A Walk Through The Garden

After a month of sunshine, the rain has finally come back (much to the disappointment of everyone). The garden however, is very happy with the change in the weather...

 Rain drops collect on the flowers and leaves, causing the patches of color to sparkle even more against the lush green of Juneau's temperate rainforest. 

Not only are Melissa's flowers and Paul's vegetables doing well, the wildflowers are blooming all over our yard. Buttercups, forget-me-knots, and the white dogwood flowers brighten the patches of yard that Melissa hasn't yet been able to plant garden of her own.

To capture this beauty, Quinn and I made a video tour through Melissa and Paul's lovely gardens. We hope you enjoy a close-up look at the pretty flowers and the large leafy greens they've been working so hard to grow. 

Our crosses from Easter are still firmly planted in the crook of an old stump.
But since summer has come, dogwood flowers have grown up around them,
making the sight an even prettier and happy reminder of Jesus's love for us.

Tasha Tudor Day

We have started a new tradition in our household: 

Tasha Tudor Day! 

Tasha Tudor is a world renowned American children's book author and illustrator. Many of her books can be found on Melissa's book shelves, and Abigail, Quinn and Laura have fond memories of reading them when they were young. 

She is very much Melissa's hero (and mine too, since Melissa introduced me to her work), residing in an old new England farm house with goats, chickens, and many adorable corgis. She believed in hard work, imagination, and the beauty and joy that could be found in making things with your own two hands.

Because of our love for Tasha Tudor, we decided to celebrate a day in her honor! We would dress and go about our lives in an old fashioned way. 

And let me tell you...we had so much fun!

The day dawned bright and sunny, and us girls put on our favorite old-fashioned dresses. 

Mine is a vintage German dirndl dress that fits me to a T! This was my first time wearing it, and I couldn't have picked a better occasion. 

I started out my morning by raiding Melissa's table cloth stash..

Quinn, being the helpful husband, had already hung up a long clothes line for me to hang the tablecloths on.  He had helped me plan a special picnic for everyone that day, and it required the perfect setting!

Tablecloths are one of Melissa's favorite things (right up there with dishes, ovens, chocolate and coffee), so we had plenty of beautiful floral printed cloths to hang up.

They would create the perfect backdrop for our picnic!

Abigail came out to help us then. She wore a lovely dress Quinn had gotten her as a Christmas present several years before. Paired with a pretty white lace apron, she looked simply stunning!

Together we hung paper garlands in the blossoming apple trees. I had sewn them all up the night before so we would have them ready. 

Melissa came out then (wearing a dress patterned all in spring flowers), and together we grabbed our trugs and flower clippers and headed down to the flats to find flowers. 

The flats were a-glow with green sea grasses, shimmering in the sun. The mountains looked wild and far-off as we skipped around with bare feet. 

Buttercups, shooting stars, lupin, and sweet pea flowers covered the ground. 

The beauty that surrounded us was amazing, we could have spent our whole day down there!

We filled our baskets to the brims with flowers. 

It was hard to leave the beauty of the flats, but the flowers needed to be put in water and we needed to start on making lunch for the picnic!

We may have stopped on the way back up to the house to take a ride on the swing though...

Once we were back up at the house, we laid down a quilt under the apple blossoms and started cleaning the flowers. 

I had extra cones from my May Day gifts, so we filled them with flowers and hung them in the apple trees. We even had enough for two vases as well!

I used a bundle of extra sweet pea blossoms to make Abigail a flower crown.

Now she looked even more fairy like with that flowing golden hair of hers!

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Melissa had started the soup for our picnic lunch. Abby and I looked through her Tasha Tudor cookbook and found a bread recipe to try.

The recipe was for a large batch, making four loaves of white bread all together! 

But I have a large family, so we decided to make the full recipe and share what we had left over.

Abigail and I took turns kneading the bread (which is always the funnest part). 

It came out of the oven looking absolutely beautiful! And let me tell you, we ate every last bit of it with honey and jam and butter (all except for the loaf we gave to my family of course). 

Our picnic was the prettiest picnic I've ever had the pleasure to be a part of, and I think everyone else would agree with me.

The apple tree blossoms smelled so sweet as we sat underneath them. 

The tablecloths blew in the breeze...

And the picnic food was beyond yummy!

We all sat together on the quilt we had brought out. We ate, talked, and basked in the warm sunshine.

Melissa remarked, as we stretched out on the quilt after all the food had been eaten and put away, "Yes, I think Tasha Tudor would have been proud."

I think she would have been, too.

Making a Splash into Cedar Lake

Here's Abigail jumping for joy at the beauty surrounding her!

One thing Alaskans will never get tired of is having a sunny weekend.

Yes, it's true.

This last Saturday dawned fair and bright and super hot (for Juneau standards) at about 78 degrees. 

After a very full and busy week of work, Quinn and I decided a hike and a swim was in order.

Gathering a group of siblings and friends together, we headed off 'out the road' to the Point Bridget trail.

First we had to wait for the other friends to show up though, and that took a little while...

So after setting off a few fireworks and playing a few rounds of baseball with a rock and a log, we decided just to start without them. 

They had said they would catch up with us later.

The trail wasn't too long, just two miles to a cute cabin, and very flat and pretty.

The only downside? 

The bugs!

My sister Valerie would love to tell you all about the terrible and horrible bugs she saw on the trail, but it would take a while. 

Thankfully we remembered the bug spray (and for BIGGER things, the bear spray), so we were mostly safe.

Mostly.

Even with the bugs though, the lovely views could not have been beaten. Buttercups, irises, lupine, and pink shooting stars dotted the fields that we walked through.

Valerie's favorite flower, the chocolate lily, was also in bloom.

Don't let the name fool you! 

These flowers may look pretty (and have a scrumptious sounding name) but they smell absolutely terrible!

We don't recommend putting them in your floral arrangements...

Once we reached the two mile mark at the cabin, we took a break. The rest of our friends hadn't been far behind us, and together we started up the last .7 miles up to Cedar Lake!

Doesn't my brother Henry there in front look sooooo excited to be there?

He had plenty of fun, don't worry.

The last .7 miles were harder then the first two. 

For one thing, it was all up a mountain, but the first view of water had us all excited, and we eagerly sped up our pace!

We'd been hiking for most of the morning, and we were hungry. But all it took was one glance at the sparkling water for all of us to suit up and swing in!

When Paul was still working for the Forest Service, he put up the rope swing here at the lake. He climbed up the tree with a chainsaw and the rope and cut his way back down so that the rope would hang and swing freely. 

We were all pretty thankful he did.

We put a silly video together of all the best rope swing jumps and the one time we all piled on top of the raft (and the inevitable flip-over). 

We hope you enjoy watching it!