My husband and I went on a little field trip today down to Valley Center, CA to the Lavender Fields.

It was a small farm at the end of a dirt road with a number of different varieties of lavender. My favorite is this one – Lavendula x intermedia cv. Provence Lavender.

It has wonderful long stalks that you can use to make wands. I’m going to try and get some of these for my backyard. Right now we only have a single plant, and it’s Spanish Lavender, so I want to try a few other varieties, especially this one.

I learned to make this wand today; pretty good for a first-timer, eh? It was quite easy. If we lived closer to the farm, I would have bought a bundle of flowers but I was afraid they would dry out too soon on the way home, and they need to be pretty flexible to make the wands without breaking the stems. I’ll just have to grow my own.

At the entrance to the building where I made the wand, there was a woman spinning some wool, and so I stepped inside the “Wool Cottage” and picked up a couple of skeins of wool. It smells so good!
We only stayed about an hour, and I get the feeling they were a bit overwhelmed by the number of people that showed up because we were there only an hour after they opened, and the lemonade stand was sold out! They must have done quite well based on the number of people there and the lines in the stores. We also got some lavender infused honey. It looked like they weren’t affected by CCD, as there were tons of bees, the plants were humming with them.
It was worth the trip, I think if I can’t get a few plants going myself, we’ll have to go back next summer and plan ahead so I can get a few bundles of flowers and have plenty to make more wands to stash in my stash!