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Summer Evening Light
Can we talk about the summer evening sky? June in the Pacific Northwest is so brilliantly beautiful, especially when it actually acts like summer and we get to see the sunshine, feel the warmth, smell the drying grass and geraniums, the roses and jasmine, and where we live, the salty sea air. And perhaps my favorite thing about living here in the summers, especially as June takes flight, is the evening sky. It’s breathtaking in so many ways, the pinks and lavenders stretching out across the sky as the sun’s rays make their long, arc across the horizon, making our days stretch out into forever. And the way that…
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Strawberries with Brown Sugar & Sour Cream
Every year for the past few years we have picked a bounty of strawberries from our own garden. And each year seems better than the last. I’ve said it before, the Hoods are my absolute favorite. Like any homegrown fruit or vegetable they beat the store bought kind any day. To me they taste better than any candy, and they absolutely ruin me for strawberries the rest of the year. Even Lily and Jasper are becoming strawberry snobs and hardly touch any I buy from the store. For a gardener with kids, strawberries are such a fun crop, as they grow really well in our climate, and the kids can…
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Summer Sangria Swizzle
It’s Saturday! It’s so close to summer I can taste it, and it’s supposed to be close to 80 degrees here this weekend, which is huge for us in the Pacific Northwest during the first week of June. I feel in my bones that we are going to have a gorgeous summer and I can’t wait for all that this sunshiny season has to bring. Long, lazy, warm days, the smell of suntan lotion, working in the garden, hours spent reading, playing at the beach, swimming. And food and drinks, of course. I can’t promise you great weather, but I can promise you here at Lemons & Roses it’s going to be a…
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Memories & Coffee
My mom would have been 69 yesterday. I spent her birthday traveling home to Everett from Catawba Island, Ohio. Hard not to think about her there, surrounded by family and friends who adored her too, and surrounded by the beauty of a precious place that holds so many memories from over the years. Like all good family soap operas, some of those memories are bittersweet, but most of them are the kind of warm, happy scenes you wrap up carefully and hold close in your heart until you can return, or in case you never do. My mom loved that place. Who wouldn’t? A tiny, hidden stretch of gorgeous land…
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An Abundance of Chives
A few weeks ago I sat at Wheat Penny, a restaurant in Dayton, Ohio, with some of my cousins and my aunt and uncle and had some of the most delicious pizzas ever. The Spring Has Sprung pizza was our favorite! It was a white pizza with asparagus, shrimp and chives. When I read the ingredients on the menu I thought, Huh, chives, big deal. Boy was I wrong. The chives made that pizza. It was so out of this world scrumptious, and the chives were the perfect herby, oniony flavor to go with the shrimp, asparagus, and delicious hints of garlic. I have an over abundance of chives in…
