Thanks a million!

As we close down on a banner 10th season of flower growing, we'd like to thank all of our wedding, delivery and Farmer's Market customers for your business and for smiles like these. Your support and appreciation keeps us growing bigger and better every year. As we heard a lot on a recent visit to Ireland, "Thanks a million!"

Buried in Blooms



 

 

 

It's high season here and we are buried in weddings, deliveries, the farmer's market and flowers. Sunflowers, lilies, roses and dahlias are all vying for center stage now. It's impossible to pick a favorite or tire of the parade of blooms. We just clap and cheer them on. We have to drive them around a bit too.

Bountiful Beauty

 

No time to write- peony, delphinium & lupine are blooming like crazy now. Good thing the days are so long or there wouldn't be time to harvest them all!

Back to Life

tulip, ranunculus, anenome, wild currant & kerria

 

The first bucket of tulips from the greenhouse marks the begining of delivery season here and the end of the long, dark winter. The tulips are huge, beautiful & off to good homes.

A very experienced gardener once told me that horticulture has an endless learning curve and I think that's true. Every new season I feel like I know at least twice as much as the year before. Just trying to implement all the new ideas & varieties is a constant challenge. This year we saved our dahlias with a mini hoophouse, got a chicken tractor up & running and  should be drowning in Royal Sunset lilies and Cafe au lait dahlias this summer. Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you. Tulip season is definitely a time when we eat the bear.

Pruning Time

                                                      
 A few years ago we almost pulled all the rosebushes out. They felt like a high maintenaince, bug attracting, thorny nuisance of a flower. So I cut dozens of roses for a final farewell bouquet and piled them into a huge vase. That was a mistake. Even a disheveled arrangement of the queen of  flowers has a regal bearing and demands respect. And she got it. Rather than take them out, we did an about-face and expanded our stock.

Fortunately rose breeders have been busy producing hardier roses every year so they are less maintainance now. They have yet to develop the rose that does not require pruning though, and it's pruning time here. After the quick annual review of pruning rules, we gear up with clippers, loppers and saws. I always start out tentatively because it seems like cutting off the recommended amount will kill the plant. But by the time I'm halfway through I'm working with the zeal of an axe murderer, leaving almost nothing in my wake.  It's always amazing to see summer's roses emerge from the barren, stubby aftermath of pruning.