Lunch with Snaveleys and coffee in Palmer

Looking at a dewy leaf from inside the van one cool morning

We have known Merle and Lois for ages. When we lived in Alaska 15 years ago, we went to Sunday morning meeting with them and then to their house for union meeting. Lois was an artist and Merle was a gardener. Both people who get things done. It had been quite awhile since we had seen them and Merle is now over 90, so I wasn't sure if they had slowed down or not. 

Silly me!

This is a picture of them painted by Debby Veldkemp, one of the friends from California whose brother lives near Merle and Lois. I realized after I left that I never got a picture of Merle and Lois together. Maybe because they are both so busy doing things! 

A picture Lois painted on a cabinet door of a logger in Southeast.

The kids, fascinated with new and different toys and ignoring all the beautiful artwork around them. 

Kids,

Actually, when I showed them the pictures and told them Lois had made them, the girls were really fascinated to meet a REAL artist. 

Lois' Denali pictures are just amazing. 

And Merle makes her frames. 

I want to be a team like that--Justin could probably do the frame thing, but I have some work to do before I could paint anything recognizable!!

Lois took us on a studio tour. 

She has done some massive canvases, some about 4 ft by 6ft if my memory serves me right (Wasilla convention grounds has a huge mural by her as well) but she now likes to do miniature work. 

These itty bitty things are little growth picked off birch trees. Corms? Not sure of the exact word. 

Love this froggy yoga-art studio! 

View from the studio. Behind those clouds lurks a huge mountain that generally fills this view. But for that day, we just got the moody clouds. 

Delphiniums. It is my goal in life to one day have a red building that delphiniums can look fantastic against. 

All of us at the table. Except Geri who was taking the picture! 

When Gilbert heard we were having ice cream, he wanted to know if we were going to have chocolate sauce with it. There wasn't any, but Liz said she would whip some up. I protested, told her it was not necessary, but.., Gilbert got his chocolate sauce. Since we were talking and laughing with her, Liz grabbed the lemon extract and poured it into the chocolate sauce instead of vanilla extract. 

Which brought us to a new level of laughing. 

I love people you can laugh with!

And it turns out the lemon-chocolate sauce, while unexpected, it actually quite good. 

Words of wisdom on the refrigerator. I love that this is clearly old, so it is something that they have decided was worth keeping for years and years. 

After lunch, Merle took us on a garden tour

The raspberry patch. I believe Merle said they have got 40 pounds of raspberries so far this year. 

He has a lot of raspberry bushes. 

Merle might use walking sticks now, but man! he sure gets a lot done in the garden! 

Golden raspberries

Merle showing the kids how to choose perfectly ripe ones to eat. 

I have never really seen golden raspberries before. They had a great flavor! 

Unripe apples

Bumble bee and fireweed

The strawberry season was mostly over and they had already processed all the strawberries they wanted for the year, so Merle told the kids they could pick as many as they could eat. 

Peas!

Merle telling them where to look for strawberries. 

I love how he likes to teach them about things. 

Orianna and the crabapple tree

Potatoes

Lettuce

Onions with frilly ground cover

Feathery carrots

A huge cabbage--this is where giant vegetables are grown--a lot of the world record vegetables are grown in Alaska--something to do with the ridiculous quantity of daylight they receive.  

The crabapples. For some reason they were just not looking as bright on my camera as they were in real life, so... 

I used the vivid setting on my phone. Woah! A little too much. 

Somewhere between these two pictures is how they really looked. 

Giant rhubarb leaves. 

Kids and rhubarb. 

When Orianna was a baby, I brought her out to Merle's garden and laid her on a rhubarb leaf and took some pictures. 

Shucked pea pods

Lichen covered garden gate

After Snaveley's, we went on into Palmer. 

We stopped for a quick coffee/sweet treat at Vagabond Blues, which is something the Snaveley's and other Palmer-ites often talk about. It was an awesome little coffee shop! 

Loved this card. But didn't buy it because.... suitcase space and cards always seem to get slightly rumpled in transit. 

When we were in Colorado, Grandma Dawna had a horsey with a Wells Fargo neck kerchief on. 

Gilbert, reading it to Elsie, said Wilson's Fargo. They called it that and then met their cousin Wilson at Cody's wedding. Elsie eventually went to the Wells Fargo way of thinking, but Gilbert refused to believe it was not his cousin Wilson's bank. Mostly just to annoy his sisters that tried to reason with him and tell him it WASN'T Wilson's Fargo. So every time we drove past a Wells Fargo, Gilbert and Elsie would try to beat the other one in saying it the way they liked it. And then the girls would all spend time telling Gilbert that it was Wells not Wilson, but Gilbert happily ignored them because he likes Wilson's better.  

So when we walked past this sign, Gilbert insisted on having a picture and pulling a few sisters in. 

Alaska Chicks store. 

Swoon!!

Quick stop by the Palmer Library. 

Because... duh. 

This was a tiny little book in the Alaska section. I want to find it somewhere and read it.

A mouse who became a writer--I need this book! 

A local rock collection was pretty fascinating to Lily.