My new mate Tyson hams it up for the camera

We were sitting on the western edge of the island on Saturday afternoon enjoying the warm sand between our toes and the afternoon sun on our faces. I was marching up and down the beach photographing anything that moved, and anything that stood still. As soon as I took a break for a snack, one of the kiteboarders racing back and forth in the water leapt onto the sand to say hi.

My new friend Tyson had noticed me running back and forth trying to photograph some of the kiteboarders. He offered to make a couple of passes back and forth in the shallow surf. He explained the wind wasn’t high enough for any fancy jumps, but I was awestruck to be just talking to a kiteboarder. Usually I try and leave them alone to enjoy the day, and just stay out of the way while photographing them, so it was simply awesome to have one of them come over and agree to model for me. How friendly! He encouraged us to go over to visit http://gokiting.com (the storefront is right next door to the dock on Marine Drive) and pick up some kites of our own, so who knows. Maybe next summer you’ll see me out there.

Sweetfest is Redmond’s first go at a dessert and sweets festival. We think that the people at Sugar were pretty good sports about giving up the name “sweetfest” just so Redmond could have it, so let’s give them a hand and visit them over at the west Seattle Farmers market any Sunday to say hi. That said, it’s the perfect name for the festival. In fact, after sampling at four or five booths, I had to go have a sit-down and drink a bottle of water to force the sugar through my system.

I blame Punjab Sweets (located in Kent, they say they are a bakery and restaurant) whose “sample” consisted of a plateful of their entire sweet line — several varieties of fudge, some sort of sugary deepfried flour batter, gulab jamon, and several other desserts. But don’t think anyone else was shy. Over at Naked (I sure hope that site’s ok, because I don’t want to install Flash 9 just to see it) they were inviting you to try all their juices (verdict: OJ is great, but the protein drink of pineapple, apple and coconut was a little… thick). Caroline’s desserts were pretty enthused about their stock too — tiny samples of rice crispie treats — oops, I mean, “krispettes”. The triple chocolate nirvana is a little slice of heaven, and while they negotiate to bring them to a grocery store near you, they’re available at the online store on their website.

Theo’s Chocolates had made a showing, of course, and dispensing with the niceties of little paper cups or plates, had huge bowlsful of broken chocolate pieces from their 3400 Phinney Chocolate Factory line as well as some of their origin bars to sample. But come on: “Coconut Curry Milk Chocolate”?? Don’t do that to my chocolate. I went with a sample of the tamer coffee chocolate and ‘bread and chocolate’ bars instead.

The star of the show had to be (pictured above) the Sugar Rush Baking Company, operating out of Coffee to a Tea with Sugar, in West Seattle. One woman, visibly excited, came running up to the booth and gushed, “*I* live in West Seattle! Where are you guys??”. But we’re not just happy that they are located in West Seattle, as far from us as humanly possible. We’re also happy that they brought what looks like their entire dessert line with them, and were offering free samples of everything. From the minicupcakes pictured (which they were also giving away coupons for), to bars and slices, to cakes, you could get a sample of anything you wanted.

The air at the festival was one of high excitement, and honestly after that much sugar, I was ready to bounce off the walls myself. With food tickets selling for $2 and $3 a ticket, I was rather pleased to be able to get away from the festival with just the entry fee of $5 (including free parking), and a belly full of samples. It doesn’t get cheaper than this, folks. Now please excuse me while I come off my high.

Teenage girl: Guess what?!! I just looked at a leopard with Colin Meloy!

Teenage girl’s friend, who was holding her place in line: Who’s Colin Meloy?

Teenage girl: The lead singer for the Decemberists!

“hi, look; I have this dead crow — actually, two — out on the street and it’s really gross…”

Dead silence.

“… can I yard waste them?”

The voice took on a faintly pitying tone.

“Ma’am, crows aren’t yard waste. They aren’t recyclable, you know.”

I got annoyed.

“Look, it’s in your pamphlet, under Yard Waste. It says “meat and fish scraps (including bones)”, so why can’t I yard waste them?”

She put me on hold, went and checked, and came back and told me to double bag them and throw them in with the regular garbage. I wanted to argue and tell her that one was showing bones already, but I gave in and hung up.

But WHY can’t I yard waste my crows?

There’s a twenty or thirty second window between when our bus arrives and when another (more popular) bus leaves, and half the people from our bus were notorious for sprinting from one to the other.

As soon as the doors opened, a crowd of people hopped out and without a glance, bolted past 4 crackheads (ok, alleged (by me) to be crackheads) in handcuffs occupying some bus benches and surrounded by a circle of policemen. No wondering whether the prisoners caught the bus to come here and be caught? No wondering why they were hanging around a newly built police station outpost? Nope. Get out of our way, we have to get to work now. Catch you on the 4 o’clock news.

What I will talk about is the way Zootunes have fired up my imagination for bringing something nice to eat at a sunny venue with nice music and about a bazillion other people. I’ve resurrected my beat-up old red 6-can cooler, and been able to wedge the most amazing amount of food into it. A couple of half frozen bottles of water serve as “ice”. Some days I buy a container of sushi from somewhere. We’ve done Whole Foods’ garlic wine salami with some caprese salad. Their tofu salad or fruit salads are nice and light. Last week they had “organic lemonade” on sale, so I nabbed a bottle or two. I’ve bought a loaf of sourdough (no, it didn’t go in the cooler) and made spinach dip.

I’ve seen people bring in Zeek’s pizza. I watched a mother feed her toddler with lavash and hummus, and assorted crudite. And he ate it! Sorry to make you guys barf, but when I was 3, I would eat nothing but ketchup sandwiches on white bread with the crusts off. And look at me now! Still sneaking a ketchup sanger when no one’s looking.

Seattle, where are you going to eat, and what do you eat when you get there?

What’s that, I hear you say? The Lavender Festival’s this weekend? Very observant of you. However, while I do like lavender, I hate crowds, so I hit upon a plan to visit Sequim before the crowds. Last year, they had 34000 visitors, so I doubt very much they’ll miss me.

I managed to hit all 8 farms, although one of them was a drive-by at 50 miles an hour. Faves include:

– Jardin du Soleil and Purple Haze for sheer prettiness

– Cedarbrook Lavender & Herb Farm for the nice little garden. Petals cafe, on site, is reputedly a good little restaurant that started out as Australian before morphing into “international”. I’ll have to try that some other time. Instead we stopped at Cedar Creek Cuisine on the advice of our host. The crab cakes were great; very chunky, but the remoulade sauce was wasted on me. I just don’t like that stuff. The organic greens salad was a great little hodgepodge of fruit and whatnot, but don’t bother getting the salmon addition to it. Way too tough.

– Lost Mountain Lavender. Hitting it at sunset — which of course, none of you will do — we saw an adorable deer stealing cherries (and then later, less adorably peeing on the lawn)

Standing in the middle of the garden at Cedarbrook, I inhaled deeply, and was almost knocked flat by the incredible perfume of a bazillion lavender blooms. I didn’t just go to see lavender, hell, I have two bushes in my front yard. I came to see Lavender with a capital L, bushes stretching out all around me, to stand in the middle of all that purple, and be deafened by the humming of the bees (the first two farms mentioned are definitely good candidates for this).

If you go: remember, this ain’t no “tulip festival” — the whole point of growing lavender is for the blooms. Everyone in Sequim is just waiting for you to leave, and as soon as you do they will get to work cutting. By August, there will likely be nothing left. Don’t wait.

Also, a good word for some of the other attractions in the area: Dungeness Spit (don’t forget to put in your $3 to hike in the area — this year your fees are buying GRAVEL.), and the Olympic Game Farm (a little bit of advice here: make sure you’re the driver, put everyone else’s windows on child-lock, and then roll their windows all down and laugh hysterically as the bison come in to lick their faces).

Ah, Sequim! I’ll be back for sure.

My all-time favorite salad is the spinach and strawberries salad. It sounded like a bizarre combination at first (have I mentioned my phobia about fruit in my meals? They are DESSERT. They should STAY THERE.), but I had to admit that I liked the idea of all the ingredients, separately. So why not mix them up together and see what happened? After all, they were going to end up that way in my tummy anyway. So out it came — a lovingly arranged bouquet of baby spinach leaves, sliced strawberries, enoki (or enokitake) mushrooms, and slivered onions. (Do you know how hard it is to arrange that so that the ingredients don’t clump together?) On top: candied nuts. To one side: two miniature parcels of filo and cheese.

And it was perfect.

Until the waitress delivered the punchline: the salad was in its final few days, after which it would be taken off the menu until next year’s strawberry-enoki-spinach season (one would guess). I spent the entire year day-dreaming of what I would do. Have a strawberry-spinach lunch every single day? So what if I get sick of it, at least then I wouldn’t spend the whole year lusting after it.

Guess what? It’s strawberry-enoki-spinach season again, right now. I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do, but I’ll try not to be bizarre about it and just take it one day at a time.

Pied-billed Grebe plays peekaboo.

It’s getting really crowded out there, folks. Along with the UW folks renting out canoes and rowboats, Moss Bay rents out kayaks, rowing shells, and sailboats. That’s in addition to everyone who has their own, of course. I try to stay out of everyone’s way, but still there’s sometimes a line waiting to go under one of the many foot- or car-bridges in the general area, and then of course, everyone gets to watch me paddle frantically while going around in circles.

This year, for whatever reason, there are a LOT of waterfowl around the arboretum area, and everybody’s nerves are frayed. The mother mallards are protectively shepherding their growing ducklings with half patchy feathers, half duckling fluff. We watched one of them bodyslam a goose whose only crime appeared to be “diving for water weeds too close to a baby.” Ever been peacefully diving and then get smacked in the stomach? You can be assured that everyone got splatted a big splash of water for laughing.

As we slowly paddled along, we were accompanied by a little pied-billed grebe, who whistled provocatively at us. Silly me, I thought that he was playing peekaboo, but my more observant husband pointed out the grebe’s wife and one visible chick, sitting on top of a matted nest in the middle of the bay. So we pretended to be terrified and paddled, shrieking, out of the general area. It’s always good to build up the little guy’s confidence. His wife probably gave him an extra cuddle that night — chasing off two humans AND a canoe!

Anyway, just keep in mind, it’s crowded out in the lake. Lots of little diving things might come up real close and get smacked by a paddle. Obviously you should be keeping an eye out for the big things, such as the various boats crossing the Montlake Cut. But spare a thought for our little grebe, who the husband has dubbed “Nessy”. And keep clear of the chicks.