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How Sequim has changed over these three years!
Dahlias again
and it's been drizzling!

With the irrigation water turned off, the flowers and lawns just love this gift from Mother Nature. We've been tap-watering many of the plants, but not really drenching them. Hope the salmon make it up the rivers, soon.

...As does our garden.

Roses in the rain...
and zucchini, and tomatoes, and dahlias...

How Sequim has changed over these three years! The Cedarfield Ostrich Farm is no more. Walmart and the Mall are planned for the west end of town. Virginia Mason has closed its Sequim Clinic - while the Jamestown Clinic has opened. Lehman's Midtown grocery has shut; the center of Sequim has boutiques, places to sit, visit, and eat, and types of individual enterprises not to be found in the malls at either end of the main street.

A last beautiful sunny Saturday means an excursion to the newly opened for the season Pumpkin Patch on Kitchen-Dick Road, at Highway 101. It's one of the family- fun farms affiliated with Roger and Ellie Schmidt's Sunny Farms store, here in Carlsborg. The produce waste and even cardboard boxes (for carbon) are mulched in the back fields of the Pumpking Patch, for this 35 acre garden. The 12 foot high corn plants shelter a Maze - a very large maze - when you fly over the field you can easily see the way in and out but whoooboy what a classic run it is! This year the pumpkins are in the north end of the farm; the highway field is growing organic vegetables. The Farm is open weekdays from 9 a m until dark. Weekends - bring your own flashlight; it's open until 9 p.m. The 5 acres closest to the highway are devorted to pumpkins for the halloween carver. Come andchoose your own. And don't miss this place on the Harvest Tour Oct 4th.

The Pumpkin Patch is open daily, starting Sept 27th, from 9- 5 through Halloween ... and weekend evenings you can run the maze until 9 p.m.- bring your own flashlight..

The next 'Saturday' place to explore was the garden base of Wood 'n Flowers - home to Bill and Juanita Harms on East Runion Road.

Juanita chooses the flowers and creates the arrangements from her three dahlia gardens. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning Bill drives the finished bouquets in his truck to the parking lot at the Sequim Medical Center at 8:30 and shortly after that they are gone. With an early morning medical appointment we finally connected with him and brought a bunch of dahlia blooms home. They are beautiful, fresh, and long-lasting. So we were invited to explore the gardens with him Saturday - they have three large cutting gardens. They save the tubers, and have a root celler for the storage. I learned that each tuber has an eye and that is where the growth begins.... it was an aha! moment. They also have apple, cherry, and pear trees, some with so much fruit that the branches needed propping up.