Summer Solstice and IEA

June is the best month and summer solstice is the favorite season; my Fairy Roses bloom, Lake Oswego has a big art festival and our Garden Group gathers to celebrate together. Look how Tao has grown; he can flip through the pictures on my iPhone, say many words, identify all the barnyard animals and charm the socks off a monkey. He gives me the love shivers.

This is the kitchen of our friends' house. It is a berm house (built into the hillside with a southern exposure) and the location of powerful, progressive energy. My friends run a CSA farm and supply food, eggs and honey to their subscribers. The house is heated with a wood burning cook stove and has a toilet that recycles waste into clean fertilizer for the garden. On this day they had planned to cook beans in their solar oven but it was overcast so we ate something else instead.

John and I brought the peeled fava beans, lightly blanched with onion and olive oil. Seiko made the brown rice balls covered with coconut and the mung bean dessert that was foreign looking but delicious. Bev made banana bread and John contributed 2 kinds of home made cheese from their new cow. Noah picked the strawberries and Patti and Paul brought wheat bread and 3 more kinds of cheeses. Chavo and John brought 2 kinds of home made wine.

I brought my appetite.

Solstice strawberries, fresh from the garden.

We discussed current events and slugs in the garden while I took pictures and put all my bracelets on Tao's tiny arms. Bev described how two of their recent woofers (farm interns) brought out their cellos and had played a concert on their deck the night before. Music, wine, friends, wholesome food, slow pleasures.
Finally, some pictures of the IEA tribe who gathered here at my house on Thursday night for a meeting. We planned an Encaustic Jam Session that will be held toward the end of August in Camas, Washington that will hose 30 avid wax artists giving 7 demos a day and making lots of fun together. Anyone who has attended our meetings in the past is invited and of course current IEA members.

We also discussed a big Encaustic show coming up here in Portland next year. Announcement coming soon. This will be an open invitational with a call for encaustic art going out in December. We are all very excited about this.

To be continued . . .