Missing Willow Farm

This tiny spot in the Solomon Islands was a maiden visit for our cruise line.  It’s where William and Kate stopped to spend the night during their recent Asia-Pacific tour.  We had the entire island to ourselves and the locals threw a big BBQ for us.  Afterwards our ship hosted a special event where they serve caviar and champagne from a surf board in the ocean, a first for us.

This island is truly a jewel in French Polynesia.  We took a fabulous excursion that was both a visit to a vanilla plantation as well as a picnic on a small private motu.

After seeing this place on TV a few times, I was super excited to visit and bring home some (too many) vanilla beans.

This is how vanilla grows, on vines that crawl up trees. It’s an orchid species that has to be hand pollinated.

The smell was absolutely intoxicating.

Our picnic spot had some interesting issues.

Can you believe this water?

Well hello there.

It’s officially become my favorite place ever.  We have visited twice now and I’d go back tomorrow.   We snorkeled our way through the islands, giving our underwater camera a workout.

The children of Fanning Island greeted us with music and dance. It’s one of the most remote places on earth with no electricity or running water.

Well hello there.

 We snorkeled with sharks and rays in Bora Bora. Quite the experience! I could do this every day.

 So pretty.

Sargent majors in Fiji, one of our favorite places for snorkeling.

 Photo bomb!

 Underwater selfie.

For a very long time.  We spent Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and Valentine’s Day on our favorite cruise ship, the Seabourn Sojourn.  It technically wasn’t a world cruise because it didn’t circumnavigate the globe.  It was billed as an Extended Exploration that sailed from Los Angeles to Cape Town, visiting 26 countries and 4 continents.  Everything after Tahiti was brand new for us.  We’ve been home just a week and are both still suffering from jet lag.  I’m going to try to do a few posts over the next little while about the wonderful things we saw and did while we were away, starting with Hawaii.  We had three stops there; Honolulu, Kona and Kauai.  We were in Hawaii last year so it wasn’t super exciting to visit.  Our first order of business in Honolulu was to hoof it over to WalMart to stock up on Christmas stocking stuffers, toothpaste, shampoo, sunscreen and all of the other things we would need over the next 4+ months and didn’t want to pack.  We each took two suitcases and a carry on each (and that’s the same amount of luggage we brought home with us, although much heavier!)

 A highlight! Five inch wide deliciousness from Holy Donuts in Kona.

Waimea Canyon, Kauai

Spouting Horn, Kauai

We had two sets of twin lambs born on the farm yesterday.  Our peach trees are budding and it’s time to plant potatoes and start tomato seeds.  Spring is on it’s way.

Today on the Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts Blog I have a fun shadowbox featuring Victorian superstitions.  The mourning pendant has a snippet of doll hair inside a metal container.  The vapours collected from fetid graves is just a bit of wool from one of our sheep.  The corpse eye coins are Namco video game coins.  The bat’s eyes glow in the dark!  You can see how I made it at http://gslcuts.blogspot.com/2018/09/victorian-superstitions-shadowbox.html

We have some gorgeous genovese basil in the garden right now (and a 28 pound watermelon!).  I like to get some set aside for when it’s winter and fresh basil is nowhere to be found.  

I get as much as possible into a mini food processor and whir it up with a drizzle of olive oil.

The resulting basil/olive oil paste gets put into a quart sized freezer bag and it gets popped into the freezer laying flat. Once frozen, just break off a chunk and add it to soups, sauces, pastas etc. A taste of summer in the dead of winter.

I am making pesto, stuffed zucchini, dill pickles and BLTs today.  I love summer!