Lavender & EELS! 🌀
Adam Rockwell Is Probably Writing Volume ♾️
Welcome to Adam Rockwell is Probably Writing!
Dispatches from the Oregon Coast. One writer, three cats, and the occasional eel. 🌀
Back To The Lavender Farm 🚜
Last weekend was The Great Lavender Festival of 2025 in Newburgh, Oregon. Or so my wife-partner, K.L. Rockwell told me.
She decided, we were going to Newburgh.
Back to the Wayward Winds Lavender Farm.
Last year, I wrote an essay about this place entitled: The U-Pick Lavender Farm Experience. This year, we did it all over again, and it was more or less the same. 🪻
We brought our now 19-year-old son along. Was this a mistake? Perhaps. He is currently preparing for college but he decided to come with us anyway.
(What he’s doing to prep for college? Nobody knows.)
Here on the Oregon Coast, the weather is ALWAYS 62-65° in the summer. Even when it’s 105° in the Willamette Valley, where the Valley People dwell, it’s still 62° here.
On Saturday morning, my annoying Echo device informed me in a nasty voice: “Today, it will be 98° degrees in Newburgh.”
Like, what?
98°.
JHCOAPS!
I told K.L. and said, “Maybe we should just put it off.”
“But the Lavender Festival is this weekend!” she exclaimed in a lavender sweat.
We were going.
It’s a whole thing going to the valley for us. A two-hour drive these days might as well be twelve. I can’t take it anymore!
Some people around here just “pop over to Costco” in Albany. What are these insane lunatics doing??
I pack a bag of snacks like we’re preparing to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Crossing the Coastal Range in weekender traffic is actually probably more annoying than hiking 1200 miles on the Pacific Rim.
When we got to Wayward Winds Lavender Farm, just outside Newburgh, it had already hit 86°. I nervously kept my eye on the temperature. It was climbing.
K.L. and Finny were off! They didn’t care about the sun. The heat. The bees. The lack of toilets.
I got out my lawn chair and proceeded to do controlled breathing. The lavender was in full bloom, and I could feel my allergies percolating. The bees were buzzing and I was about 50% of the way to a panic attack.
As I said last year, there are only three types of people at a U-Pik Lavender Farm: Pickers. Holders, and Watchers.
I am the watcher.
K.L. the picker.
Fineas, the holder.
Listen, I’m not about to spend any time in the sun exposing my day walking ginger skin to sunlight. OR expose my allergies to allergens. It’s just not done. So, there I sat and watched the pickers and holders.
I noticed something interesting while watching the festival from the shade: most people were there to take Instagram photos, not U-Pik. These Instagramming psychopaths would buy a $5.00 handful bouquet and take off.
They weren’t there for the flowers. They were clout-chasing Wayward Wind’s lavender!! I just learned the phrase clout-chasing, bear with me.
But the poses they struck! Wow. Out there amongst the bees and sun. Some of them wore all white like they were going to a Baptist River Baptism (is there any other type of Baptism??). They wore sun hats. It was all quite performative. Like me, pretending I didn’t love the lavender.
K.L. Rockwell didn’t drive two hours across the Coastal Range to get a $5.00 bouquet.
No, siree.
This year her lavender kill was more or less a BALE of lavender. She must’ve picked ten pounds worth.
So now, our house smells of lavender. Pungent, smelly, lavender.
Luckily, lavender is supposed to calm you down, which I needed after being at the 2025 Lavender Festival Extravaganza of Lavender!
✍️ Writing
It’s time that I reveal my new project!!
I just completed the first draft to my next novel:
Eels! 🌀
I’m super excited about this one. It’s a horror-survival book. Or perhaps a survival-horror? Disaster-Survival-Horror book? I need to figure this out before the tentative release date of October 1st this fall.
Eels! (with an !) is a “fun” disaster horror. There are: Earthquakes. Tsunamis. Wildfires … and you might’ve guessed it:
Man-eating eels. 🌀
That is all I shall say for now, except that it is set completely in the city of Newport, Oregon. Where I live.
If you’d like to get an advanced copy and be on my “Advanced Reader Copy Team” let me know. Click here to get on the list. And get the book first and free!
In other writing news: I’ve also started work on The Unexpected Exorcist: Book II. I’m looking forward to more action and exorcising fun from Uziel Axe and his partner Sister Catherine.
If you haven’t read The Unexpected Exorcist and would like a copy, it is just $2.99 on Kindle right now. Grab it here.
🐈⬛ Cat Corner
BabyCat, our senior cat, is sadly declining in health. He has been doing this whole “declining health thing” for the last three years. He is almost twenty-one years old or so. We got him twenty years ago (!) in St. Paul, Minnesota, and he was already 8-12 months old.
A year ago, the vet told us that “BabyCat is dying.” I thought that meant he would be dead soon. But that was a year ago. He’s still holding on and begging for food.
Fluffles has been Fluffling.
She is now almost one year old this August. Fluffier than ever and big.
We have been told she is called a “Rag doll” varietal of cat.
Fluffles refuses to eat any wet food. Ever. She’s quite the little snob. I can hold out a piece of ham and she will turn her nose up at it. I have never witnessed this type of cat behavior before, and I’ve had over 134 cats in the course of my life.
Thanks for reading.
Stay foggy.
—Adam Rockwell
I love lavender, and can almost imagine the scent permeating the whole house, yum!
I am sorry about your old kitty possibly preparing to leave you (the sad unfortunate aspect of sharing our lives with animal friends, most of the time).
But the px of Fluffles attempting to get into the sun without having to stand up made me laugh!! 😹
So very sorry about the eels(!). I have been running, screaming, in the opposite direction for decades. Not a subject for my fall reading list. I’ll just pass over that topic in silence and just say how I’m taken by your cats — dear things.