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Sam and I had a lovely weekend staying at a little farm on Whidbey Island.

We met Velvet,

a very sweet jenny(female donkey), a bunch of buttheaded goats, chickens, ducks, an overwhelmingly enthusiastic young german shepherd named Savannah and a sweet kitty whose loft-leaping prowess has been sharpened to ninja-worthy extremes by Savannah’s ebullience.

Many thanks to Ginger, Delayney and Caden for sharing their beautiful place with us. It’s a gorgeous cabin and the loft was very cozy and happily for Sam, the dog could not climb ladders. Sam and Caden had a ton of fun bouncing madly on the giant trampoline out back.

Whidbey is beautiful too. We browsed the Langley galleries with their gorgeous bronze animals, awesome carved wood thrones and glass menageries and spent long, luscious afternoons on the beaches.

I made a sand dreamer

and Sam and I created a fort with three entrances and three bridges to reach the tunnels in the outer walls..

Beware the catapults of doom!

‘Twere a loverly weekend, capped off with a waffle(to the joy of my waffle-crazy boy) brunch in Langley on our way home.

Not so lovely to come home to clouds of flies hiding out in my eyrie and corpses all over the kitchen! Apparently Sophie waged war against the midges while we were gone and the ones that didn’t get bombed to death all flew upstairs. Gack.

More pics here. Of the trip, not the fly massacre.

My friend Azra asked a rockin’ question on her lovely blog Dreaming of Chiaroscuro.

If you prayed for God, instead of to God, what would you pray for?

Go see my answer and add your own two cents.

Don’t miss her nefarious tomatoes, while you’re at it.

My freezer is now full of plump, delicious blueberries.

Rita and I picked ‘em out at Blueberry Blossom farm in Snohomish. Yum.

I also took her nettling for the first time yesterday out in Discovery park, with my other new foraging convert, Rachael.

The secondary growth is not as lush as the spring pick was so we didn’t overpick the colonies, but we all harvested enough to have a few good yummy nettle meals. Rita and I celebrated later that evening, with sauteed nettles and shallots as a side for sweet potato bisque and smoked gouda grilled cheese sandwiches. Mmmmmm…

Berrying pics.

My Bad Fairy Dreads were fun an’ all,

(click to embiggen)

but it’s high summer and they were hot as hell, heavy and itchy. They had to come off! Luckily, I know some excellent debraiders. :} Soon, Rita and Sam had me lopped down to size:

(click to enlarge)

Then the great unbraiding began and with Ben’s nimble fingers coming to our rescue at the last moment, when Rita and I were reeling in a hairy delerium, my poor tortured frizzy head of doom emerged at last.

(click to expand teh frizzy head of doom)

OMFG it felt heavenly to scratch my scalp! And wash my hair. Phewph. I love having crazy long wild wanton she devil extensions, but there’s a reason I only do shit like this once a year.

My poor traumatized hair. I decided it was time for a mercy killing.

(click to maximize my cute bobness)

Ah, the short summer bob.

It’s a berriful world out there right now and I’ve been taking full advantage of it.

My friend Seb teaches classes on the wild things out there. What’s edible, what’s medicinal, what’s tasty and what’s bleeeah. Rita, Ben, Kevin and I trailed her across Tiger Mountain last saturday and learned all sorts of secrets and treasures.

We feasted on a multitude of delicious(and a few not so delicious) offerings. Huckleberries, blackberries, thimbleberries, blackcaps, lichen(imagine dry, sweaty paper), licorice fern, cat-tail root(sort of potatoey), wild plum leaves and other strange forest delicacies.

I especially loved the blackcaps-deep maroon/black raspberries-and the thimbleberries, which were surprisingly plentiful and quite tasty.

Kevin discovered a sleeping snake(you can see it on flickr with the rest of the picture parade) and we worked up quite a thirst with all that tromping about in the hot sun, so we hit the Snoqualmie Brew Pub for lunch and pitchers of rootbeer.

The rootbeer is excellent, which is fortunate, since we ended up consuming way more of it than we’d intended as the waiter’d forgotten to put in our order and thus we sat for several hours in sun-dazed conversation until we finally mentioned that we were starving and he, mortified, confessed his error and gave us a free extra pitcher.

All in all though, it were a grand day and we floated out of there on a haze of rootbeer bubbles, with heads full of foraging knowhow.

Faerie Worlds was aswarm in fairies of all sorts, including Rita and I-the baddest of the Bad Faeries.

We had a seriously good time camping too. Lucked out on campgrounds-first Triangle Lake, though purported to be a mere ten minutes from the festival rather than the half hour twisty turny drive it turned out to be! However, our river bank tent nest, cozily tucked into the most abundantly laden huckleberry bushes I’ve ever laid mouth on, more than made up for the distance.

We camped there with my friends Kevin and Seb and even though we didn’t see them as much as we’d've liked, much fun was had when we did.. Kevin adventured up the river and discovered an awesome natural water slide and miles of gigantic moss-upholstered boulder-strewn river, perfect for clambering over and splashing in.

Flickr’d pictures(including more bad faerie hawtness) here.

Seb donned her amazing homemade antlers, which so goggled Sam with their nigh invisible attachment that she let him steal them for a while.

Definitely going to have to make him a set.

There’s only so much fairy-watching and strolling nonchalantly about looking badassedly hot one can do however, so we took off on the third day and drove through the mountains to one of my favorite places on earth-Breitenbush Hotsprings.

We arrived in time for dinner, but unfortunately, they’re sticklers for day use timeliness and we only got to steal a half hour in the springs. Sigh. Still, loverly lusciousness.

We stayed at Cleator Bend campground right next door, another beautiful riverside spot. This time one of those wonderful glacial torrents that beats stones into deliciously smooth, eminently stackable ovals. Rita has all the pics of my stacks on her camera(not to mention our skinny-dipping naiad shoot), so you’ll have to wait ’til she has time to process ‘em to see.

Aaaaaah, such a glorious world we live in.

My friend Svadesh wrote this poem in response to his recent heart attack and the resultant outpouring of love and protest from his friends. I must say, we’re awfully glad his mortal conglomeration decided to stay conglomerate for a while longer. As conglomerations go, ’tis one of the very finest.

I didn’t know before it happened

You brought the flower to my door

My funeral had begun

The voices intoning their concern—

Their love.

On the gurney you don’t know

Your fate, the part of breath you’ll be next hour

The mechanical magician working on my form

While I watch the rivers and brooks of my heart

On television

And then,

Back into this body once again

Feeling the life

The way I like it.

Your emotions and thoughts trekking through unseen space

Touch me tenderly with that feeling we all know so well

And forget and remember … again and again.

Thank you dear friends

No wake for this mortal conglomeration now

The funeral has been delayed so further experience

I may gather on the soul’s path into the great unknown.

Svadesh

I’m sooooooooooooooooooooo tired. Rita and I have stayed up to the wee hours the last two nights putting two foot long red and black extensions in our hair.

We’re going to the the hottest Bad Faeries at Faerie Worlds! Mwahahahahaha!

Don’t worry, there will be lots of pictures.

Alas, we had to take Delayne back to the ferry on sunday, but that didn’t stop Rita and Sam and I-we kept right on camping and mad-libbing and munching on the bestest trail mix ever.

The next day we said goodbye to the magnificient momma maple,

and detoured on the way home to visit Port Townsend, where Rita treated us to lunch and we ‘xplored the dank and spooky underground bunker at Fort Umwhatsit. Not too mention lazing about on yet another fabulous beach.

I couldn’t resist stacking the lovely round stones.

Rita created an amazing shadow stick woman(see her flickr set) and Sam attempted to bury his very wiggly toes.

Oh, and Rita took this terribly cute picture of me.

Once we nabbed our Delayne from the Coho, we hopped on 101 west to curve and twist and wind around the lovely, sparkly Lake Crescent on our way to Fairholm Campground.

Fairholm is a gorgeous, large campground and we lucked out on a spot not far from the lakeside that just fit our humonguous tent palace. Hurray for tall trees, chortling ravens, campfires, wading, cookin’ over campstoves, giggly tent mornings…

We hiked up to Marymere falls, where Delayne played Fallsmonkey.

(photo by Rita)

Sam collapsed dramatically at the top, almost missing the sight of the falls itself in his grand display of exhaustion. Downhill is always reinvigorating though and we found a wonderful wandering stream to follow as we got lost on the way back to the car.

D built an exquisitely balanced, pretty rock stack by the stream side whilst Sam and Rita skipped stones and I dreamily clambered about on the many wondrous logs piled topsy turvy over the river.

The next day the ocean beaches were calling us, so we piled in the car and followed a road that kept getting narrower and narrower, but did eventually bring us to the promised coastline and a perfectly marvelous beach.

We spent the whole day there exploring it’s bumpy cliffs, tidepools, amazing islets, driftwood fortresses and kelp whiptastic beaches.

Delayne showed Sam how to build sand pancake arches and drip trees, Rita made an awesomely spikey fort,

and I created a sleeping Sea witch.

Arrr, it were a grand day!

My full set of flickr’d pics live here and Rita’s(I must confess I stoled some), here.