Sequim's 18th Annual Lavender Festival

The other day, my mother and I visited two lavender farms after my town's 18th annual lavender festival ended.  Sequim has around nine or ten lavender farms in the area.  Lavender repels mosquitoes away (thank God), and a lot of people love the color and smell.  And by a lot of people, I mean A LOT.  People from all over the world will visit Sequim for its lavender farms.  I believe someone nicknamed our town the lavender capitol of the nation once.  It's sort of a shame it wasn't sunny this past weekend, but the overcast helps my photos out a lot!

My mother and I visited the Purple Haze Lavender Farm and then the Sunshine Herb and Lavender Farm.  There were not very many people around the time we visited the farms, which is super nice because the crowds can be annoying.  So we had more space to take photos, take our time with walking around and browsing vendors, and traffic was not all too terrible.  It was a very fun afternoon/evening for us.  Here are the photos:

My mother sitting in the little ice cream/lemonade shop area.

This is the other side of where my mother was sitting in the first photo.  Through the windows, you can see the little ice cream/lemonade shop I was talking about!

One of the southern fields of the Purple Haze Lavender farm.

The northern-most field of lavender with a pretty but private residence in the background.  The white tent is a vendor.

My mother would not stay still for these photos!

More of the festival.  There was music and the tents under the trimmed willow tree were part of a restaurant, Blondie's Plate, selling good food!

Finally, a non-blurry, posed photo of my Mom!

Little trails and little crowds

They had the prettiest little garden area!

Raised bed garden.

My mom next to the super tall artichokes.

A close-up on one of the artichoke heads.

Sooooooo much color, I didn't want to leave!

I am half-tempted to just walk into that residence, announce that I live here now, and kick everyone out.  I don't know how successful that would be, but I don't want to deal with the lavender festival crowds anyway.  They can keep their house.....for now.

There is even a cute pond with huge dragonflies on this property.

And two lines of evergreen trees.

They had a fenced off area near the evergreen tree lines, which had chickens and two peacocks!  This is the male peacock.

Such vibrant colors on this one!

There is the Royal Highness with his lackluster female companion in the background.

I had no idea chickens fall asleep this way.

Where is her head?!

The sounds of my shutter clicking woke her up...  Oops.

Mom wanted me to pose in the fields.  I'm not all that photogenic, and I look super tan here.  I swear I am not this shade in reality!

The west lavender field at the Sunshine Herb and Lavender Farm.

The big red barn is an adorable herb and gift shop!

I chased this bumblebee around for a while trying to get a cute photo!  It was a little afraid of my camera's shutter sounds.

They had a goldfish pond!  The metal mesh over the pond is to keep birds and raccoons from eating up the fish!  And they have this old purple bench in front of it with the paint chipping away to a distressed, vintage look.  But someone broke the wood in the middle of the bench, so it's not very suitable for seating anymore.

Close-up in front of the farm's water fountain!  This is a great spot for resting and people-watching on this farm.

This purple garden arch used to be stark white.  I think I prefer the stark white more, but it's obviously painted this color for the festival.

I think I like this photo of me best but I'm not too fond of photos of myself.

My mom in front of the main lavender field, with it's statue in the background.

Close-up on the naked statue!

She and her cherub companion look over the fields, I guess.