lavender can be quite useful in the kitchen and pairs nicely with all sorts of foods. To experiment, I bought a 1 oz. bottle of lavender extract to take home. I'm going to make lavender butter cream frosting with it, which I hear is very good. But don't get me started on baking. . . that's a tangent for another day!

The festival hosted artisans from all over the island: painters, potters, jewelers, wood-workers, quilters. And along with the yummy lavender foods we sampled were a whole bunch more we didn't: lavender stewed mussles, lavender apple cake, lavender chocolate chip cookies, and lavender wine.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The scent of lavender followed us everywhere, and if you closed your eyes for a moment and inhaled deeply, you could almost imagine you were in the south of France.

I'm very thankful to have Helen close by. After the festival, we got lunch, went home, and watched "Confessions of a Shopaholic." You know what else I'm thankful for? That she enjoys the same girlie things I do. :)