The Savage Vine

Savage Plants and Landscape has long been my favorite North Kitsap nursery.  It's not the largest in the area, but it has remarkable diversity, outstanding grounds, and personable and knowledgeable service.  Well, they have improved on all this by adding a wine shop!  The Savage Vine  is located on the premises, in a peaceful and refreshingly non-hipster setting.  They are open daily and do tastings on Saturdays, with the price ranging from free to $5, which sounds reasonable to me.  They expect to add outdoor seating as the weather warms, which will make it all the more divine.  I quite like the idea of drinking wine while shopping for ground cover.  It's also located conveniently between my house and my shop...nice!

I'm really pleased to see so many quality small businesses opening in the last year or so in the area, especially in the face of an uncertain economy.  It seems that the worst things got, the more courageous and creative many people became; resulting in flurry of business openings and reinventions, cool new events, and fledgling non-profits.

Poulsbo Mini Pub Crawl

Katie, a fantastic server, behind the bar at Tizley's. 

I left work with beer and sausage on my mind, so after rendezvousing at home, Drew and I decamped for Tizley's Europub in Poulsbo.  Sitting on their comfortable old furniture on the second floor with late day sunlight filtering in, life begin looking pretty good.  I had a sample of a delicious coconut porter from Maui Brewing Company, and a glass of a refreshing Kristallweizen from a new Poulsbo brewer, Sound Brewery.  We also had mounds of sausage, sauerkraut, a lamb burger, bread sticks stuffed with cheese, apple strudel, and other wholesome delights.  And it's OK, because I had raw spelt flakes for lunch!  With green tea!

Front Street in Poulsbo from Tizley's deck.

The tasting room at Sound Bewery.

Inspired by the Kristallweizen, we then set out for Sound Brewery's tasting room.  After driving haplessly around an assisted living center for Alzheimer's patients, we finally found it in a small warehouse tucked beyond an automotive center.  It was as unpretentious as you get.  Some breweries go out of their way to promote a gritty industrial feel, but this was an authentic bare bones tasting room.  It was fairly crowded but pleasantly low key, and the beer and service were both friendly.

We came home and with a mixture of hope and dread turned on the Mariners game.  Bless their incompetent hearts, they actually won the game.

It has been a stressful year and little pockets of goodness like tonight feel really sweet.

Kitsap Spring

The last year or so has been a big one for me, and I'm just now feeling that I'm settling into my new routine.  I'm a lazy writer, and the more complex and momentous life events often seem too hard to write about.  It's not a good trait for a blogger, since I end up chronicling the mundane and skipping the interesting stuff.  I'll work on it.

Anyway, spring is supposedly here, and the farmer's markets are beginning to open around the county.  Kitsap Cuisine does a fine job of writing about the local farm and food scene, including good articles on the local farmers markets.  A full schedule of local markets is below.  It seems like they're getting bigger and better every year, which pleases me no end.  I have tomato seedlings happily growing in the laundry room and all the onions and most of the greens are in the ground.  My snow peas are up and looking vigorous.  So, yeah, it must be spring.

African Basket Giveaway

A new blog covering Kitsap events, communities, and businesses, Kitsap Daily, is doing a giveaway featuring an African basket from my li'l store.  Check out their website for details.  The baskets are similar to this one, but come in a multitude of colors and patterns.  We are also now offering free shipping on orders over $100 throughout the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii.

I don't want to use this blog much to promote my business (I will return to gardening and life in general soon and thus will actually have something to write about), but I just wanted to get this out there because I really like the Kitsap Daily and I think this is a pretty cool little contest.

I Love My Town

After work The Husband and I swiftly trotted off to The Filling Station for food and beer, where we enjoyed a view of the Seattle skyline and Mt. Rainier from the deck.  After such a dismal May and June it felt almost decadent to be all hot and sweaty.  We then took a walk around town and snapped these pictures.  I had forgotten how much I love little Kingston.  I just needed the sun to come out to remember.  Probably the frosty Stella helped too, but anyway, it really is a lovely and completely unpretentious place.

Capitalism!

I've been working day and night the last few weeks starting up a new business, Tango Zulu Imports, selling handcrafted goods from (mostly) West Africa as well as Nepal & Tibet.  Between that and training for the marathon the garden is a little neglected, but it seems to be muddling through.  The chard and kale are pretty delighted with the cool spring we're having but I am despairing of ever getting my tomato seedlings out of my bathroom.

Anyway...I have leased a 147 year old house in Port Gamble, Washington, as my base of operations. Retail shop downstairs and internet operations upstairs.  I have always loved Port Gamble, which is a bit of an anomaly out here in the Pacific Northwest.  It's a true company town, built in the mid-19th century to house lumber workers (my place used to belong to the doctor and it had rooms for patients, so it's pretty big.)  The lumber company was from Maine, and the houses were built accordingly, in a northeast style you don't often see here.   A lovely place to go to work, and it's only 10 minutes from my house, AND backs up to the trails I like to run on.  It couldn't be better.  By the end of next week I expect to be open for business, both in the store and on the web, doing something I've always wanted to do.

Signs, Signs, Everywhere There's Signs

Here are a few signs from recent travels that amused me.  One is from China, where apparently I had no business being on the ropeway (tram).  The others are unusually morbid ones, by U.S. standards, from the Grand Canyon.  I especially liked the one of the guy puking.