Annie's country garden

Guns & Roses

Well, not really - roses first then guns. Nicely differing landscape over the past 2 weeks with Sandri's classic gardens (complete with warm white sand between my toes) then Fort Casey (foreboding on a good day, but dark clouds and a brisk wind made it chilly and intimidating).

Fun Happy Hour included Anacortes Sketchers Missy & Kalena, and Gnat's friend Mary from Nebraska-who-used-to-live-on-Whidbey-and-just-moved-back.

Tuscan Rose Garden ... eh I should say, "The Dog at the Tuscan Rose Garden"?

This is Mikey, the sweet and gorgeous yellow lab at the Sandri's Tuscan Rose Garden.  It was a very fun day. The Sandri's garden will be on the Whidbey Island Garden Tour this Saturday, and I hope to go and capture the roses and other plantings in their beautiful ornamental garden. But ... being the animal nut that I am, I just couldn't see past Mikey on Sketching Friday!  He was awfully sweet! That scrunched face drove me crazy. But ... the plants and the metal works make it a very artful and well choreographed garden! Totally worth visiting.  AND the Sandri's were uber sweet themselves.   Many thanks to them for opening their gardens to us! (Metal works  by Todd Eugene, Whidbey+Works ... and he'll have pieces for sale at the Tour!).  

Sky Root Farm

The weather was beautiful at Sky Root Farm last Friday.  We learned about Nervous Nellie, the goat who has triplets and didn't want more than two!  The pigs who really are piggy and mess everything up! And the meat goats who get five stars.  Nervous Nellie will find a new home, the babies, well, use your imagination.  The pigs will not have their rent renewed either.  Everything has to work in a sustainable manner.  The goats clear the fields of unwanted blackberries & fertilize, the ducks eat the slugs and fertilize.

We are establishing a new tradition of showing our sketches before we leave or at Happy Hour.  A glass of wine under the trees at Sky Root on a warm summery day was wonderful.

Elle, a garden intern from Illinois washing radishes

Kohlrabi with tub, washing station and barn in background

This was done from a photo.  Nervous Mom and three babies.  She only wanted two! OR ONE!

FARM HARMONY, FROM UNDER AN APPLE TREE

It will be hard to ever beat the time I had yesterday, sitting in the shade of an ancient apple tree, inside an old chicken pen, with ducks and ducklings muttering about in the grass behind me, a group of chatty hens scratching around next to me, a robust rooster serenading his biddies across the drive, a flittering flock of swallows swooping and swirling overhead and through an open window, and mama goat mewling to her trio of four day old babies in the pen behind the barn. Down the yard apiece - meat goats (unaware of their fate) and pigs (also unaware).  And at the farmhouse, on the porch, a comfy old hound snoring in his bed, and, inside, an escape cat, plotting. 
The peacefulness, the bright blue sky, the soft breeze rustling the leaves and grasses around me - all of it influenced my palette, I am sure. But I am reminded, once again (as I have been hundreds of times in my 70 years), that I could never be a farmer. I could never work that hard to achieve all that peaceful harmony. And, I could never, as Annie the Farm Kid does, name my food.

Sky Root Farm in Clinton on Whidbey Island

Sky Root Farms

What a lovely day at Sky Root Farms, so much to sketch!  I kept thinking how I wished I could capture the sounds of the happy pigs and goats  (who knew there were so many different goat noises?), the taste of the Kohlrabi (a turnip looking thing fresh picked and sliced up) and the smells (some not so good, but so wonderfully farmy). A delicious day with fun people and great stories of their livelihood .... and they genuinely appreciated our sketches.