Life in Fukuoka, Japan: Lavender Festival

Sunday, July 15th

My sister-in-law, Michelle, spent the night after our big shopping day on Saturday. She left once we all got up since she had to drive back to Astoria. It is about a 3 hour drive depending on traffic and the route one takes.

After Michelle left, Mark and I headed to Wilsonville for a lavender festival. Now, I do not know about you but when I hear the word festival I think of a festival. Lots of tents or booths with crafts, food, lavender and more. As we were heading up I was looking forward to the festival. I love the smell of lavender. I kept thinking about all of the things they might have there.

We followed the signs that pointed the way to the festival. Once we saw where people were parking I was beginning to get a strange feeling that this was not really going to be a big festival. It was held at The Barn Owl Nursery. The nursery itself is a small building. There were gardens around that had strawberries, blueberries and other fruit/veggie plants. It was interesting to see them all around the area. The Willamette Valley grows all kinds of berries and they are fresh and plentiful twice a week at the farmers market. We walked behind the nursery to see three or four little booth areas that had the white tent over them to protect us from the rain. (Today was much cooler than yesterday had been and there were only a few sprinkles.) We took a quick walk around to see what the tents had in them. One had a make your own soap for $10. Now there is no soap I could make that is worth $10. I passed on the one. One of the other tent areas had yarn in it. Hmmm.....I don't knit or crochet right now. The other two tents had some items made with lavender, like a little wreath. Those were cute, but I can't pack them to take them to Japan so I don't need any. The last tent area had a cook demonstrating some recipes you can make with lavender. Let me say though that the woman was just getting started and there were no other people out there besides me and Mark. We decided to go into the gift shop in the nursery. This is where the trip became worth it to me. I ended up buying some nice things. I found a little address book that was made in Florence, Italy that had lavender flowers all over the book. It is very adorable. I also bought some lotion and some lavender shortbread cookies. We had a woman who was working at the festival talking to us. I honestly do not know how our conversation started, but I know how it ends. SOme how she went on to tell me and Mark about her granddaughter. Her granddaughter is going to be a teacher. Well, she had been in Ethiopia working at an orphanage teaching English. She and the others also had to teach sex education. The grandmother was telling us how the girls (between 8-12) were asking what a bra was and what it was for. Since the granddaughter was with a bunch of girls she turned around so they couldn't see her and she carefully took off her bra and passed it around. The younger girls were looking at it and giggling. they were saying how they would not like to wear one of those. How odd is that for conversation with people you do not know? I thought it was a little strange. Mark just kept saying, "Who does that?" he couldn't figure out why this lady told us all of that. I just had to laugh. After that we high tailed it out of there.

We were going to make a stop in Wilsonville to look at an area called Village at Main Street. This was a beautiful community of town homes, apartments and houses. The community has a pool a fitness center (LA fitness), stores, and a huge park all right within walking distance. We are looking at it for next summer if we come to Oregon for a month or so. The area is newer and more modern than Salem. I am glad that we had a chance to live here in Salem before buying property. We feel that Salem is nice but we would rather be in a different area of Oregon.

The park has a public dock that Mark could use to go kayaking. The forested paths lead all around the park and and go to the dock. There are more baseball/soccer fields than I could count. The park was very busy while we were there. They were having baseball games and the area for picnics was getting set up for a family party.

It is nice to know we can head to Wilsonville to kayak and walk. It is north of Salem, but it only takes about 30 minutes to get there. We will be heading up before I leave to use the park. Once I go Mark can take the kayak and hang out for the day.

This week.....packing and getting our stuff to Portland to ship to Japan. (With less than two weeks to go I have a lot to do.)