A Year In The Life - Day 41, July 1, 2014

It feels like you can be out in the woods looking to gather something pretty much throughout the year here in bush Alaska.  As July is now here, we are getting ready to enter the "gathering time" that comes just before the "hunting time" of the year. :)  Soon we will be heading out to the hills and tundra, searching high and low for the berries that we wait all year for.  But for now, it is something else.  Sarah has recently gotten into some crafty projects that involve essential oils, and creating home-made natural products such as bug repellent, sunscreen, lip balm, etc.  The project of the day is bath bombs, which she will be making when her family gets here later this month, but we are prepping now for that endeavor.  We begin with the Wild Rose Hip (improperly capitalized here) blossom, the pic of the day.  Others will follow, and as the project goes on, this post and its pics will likely be revisited.

These things are about the most fragrant blossoms I have smelled here in the 'wild'.   They are POTENT.  At any rate, we find them - and they are all over - and we pick them.  Though the petals are the only portion of the blossom Sarah will be using, it is far easier to just bring the whole thing home and sort them later.  That just involves separating all the petals and arranging them out on the dehydrator trays, like so:

After drying, they lose their fragrance, although they seem to take on an enhanced color.  It is in this state that they will be added to the bath bombs later.  Presumably when they are placed into the bath they will rehydrate and smell nearly as they did before.  Sarah will find out, at any rate.

 As stated, that post on the finished result will follow later this month.  Sarah is currently engaged in several projects - beading, Kuspuk sewing, and natural body care products - and so at some point soon all my documenting the events will culminate in a few crafty posts, as well as the projects I am chipping away at between putting a dent in the Northern pike population.  Stay Tuned for the crafty side of Bush Life.  :D