Maryland Renaissance Festival

I was super happy to be able to go to the Maryland Renaissance Festival twice this year; once with a friend and once with my mom (who came to visit for the first time in 8 years). Since we'd both been a couple times already, my friend and I made a point of taking in as many shows as possible whereas my mom and I saw a couple shows but mostly wandered around.

I really think that the first show we saw, Flexible Comedy, was my favorite. My face rather hurt after from all the laughing.

Then there were the Pyrates Royal. I regret not having got one of their CDs but might order one from the website. They were pretty good and the tenor had a wonderful voice.

Also doesn't he remind you of Smee from Peter Pan? Then there were The Interpreters, the definition of bawd. One speaks Italian and one speaks blond. Very entertaining.

We also saw a group called Wine and Alchemy. I'm afraid I was already playing with my fun lenses by then so the only picture of that I have was done with a fish eye attachment.

I had good fun that day playing with different lens attachments. There was the fish eye:

And a Lensbaby double glass:

The day I went around with my mom was so much fun. She was like a little kid at Disney. Actually I should ask my sister what mom's first visit to Disney was like because I think she got a bigger kick out of the festival...and who wouldn't? She particularly enjoyed the costumes people had, especially the totally not having anything at all to do with that year's story line costumes.

We also saw the Dangling Darlings and she got some good shots of them.

We saw a Gypsy band, a gentleman randomly playing a spinet, and some lovely stilt walkers.

We also ran across a guy I saw last year. Last year I saw him only as a butterfly but this year he was a butterfly, a baby, and was riding a horse.

The horse contraption was adorable, looked somewhat like a My Little Pony actually. My mom fell in love with it. I think she was more enraptured than the kids. It was adorable.

That's mom in the stripes.

I also introduced her to the awesomeness of fare food including fried brownies and fried candy bars. I was pretty disappointed with the brownies and will, myself, be sticking to the candy bars in the future.

Best part of the day? I got my face painted. I was so pretty I waited until I absolutely had to to wash it off. In fact, if the next day hadn't been Sunday and if I didn't consider face paint somewhat inappropriate for Mass I think I'd have kept it on.

Can't wait for next year!

Let's Go Local!

What is that? You might ask...baby lavender? Baby rosemary? Nope. Both of those are actually wrong. This morning I went to the farmer's market near my house. I found lots of WONDERFUL things to look at, smell, and taste. The above photo is of a dwarf plant that I discovered and just HAD to bring home. I'll tell you more about it below.

I don't have to work at the theatre until later tonight. So I feel like I have an entire day to myself where I otherwise might not. I got up at a decent hour this morning, and headed over to the farmers market in Silver Spring, MD. It's not a big market, with only about 10 vendors, but I would still consider it to be a good local market; at least I don't have to go all he way down to the Eastern Market area of the city.

I started out with just browsing, wandering through the vendors just to see who is offering what, and for what price. One of the first things I noticed were all of the fresh salads and strawberries. Not that I didn't already know, but perhaps I'd just never really noticed since I live pretty removed from "the land." But the first harvest of the spring brings more than just strawberries . There are also various lettuces, kale, spring onions, sugar snap peas, and more. The market was awash in shades of red, orange, yellow, and green this morning. There were vendors with freshly cut and potted HHHHerbs (cause there's an H in it!) and flowers of every color, as well as baby squashes (with flowers!) everywhere. And to top it all off, I even got to join in with a one man band (a guy playing a Bass, tamborine, and harmonica all at the same time) while he sang I've been working on the railroad and Dinah blow your horn. I felt like a kid again! Below are my pictures, why don't you take a tour with me of the sights and sounds of the Silver Spring market?









Even though there's a salmonella scare in the US because of tomatoes, not all tomatoes are tainted. Tomatoes from Virginia have been cleared. And these heirloom tomatoes look delicious!


That first picture? Well this is the zoomed out version. If you guessed that the aforementioned photo was dwarf curry, you'd be right! After rubbing this plant and having visions of various curried meats and vegetables stewing in my kitchen, I just had to bring one of these home!

And finally, I thought I'd share a quick clip of the guy who didn't mind that I was singing children's songs along with him: