Happy Friday y’all!
It’s beautiful out here! The peaches, plums, Loropetalum, Spirea, Carolina Jessamine, Clematis armandii, wild plums, sand pear, and so much more are dripping in flowers. Petals are raining down in the wind and rain and sprinkling the ground with beauty around the base of the plums. The grass is getting tall, taunting me with threats of another job that requires my time.
We had plans to celebrate St. Patrick's day with some special friends (both are responsible for Mandy and I connecting), but realized we are back in that space of farm flow where the world is moving so fast that no matter how much you run, you can’t quite catch it. So in the name of responsibility, we had to cancel on fun this weekend. I hate cancelling on fun, but from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. each day, we are hustling as hard as we can to get it all done, so the decision was kinda made for us.
If anyone received flowers on Wednesday with a care card telling them to plant their poppies in the ground, I hope you didn't. It doesn't work. Our printing company flip flopped the wording on our mum cutting growing instructions with our poppy flower care cards and we didn't discover their mistake until we had packed almost all of the day's boxes. Mandy sat in the 34 degree cooler for the next 3 hours, hunting down all the poppy customers by name and undoing about 80 boxes to replace all the bad cards with good ones. It was already one of our busiest shipping days in the history of the farm, so this added significant adrenaline. In the midst of the madness, she thought that 3 or 4 might have escaped without getting the correct card, so our apologies if you happened to get one of those.
Speaking of mums, our program has gone exceptionally well and we are ready to open up sales again! For those on the mum cutting waitlist, check your email because at 9:00 this morning, you were given a 24 hour advanced buying opportunity before we open sales to the general public. For everyone else, the sale will go live on Saturday at 9am.
The plant sale for locals is right around the corner, which also means the farm store will be open too! Check out our plant sale preview. And starting Thursday, March 28th, the Farm Store will be open for our Spring season, Thursdays-Saturdays. The plants are all looking healthy and happy right now and I've gotta set up misting systems this weekend after this rain passes, so they'll stay verdant and perky for y'all.
This week's item of interest to share is an amazing book by an incredible woman who has helped reshape the flower design world for the last 30 years to one that is more inspired, intuitive and in tune with the rhythms of nature. Ariella Chezar has inspired even the likes of Floret and Saipua and now has a book out sharing the secrets of how she creates beautiful art with flowers and foliage. Not only is she the pinnacle of the floral design world, but she's also one of the kindest and most zen people I've had the pleasure to work with. She had a big event a few years back and ordered 2 ginormous boxes of our flowers. We were flattered, because we are big fans. Alarmingly Fedex sent word that they were delayed in transit and we felt terrible. We braced ourselves for the expected human reaction of someone in a high stress situation. Often that means a degree of anger at us for something outside our control, like a weather event delaying a plane or truck halfway across the country. Yet, not only did she treat us with kindness when trying to navigate the situation, but she legitimately sidestepped stress entirely. She was so calm about a situation that would've caused 99% of people to panic.
She didn't fixate on all the downstream hardships. She didn't lash out. She calmly accepted reality as it was and seemed at peace with it and confident that she'd be okay in spite of this seemingly significant loss…..and then Fedex course corrected and everything arrived on time and all was right with the world. But our interaction and the way she dealt with it made a big impact on me and told me a great deal about who she is as a person and professional, beyond the magnitude of her serious creative prowess. So if you love art, design, flowers or just to read the thoughts of a really good person who happens to excel in her beautiful profession, this book is a must have.
It's called "Home in Bloom" . You can find it at Bookshop.org, Penguin Random House or check your local bookstore!
We hope you have a wonderful weekend with perhaps a touch of Irish music or beverage or both. Sláinte y'all!