McGrath CSA and Ventura County Tidbits of Info

Yum! This is the contents of our weekly CSA box from McGrath Family Organic Farm.

Flowers by Aunt Anna

All my favorite flowers (hydrangeas, sweet peas, tuberose, peonies, and roses) in one place, courtesy of my Aunt Anna and her wonderful florist skills!

Buena Vista

This post is mostly pictures, as my aunt's home and yard are so beautiful.  She lives on five acres in Buena Vista, Oregon.  She is a teacher, but in her spare time, she tends her flower business, Buena Vista Flowers.   And by spare time, I mean the 16 hours that she isn't working as a teacher.  Seriously, she was out until ten o'clock one night working in the yard. Brandon and I felt lazy, as we watched her from our bedroom window, ready for bed.

The sign above is outside her shop.  My aunt specializes in cut flowers and sells her flowers from her shop on the honor system or through special order.  I find it amazing that she prepares beautiful bouquets, places them in her shop, and leaves them unattended for customers.  Here's my aunt cutting peonies from the many rows:

Here's some beautiful yarrow:

Paige loved wandering the flower beds.  See the delphiniums in the back?  Can you imagine having that many beautiful flowers at your disposal?

Here's Paige and my Aunt back in the peonies:

It was hard to get pictures that didn't involve my Aunt working:

But I eventually succeeded.  This is my favorite.  At Paige's baby shower, which my Aunt Michelle hosted, the favors were little pink tins filled with dianthus seeds.  I still have several of them - I know I should have planted them, but I wanted to save the favor.  And it would have made me sad to plant them and then leave, as I would eventually do since we move so much.  A few people at the shower admitted they didn't have green thumbs and gave their seeds to my Aunt Mary.  She started flats and flats of them and then planted them around her shop.  She and Paige are in front of them.  They are the low-growing pink and white flowers.   I had never seen so many at once.  I love that those favors went from a fabulous shower in Orange County three years ago to their current state of prolific bloom at my Aunt's house in Oregon.

Jam Country

Once we left Portland, shakes in hand, we headed south to my aunt Mary's house in Buena Vista. We realized about twenty minutes into our forty minute drive that both girls were asleep and that if we took the direct route, the girls would only have a twenty minute nap. So, we decided to take the scenic route through some wine country via Carlton. I'd read about a jam shop in Carlton called Republic of Jam and figured I could buy some Oregon jams as hostess gifts, since we'd be seeing friends and family on our drive.

We passed through McMinnville and wound into the country, seeing filbert orchards, vineyards, big hills of evergreens, and damp pastures. The Hotel Vintage Plaza , where we stayed in Portland, included a nightly wine reception and rooms named after Oregon wineries. So we were excited to drive past Monks Gate Vineyard which was the name of our room. If we didn't have sleeping children with us, I'm sure we would have stopped for a taste or three.

In Carlton, I jumped out of the truck and walked into a little main street shop for the jam. The store was lined with seemingly all varieties of jam. The owner came over and explained her jam philosophy - less sugar, more fruit for a jam that is more of a spread. I picked marion berry, raspberry rhubarb, rhubarb rosemary, and pickled limes. All were very Oregonian in nature, except the limes. But the limes were interesting and I though maybe someday I'd make my own using limes from our tree in San Diego.

We then continued on to Buena Vista to see my aunt.

Cacao! I have more to say about our time in Portland...

Sorry about all the Portlandia references - they will stop after this post.  Anyway, about our last day in Portland.  Paige and Jules roused us from bed bright and early and we left our hotel right after breakfast to visit the International Rose Test Garden in Washington Park.  The roses, the garden, and the setting were absolutely beautiful.  I found the gardens very inspiring even though most of the plantings except the roses do not grow very well in Southern California.  All those evergreens and hostas combined with the lawns veiled the entire garden in green.  Southern California is a coastal desert and never shimmers with greenery, but I love it just the same of course.  The rose garden was a good example of how important background planting is to showcase flowers.

 
After our walk through the rose gardens, Paige and Brandon hit the playground for almost an hour.  We had thought about going to the Japanese Garden but it was starting to rain and we wanted to ensure we had lunch and got on the road to my aunt's house by that afternoon.  Brandon had read that one of the food truck pods had really good poutine, so we decided to head across the river and have some fries with cheese and gravy.

Well, the poutine turned out to be underwhelming although the pesto-mayonnaise dip was delicious.  It was not the easygoing gastrotruck experience that we'd been expecting.  For one thing, Brandon was convinced that the operator of the poutine truck had been watching pornography just before opening the truck for business.  So, that was gross.  And Paige was near a tantrum and Jules was fussy.  Paige's frustration was instigated by a little coin operated merry-go-round that did not work.  She became annoyingly obsessed with its little green dirty horses.

Seeing another truck with some promising looking milkshakes, I decided to order one to salve the bad experience.  I swear, it took the girl behind the counter 15 minutes to scoop and blend my lavender-honey milkshake.   I know she was busy telling her co-worker all about her weekend and explaining her personality traits and quirks in great detail, but I honestly couldn't figure out what was slowing her down.  There were no other customers.  The shake turned out to be absolutely delicious, almost ethereal, though, and I would order another, but the slowness didn't help my annoyance at the time.  Brandon's fresh mint and Oreo shake was also very nice.

So, with that, we said cacao to Portland, loaded into Brandon's truck to the sound of children whining, and headed for Buena Vista.  Luckily, whining quickly turned into snoring.  Stay tuned for more...

Peaches!

Almost-ripe peaches from my backyard tree. I pruned and fertilized according to R. Sanford Martin and Ken Andersen's "How to Prune Fruit Trees and Roses" and Pat Welsh's "Southern California Organic Gardening." The tree has some peach leaf curl, which is a disease, so this winter I will treat the tree with Bordeaux mixture. My aunt gave me some while I was visiting her in Oregon, so I'm ready!

Put a Bird on It! Part 1.

We are just back from a road trip that kicked off with Brandon greeting us girls at Portland International Airport with hugs and a large pink box of Voodoo doughnuts. Paige tried a few bites but wasn't that interested. Brandon and I gobbled down our apple fritter and blueberry cake doughnuts though. It was funny to see those pink boxes throughout the day in the hands of other tourists as we wandered around Portland.

We dropped our luggage off at the Hotel Vintage Plaza, wrangled the double stroller into position and set off on foot to Stumptown Coffee. Stumptown was good, but I think I like Blue Bottle Coffee better, in case anyone cares about that sort of thing. Coffees in hand and one diaper change later, we wandered into what turned out to be the Portland Saturday Market at North Waterfront Park along the Willamette River.

Fueled by Greek food, rose-petal Rogue beer (in honor of the Rose Festival), and milk, Brandon and Paige danced to the live music for almost 30 minutes. Yes, it was very cute.

And then we ambled along Waterfront Park, which had a carnival.

Mostly the sky looked like this:

In fact, the weather was rainy and cold until we reached Northern California. But we soldiered on. Paige never once complained about being cold and I think is very warm blooded.

Once we got our fill of gawking at crafts, carnival rides, the river, and the milieu of oddly tattooed/pierced people, we walked back to the plazas closer to our hotel, starting with Pioneer Square. The Festival of Flowers was being commemorated by a flower pot installation of medallion patterns on the square.

And then we went to Directors Park, which was hands down Paige's favorite. She didn't stop playing in the fountain even after it started raining. The fountain was really cool - I wish we had something like this in San Diego. I know that children wade at the fountain in Balboa Park, but this fountain was specifically designed for little ones to play in.

We ended the day on a high note - a long nap and the Starlight Parade! We lucked out because it turns out that our hotel was on the parade route and had set out chairs for the event. The parade started very late, almost at 9:00, so we only lasted until about 10:00 with our little ones. But we saw some awesome marching bands and floats. Paige got all sorts of swag and smiles from the people in the parade. I just realized that I have mostly been talking about Paige, but all day people said "ah, what a cute, bright-eyed girl!" to Jules. She was content to nap and look around from her stroller and be held by her mommy and daddy.