The Tailor and I love peaches (and he loves canning them) so much that we’re willing to drive four hours to get them fresh from the orchard.
(Of course, that also means I get that Movin’ to the Country, Gonna Eat a Lotta Peaches song stuck in my head every year…)
You’ll find a few orchards on our side of the Cascades, but most of our famous Washington fruit is grown in the central part of the state, near the Columbia River Gorge. Crossing the mountains is a lot like entering a parallel-universe Washington, where instead of rain and emerald greens, you get high rugged cliffs and desert sun.
And sweet, delicious fruit.
So even though the farmstand ladies look at us like we can’t possibly know what we’re in for (oh, we do), we fill our tiny car to the brim—
—and break out the mason jars when we get home.
Ghost domes 
Forgotten canyon 
Twists and turns
Mmmmmm smell the smells, see the mess in the kitchen, but then the oh so delicious tastes. Nice to know these traditions we no longer participate in are carrying on!
Eating a Washington ripe peach is like eating a piece of sunshine! I love that you devoted several pages in your sketchbook to your love of peaches! It makes me appreciate them even more and makes me smile!
YAKIMA! This post makes me so happy 🙂 Naturally I love all of the sketches, but the last one is just fantastic!! Please, please, please put out a book of sketches…I just want to buy it and stare at it for days and days and days. Such beautiful work, my friend!
Thank you, Candace! And I’m so glad you got to see Yakima; I love that part of the state. I’m working on figuring out the book thing…thanks for the vote of confidence!
I’m curious if you paint on both sides of the page when using a standard moleskine sketch book (not the watercolour version). Your paper/image quality is great.
Thanks, Angela! Yep, I use both sides of the page, in pretty much every sketchbook I use. I even have a couple of sketchbooks (non-Moleskine) with really thin pages, where bleed-through is a big issue, and I still use both sides of the page. I tend to view each sketchbook as a finished, stand-alone piece when it’s filled, so I like to use every nook and cranny.
Pingback: The canning season – Chandler O'Leary