The Blossom clan gathers to carve Jack-O-lanterns each Halloween at the family homestead on New Sweden Rd. Photo by Joel Sackett
The Blossom Family
In such a transitional environment in the USA of daily new inventions, progessive innovations, constant change, and relocation of homebase, it is stabilizing to revisit the historical roots of yesteryear, the people and projects that have contributed to the things of today. One such Bainbridge Island family deeply rooted in Island history in the Lynwood Center and Eagedale areas is the Blossoms, Morrie & Kathy and their grown-up family Sarah, Matthew, Debbie and Bob.
Let's go back to around the 1930s. On the knoll overlooking Lynwood Center a stately Tudor manor was built and lived in by Emmanuel and Edna Olson surrounded by linden trees and about 15 acres of forest. With great vision, the couple then proceeded to develop Lynwood Center in the same Tudor style, a prototype of today's shopping mall, with small shops, a theater, and small living units on the upper story. Lynwood received its name in a contest in recognition of the linden trees. Emmanuel & Edna had no progeny but had a niece and nephew, Helen and Glenn Nolta. Helen married Maurice Blossom whose union produced Mick and Morrie Blossom. Morrie lived for awhile with his great aunt & uncle Olson in an upstairs room in the manor where later people used to dine at the former Pleasant Beach Grill & Oyster House run by Hussein Ramadan in the 1980s.
When the Olsons died, they left their inheritance to the niece and nephew. Glenn married Lucille and together they ran the Lynwood Theater until it was sold in the 1980s. Helen lived in a small home behind the manor. Morrie & Mick also owned the Timber Lodge on south beach where in the 1970s you could go bowling as long as you were willing to set up your own pins. The Lodge is gone now replaced by beautiful, waterfront homes. The Blossom brothers also were involved in an earth-moving business.
Morrie fell in love and in 1976 married a Bainbridge High School friend, Kathy Stone whose family lived in Eagledale on New Sweden Rd. where the picture of the Blossom clan with the jack-o-lanterns was taken. Morrie and Kathy own and run the South Bainbridge Water System. Every Christmas the couple would place a Christmas tree on the corner of their property in front of an old gas station (now gone). In the early 2000s the Blossoms began to update the area and develop some of their land. The result was Lynwood Commons, a mixed used complex, that opened in 2002. The Blossoms daughter, Sarah, now manages the complex, Matthew works in the earth-moving business and at the Water Company, Debbie is a nurse, and Bob, an attorney.
Recently the Blossoms sold off the manor and and surrounding acreage to Bill Nelson, another longtime Islander, who refurbished and updated the manor into Edna's restaurant. See Bainbridge Review articles. Bill is building another mixed use complex to complement the style of Lynwood Center and named it Blossom Hill in honor of the Blossom family. It is scheduled to open sometime in late 2009.
Historic Lynwood Center
Line drawing of Lynwood Center courtesy of Ramona Rafferty
Tudor-styled Lynwood Center in the snow. Photo courtesy of Bainbridge Island Historical Society
Lynwood Center ~ 1930s
Lynwood Center is a quaint, Tudor style shopping village designed and developed in the 1930s by Emmanuel and Edna Olson who lived in the English manor on the bluff across the street ( now Edna's Beach Cafe). In the last few decades the manor has served as a restaurant, noteably the former Pleasant Beach Grill. The first Lynwood building housed a butcher shop built by George Beck, a former logger, who with his father and brothers built many of the homes in West Blakely including the Bombay House. Later they added a variety store, restaurant, hardware store, garage, and Bainbridge Island's first and for many, many years its only movie theater. Second story apartments were a later addition. It has been stated that Lynwood Center provided a prototype for the modern day shopping mall.
Lynwood Center is now one of three service centers on the Island outside of Winslow. Island Center and Rolling Bay are the others. The site of the Treehouse House Cafe has had many different entrepreunerial endeavors including antique shoppes, a Suzuki School Studio and Julie's Frame Gallery. The theater has celebrated its 70th year anniversary. Walt's grocery store was located next to the theater for many years providing groceries and assundries for the neighborhood. Walt Hannon and his Mom, Rhea, put the personal touch on providing groceries and it became a gathering place for conversation and coffee. The Hannons are also long time Bainbridge Island residents. Several years ago, Walt moved his grocery story across the street into the new Lynwood Commons complex and although modernized some, continues in the same family-style, personal custom service.
Intent on preserving the heritage, the historic exterior facade, and the integrity of the brick building, Steve Romein and Ty Cramer purchased Lynwood Center a couple years ago and have just recently restored it's structural health and reconfigured some of the interior space where Walt's Market was. Upstairs communal style living features nine apartments with shared kitchen and living areas with private sleeping quarters. The upgrades were designed by O'Connor Architects, an Island firm known for its green technology and contructed by Schuchart/Dow.
Open meadowland sweeps the landscape around the stables reminding us of former farms in Eagledale that grew and supplied vegetables and milk to the milltown of Port Blakely down the road. Now Rick and Kathy Countryman operate a horse stables there. For the last nine years, and again this year, the Countrymans have generously offered free pony rides to kids 12 & under on Saturday and Sunday of the Christmas in the Country tour from noon - 2pm. The covered arena makes the activity suitable no matter what inclement weather might arrive.
Yippee! Free pony rides!!
Cyprion Wyatt
Kathy Countryman's maternal great grandfather was Cyprion Wyatt, an influential citizen of Bainbridge Island and captain of the Florence K.and Bainbridge steamboats, and the Liberty (the first auto ferry from Bainbridge to Seattle). He lived in the historic Wyatt House on Wyatt Way in Winslow.
Hajnalka's Studio
The Joslyn's home and yard in 1987 before the transformation. Sons Andrew and Chris in the foreground.
Before she excaped to England with her faimily in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Hajnalka (nickname, Hajni) spent her childhood in Budapest. In 1965 she came to America. After some time, Hajni married Marc Joslyn. They settled in southern California with Hajni's son from a previous marriage, Chris Kattan, and together added another son, Andrew. In 1986 they relocated from a home in the high altitudes of the San Bernadino Mountains, Mt Baldy above Claremont, California, and found their way to Bainbridge Island. They bought their present home on the corner of New Brooklyn and Mandus Olson, a rambler with a nondescript yard and a bramble border along the road purposefully creating a "briar patch" effect to deter horses from crossing the property. A five foot wide community easement along the road had been established for horse traffic, but the previous owners were not fans of the equestrian species. After intense clearing of this intentional, wild hedgerow, Marc began to build a fence that unknowing trespassed into the easement. Thus he learned of the the horse path.
Marc came from a family of musicians and Hajni had studied ballet and the performing arts. Although her father was a gifted architect and her mother graduated from a fine arts academy, Hajni was not drawn to the visual arts until her mid-twenties when she became the student of a Zen master who inspired her to take up oriental art forms like Sumi painting. Their artesanal heritage extended to their sons. Hajni's oldest son found his gift in the performing arts. Chris Kattan, a graduate of Bainbridge High School, is an actor/comedian who was a regular on Saturday Night Live. His newest endeavor launched this September is a TV series, "Middle", for ABC TV. Andrew Joslyn came as a youngster to Bainbridge and began violin lessons with the Suzuki School. His prowess in music continued to develop. He added dance to the music and took a venture into swing dance at Bainbridge High School. Andrew now is part of a performing band, Handful of Luvin'. Now that her sons are out in the world, there is Butsu (a pesky, little white dog) to clown around for their entertainment.
The Joslyns viewed the blank landscape surrounding their home as an artist's canvas. They designed and transformed their barren yard, with diligent toil and the sweat of their brow, into a peacefully beautiful yet practically useful verdant haven. Hajni has always been at home with nature and is a devoted gardener. Ponds surrounded by tree and flower borders, ponds with fountains and other water features provide soothing, calming sounds condusive to meditation. The clucking and crowing of chickens and a rooster brings a homey feel and speaks to sustainable living on fresh eggs, fruit from the orchard, and abundant homegrown vegetables. In their twenty-three years on Bainbridge, they have added rooms and a covered porch to their home, added the studio adjacent to the garage, a Zendo for meditation, a composting outhouse, and nurturing landscaping. In 1997 their garden was featured on the Bainbridge in Bloom garden tour.
The walls in Hajnalka's Studio are adorned with her watercolor paintings. With her love of nature, it is only natural that trees, plants, and flowers emerge in her paintings. She is a member of the Puget Sound Sumi Society and the Northwest Watercolor Society. Multi-talented, Hajni also sews most of her clothes, fashions jewelry, lotion bars, and makes Ukranian batik eggs. With their love of music and art, the Joslyns are offering the studio for hire for music instructors to teach students and to Christmas in the Country in support of the arts.
Pond
The Orchard
Butsu
The Gazebo by the Chicken Coop
The Chickens
Hajni Gathers Eggs
Pond & Fountain Surrounded by Ajuga
Water Feature
Hajni and her sister shop at Stephens House during Christmas in the Country 2007
Sweetlife Farm
Fortner Home front view with new Gazebo
Sweetlife Farm
Bob & Nancy Fortner invite discovery of their secluded, self-designed woodland home nestled within ten acres of forest land near the Grand Forest. Completed in 1999, the home resembles a scaled-down version of our nation's historic park lodges. An upgraded workshop and attic adjacent to and above their garage house their commercial kitchen for preparing the farm products. The Fortners love of "the natural" and their visionary and entreprenerial spirits have expanded their horizons within the confines of their rural retreat. Fondly dubbed "Sweetlife Farm", the Fortners make natural skincare products, preserves, vinegars, sauces and herbal salts and sugars from their own honey, berries, fruits, flowers and herbs. This year they are adding a new Cocoa Local flavor to the wildly popular original flavors, and a new line of creamed honeys. There will be plenty of mouthwatering rosemary shortbread and assorted gift boxes of Sweetlife Farm products ready to share with the lucky people on your holiday gift list.
Greetings from Bob & Nancy:
"We live, cook and garden on 10 acres near the Grand Forest. Since moving the book business home in 1999 we have been able to focus on two of our passions: gardening and cooking, and maintain large vegetable, herb and flower gardens, along with a modest orchard and a few beehives. In 2006, our eyes got “bigger than our stomachs,” as Nancy’s father would say, and we went with the notion that if a few rows of berries and lavender are good, then a lot more would be great—we now have a bountiful harvest of both, and have added a new kitchen in which to process the farm’s bounty. This year in order to focus primarily on the farm and farm products, we closed our online bookstore. We added a greenhouse, new raised beds, a chicken coop, and a wood-fired bread oven housed in a gazebo near the house. Our goal is to feed ourselves as much as is practical from our garden, share the excess, and supplement with foods grown as close to home as possible, from trusted sources. With just the two of us working our garden and producing food and other handmade products, our days remain full, and the quality of life superb. Friends and family occasionally show up to help us pick or help wrap and label products, but for the most part we are the “do it yourself twins.” There are those who would deny us the “farmer” label, but whatever we’re called, we’re all about homegrown, homemade and sharing the bounty! "
The Fortners invite you into their *refined rustic home to discover their wonderful natural products and those of their guest artists, a treat to be sure!
*"refined rustic"-concrete floors beautifully faux-finished, warm wood and exposed beams, stone fireplace, and unique fixtures.
Nancy Fortner harvests lavendar
Bob Fortner picking squash
Bob and flavored vinegars
It's Christmas time at Sweetlife Farm
Nancy cooking with wine. Sometimes she even puts in the pan!
Island Music Center
IMC Building
Hazel Creek Farm
Former Pedersen home now Hazel Creek Farm B&B
Hazel Creek Farm ~ 1921
This twenty acre compound with charming remodeled 1921 farmhouse, barns, schoolhouses, and horse arena is home to the Hazel Creek Montessori School named for a small creek that runs through the property. Janice (the school director) and Ollie Pedersen (landscape architect and native Bainbridge Islander whose family has lived here for over 100 years) developed the property that now is the epitome of country elegance. In June of 1989, Ollie & Janice purchased 5 wooded acres, began logging, and by March started to build the original schoolhouse using only a chain and skill saw:
"Ollie & I used to work together all day landscaping other people's yards and then come home and pound nails and saw boards as we labored together to build the structures on the Hazel Creek Farm. We'd go to bed with ace bandages around our wrists to help control the carpal tunnel pain."
The acreage grew to 20 acres when in 1995 the Pedersens acquired their home, a 1921 dilapidated farmhouse which they redesigned and remodeled. They and their four children, Mitra, Adam, Ashley, and Alison, built each building on the property as funds and time allowed them.
The rolling landscape and sweeping greens are interrupted by white pasture fencing, grazing horses, and buildings all circumferenced by tall fir trees and sylvan borders. The estate grounds were featured on the 2002 Bainbridge in Bloom Garden Tour. Dances and other special events are held in the large, heated barn where during Christmas in the Country, elves & Santa Claus will appear, artists will offer their unique products, and entertainers will livin the festivities!
Janice invites you into the barn
Bainbridge Youth Orchestra
Sharon Soames, Director of Christmas in the Country, visits with Santa. Photo by Karin Lehotsky.
Janice offers riding sessions to the Montessori students
