It's Lavender Festival time

There is a place in the Gettysburg area called Willow Pond Farm where there are acres and acres of lavender.  I was lucky that the weather was cooperating on this one day that I had off during this festival.  I got out to the farm early and started to meander.  There were small garden areas of herbs, edible flowers and plants, etc. and a lovely pond area where the sign there read, "Please do not disturb the frogs."

There was a fairly large area where you could snip your own bunches of lavendar--as long as you dared share the fields with the multitudes of bumble bees and honey bees.  I just took a deep breath and thought to myself, "Show no fear."  I quietly moved among the lavendar plants and bees while selecting branches to snip.  Luckily, I was not bothered by a single insect.

There were vendors selling garden items of all sorts.  My one selection was of some votive candles in lavendar scents.  There was one stand where the vendor was selling all kinds of things about fairies for your garden area.  I was so tempted to ask her if she really believed in fairies, but she was too busy with customers.  I, myself, do believe in fairies ever since a friend caught one on his camera this one evening while we were out exploring at Lily Dale, the center of spiritualism.  But that is a story for another time.

There were lectures on identifying and growing a variety of herbal plants and lavendar; but since I am the kind of girl that hasn't gotten into dirt since I was about 8 years old, this only held my interest for a short time.  There were also some workshops on things such as making a lavendar wand.

And, then there was lunch.  I selected the turkey sandwich, a small cup of pasta salad, green tea with lavendar, of course; and last of all blond brownies made with lavendar.  Each item had it's own flavor with just that hint of lavendar in everything.  But, the one thing I enjoyed the most before leaving this site was an ice cream cone with peach lavendar ice cream.  And that was really good!

Once again, it was getting really hot out so it was a relief to know I had seen everything and could go back to my air-conditioned room for the rest of the afternoon.

There has been some talk that this "might" be the last Lavendar Festival as one of the owners of this farm has been having health issues.  However, they were asking for information from everyone as they were leaving so that they could make contact with them for next year's event.  Since the crowd attending this event was pretty large, I am sure the people are hoping this festival will continue again next year.