And all goes forth

I’ve been busy. Weekends for family and friends, weekdays for work, and little time for anything else.

St. Radegund’s Faire

Queen G and her French Bread

We attended St Rad’s this year, our first time. M and I did not tent it; instead, we were generously allowed use of some unclaimed bunks on site. We showed up with the intent to car camp. The Event Steward saved us. Yay!

We left for the event much later than intended, and the SuperAwesome! that is mapping software left us staring at a blocked road at approximately midnight, somewhere in the remote fields of Minnesota. It took us some while to find a route that was actually paved to eventually get to site, and so the kindness of the Event Steward can not be overstated.

G recently had a trip to France, and she visited Château de Guédelon. She brought back flour ground in their gristmill, and she baked up bread in the clay oven you can see in the background. It was a really lovely bit of experimental archaeology. The bread was very good, and I rather wish I had thought to bring commercial, American whole wheat flour to compare the taste of the two loaves. My sense of G’s bread was that there was a difference, but I can’t be sure it was not psychological. I can be sure it was delicious.

During the night, a terrible thunderstorm rolled in, and we watched as people broke camp and either left site in an attempt to beat the storm, or brought their beds into the big cabins and bunked for the night. It was weird and wonderful to listen to the storm.

Sunday morning, we packed up what little we had and had breakfast with G at some restaurant, then made the long trek home.

Garden Wank

Beans Be Blooming

I’m glad to see that both runner beans (left and lower right) are blooming, so I hope to get some seeds this year. The Bartolotto Lingua Bush are also blooming (top right). What was a surprise is that they are both in the same bed. I thought I planted one in one bed and the other in the other bed, but the bean plant that is in that other bed, the single plant that came up, has not yet bloomed.

Ren Faire

The 16th C. Garden at Bristol, such as it is.
Which is better than not being there at all.

Other fun: a couple of trips to the Ren Faire, one to meet up with M’s family and a couple weeks later, one to enjoy with the spawn posse.  The second trip, I tried to really look at the 16th c. garden they grow there, but other than a quick run up to the bed and speed glancing (yeah, I know, right? Speed glancing) at the plants, I didn’t really spend much time there. The Posse was on the move and the crowd was thick. But I was able to at least confirm that the plants I have chosen for my 16th c. gardening pleasure are pretty much the same as the ones they grow there.

Look at us, all having a life and shit!

Summer is ending, alas.