Greetings on this fabulous Sunday evening ! I hope all is well with you and yours.

Two weeks ago we jotted down On the calendar that we were going to run down to Steuber Distributing in Snohomish for a dirt run. Thanks to a fellow local flower farm friend, I also recently found a place called The Chocolate Flower Farm, so I suggested we try finding that on our run – kill two birds with one stone?

Well, it’s been a rough week, lots happening with mom, still going through the painful sorting & discarding of my past life trying to organize the craft room, I’ve been exhausted for no good reason, not feeling super great & my brain has been super foggy.

After a really hot shower Wednesday morning I announced I needed a very hot, steamy bubble bath….and a break from home. I haven’t had a good soak in a while…so Joe suggested we tie our trip to Snohomish with a quick get away to some hotel or B&B. You don’t have to tell this girl twice to book a place for the night to spoil ourselves! I looked for a while and tried a few places before finding The Mansion Inn at Lake Stevens, booked the room as soon as I got the green light that it was close enough to Steuber’s & the ferry to be worth the trouble.

Our experience at Steuber’s was interesting. They are situated in a semi-residential neighborhood, taking up just about an entire block. I realize it’s winter, we are in the middle of a pandemic, and I know nothing about this place, but I’m not going to lie, it looked shady!! Not to mention, I had emailed them earlier in the week to ask how it all worked, and didn’t get an answer, so I had no clue what I was doing! But we decided to give them a try because the group of flower farmers in the county all say they like the place & they had the dirt that I’ve been hearing so much about. We ended up with 21 cubic feet, that should do me for the year, but we’ll see how nutty it gets! I also managed to wrangle two catalogs away from the guy with hopes of ordering more from them soon. Their web presence is severely lacking, they are very lackadaisical in their customer service both in person and on the phone & not super helpful when you arrive. I’m thinking if you are dealing with them, they automatically assume you know what you are doing -and don’t have time for your silly ass questions about dirt recommendations. There’s no hand holding here folks, get your ticket, pay your invoice-preferably in cash or there’s a 3% fee, and go around back to pick up….wait what? Where’s around back….oh goodness! But we did it & things are great—-so far so good, I’ll poke at the dirt in two weeks!

Then a quick 15 minutes to our room at the B&B, The Mansion in Lake Stevens. It’s a beautiful place, nestled in a neighborhood around the lake. It isn’t right on the lake, but the view from our presidential suite was just as stunning as the room itself. The jetted tub was just what the doctor ordered, with Doctor Teal foaming lavender bubbles & whipped honey scrub to scrub away any worries!

The owners of the B&B were certainly spot on with dinner recommendation to Fransisco’s for a mouth watering New York steak & a cocktail!

We stopped at some antique stores along the way to the ferry, still hunting for my hutch!! Our little jaunt over on the ferry was quick & beautiful. With Covid we weren’t allowed out of our cars.

Our visit to the Chocolate Flower Farm was lovely & very insightful! I’m looking forward to trying some new & exciting things this year. A chocolate smelling perennial cosmos?! Yes please!!! Black Prince snap dragons for those who are not fans of the pinks & purples! She has a beautiful place there! They are expanding & growing their space. It will be fun to see how it goes! They had some fun chocolate that we picked up for family & creamy fudge we had for dessert last night!

This is where things get a bit TMI if you are reading my blog for garden purposes….but if you would like to hear about my brain fog, being short changed, and fatigue keep reading!

Between the weight gain, brain fog and fatigue, I thought I was going crazy, then I remembered reading something about this being connected to menopause. A while ago I went in to get tested for hormone levels to see what our chances were of conceiving, well as it turns out three years ago, at 43, I was already Perimenopasal….the beginning stages of menopause. That was crappy news…even if we did conceive, the chances of having a baby with issues is astronomically high. It seems really unfair that women have such a short window to have a baby, why are we short changed-men can conceive until the day they die-and supposedly the older the man the higher IQ the child has!? But the older the woman is, the higher the chance of birth defects?!

Oops, sorry, I digress, my point here was, I’ve literally felt like I’ve been doped up on some sort of drug-wanting to sleep all the time, couldn’t focus, and bloated beyond hippo size! The little mental health break helped significantly, some research on menopause helped shed light on things & a visit to my doctor next week will get things moving in the right direction.

It’s looking like the snow they promised has finally arrived! Looking forward to seeing how much we actually get! I hope you are doing well, until next time my friends-hugs to you!