This weekend was marmalade weekend (a view of last year’s marmalade weekend)! My favorite kind of weekend, as marmalade is one of my favorite things. We had a fantastic bounty of oranges from our little tree this year. It was about one paper grocery bag full of oranges. We ate quite a few, but most were saved for marmalade.

It amazes me that we are able to grow oranges. They just seem like such tropical little gems. Have you read The Sun Egg by Elsa Beskow? It is one of our favorites. As the story goes, a little boy named Danny drops an orange out of his lunch box in a Swedish forest. The creatures of the forest think that the sun laid an egg until a bird corrects them that it is an orange. When winter comes and the birds migrate south, they take the little wood fairy with them to see the oranges grow and she gets a little straw and sucks the juice out of the oranges. So if ever you get a dry orange it is because the fairy had a drink of it’s juice, and really, you don’t mind sharing, do you? It seems the fairy skipped our yard this year, because all were juicy and delicious.

We did more work clearing out and harvesting what was in the ground in order to make room for new things.

We had a few hours without boys on Saturday and were able to take the baby girl with us to the nursery to casually walk and browse. It was so luxurious and reminded us of our pre-child days when those slow visits to the nursery were commonplace. We indulged and bought a whole slew of new plants, kale, half-priced onions, romanesco broccoli, blueberries(!) and a handful of flowers for my flowerbeds which are getting a major redo this year. Two hydrangeas for in front of the cottage, a new rudbeckia, a tea tree for a sunny hot spot and a few penstemon to make my bed more water wise.

Oh, I’ve been experimenting around a bit, both in the kitchen & with body care things that I can’t wait to share! To come soon.