Happy Friday y’all!    We had a lovely trip to my homeland of northern California, where we celebrated my mom’s 75th and just had a great time connecting with family and friends for two weeks.  It was a huge treat for us both and is always rejuvenating to get off the farm for a bit, especially to see loved ones and to have some laughs.  NorCal was cool to the point of being cold though, which made coming home to sweaty field work in the humid 90’s quite a shock.    We’re out in the fields right now working on the thousands of dahlias we’ve got planted.  Weeding, laying down landscape fabric, driving in rebar stakes, topping the plants, etc….    We are...

Howdy friends!      A couple acres of beds are made and I’m a little sunburned from hours of shoveling in the sun, but already a couple thousand dahlias have been planted by the ladies.  It’s always interesting to see how your mind responds to adding order and geometry to a field that was previously filled with grasses or cover crops.  You’d think it would feel alien and unsettling to take a “natural” space and add row after row, but instead it's quite calming and pleasing in appearance.  Perhaps it's subconscious satisfaction gained from a temporary victory over entropy and an erroneous belief that the second law of thermodynamics doesn’t apply to you.  Or maybe it's just that parallel lines...

Hi all,    Our employees were all excited to take today off as we slow down for summer and Mandy and I saw a slow down as an opportunity to replace some cabinets, but as soon as we pealed back one layer of the onion, we of course decided to tear apart our whole kitchen.  I think I had too much caffeine that day and the mood was high and the momentum was strong.  An exterior wall came down in the process. So, without an exterior wall (there was rot), we are exposed to wildlife, i.e. Biscuit, who keeps sneaking in and meowing all night to our great chagrin.  So I need to finish rebuilding that wall today so we can...

                              Farmy Stuff Happy Friday y’all!    It’ll be brief this week.  Long day’s got me tired (it’s Thursday night) and I’m re-watching “Growing Floret” Season 1, before I watch the new release of Season 2.  Anyone who likes flower farming enough to read this every week, would love her show.  It’s like going from stick figure farm stories to virtual reality.  It’s beautiful, inspiring, and possibly more importantly, very honest.  So much of the project/business based shows you see are almost like a montage in an 80’s hero movie.  Everything goes smoothly, gets done in a week, and looks seamless and beautiful at the end.  It’s mostly b.s.  Life rarely works like that.  It’s so much more compelling to see the...

  Just before midnight on Wednesday, I took the old truck and picked up my brother and sister in law at the Airporter in Athens and we made the rainy drive back out to the farm.  We were all exhausted.  Mandy and I in the prior evenings, had gutted the two bedrooms, pulled off the molding, the doors, removed ceiling fans, ripped out carpet, rotted sub flooring, scraped ceilings, re-framed the joists, installed new sub flooring, and painted the walls and ceilings just in time for the wool carpet installer, who showed up late and finished at 7 p.m. on Wednesday.  We hurriedly hung doors, reinstalled ceiling fans, re-installed moldings, re-furnished both bedrooms, and caught a shower just in time to...

   Okay, that title only works if your British, but I’m writing this near midnight and I’m bad at titles, so let's just get into it.        A year’s worth of planning and over half a year’s worth of work has all culminated this week into 5 Fedex vans full of bouquets and flower bundles heading off to Moms and loved ones around the country over the last 3 days.  One of the best parts of this job is to be a conduit for expressions of love, gratitude, or even sympathy from one person to another.  It truly is a fortunate place to be.  A real honor and it definitely fills our hearts.    This week is always intense for us and there...

   Hello hello.  It appears that the last glorious days of true spring are upon us here in North Georgia and the great southern calvary of mosquitos riding on the backs of cicadas will be here in short order.  It has been a fabulous run and despite almost being in the 90’s back in March, it’s been surprisingly cool through April into early May and actually hit 38 yesterday.   We’ve appreciated every minute of it, but I guess an El Niño summer is a coming, so maybe send a fruit basket to your HVAC guy just in case.    The honeysuckle that’s been generating deep heartfelt smiles are just about done blooming, and the roses are becoming my go to fix...

  Happy almost weekend y’all!  A little rainy lately, but the cooler temps have been delightful.  I for one am happy to work in a light rain in April with temps in the 60’s and 70’s even if it means heavy jeans and soggy socks.  It feels like a gift to have a real shoulder season, unencumbered by immediate and persistent heat and mosquitos.   I’ve been spending part of each morning and evening harvesting the peonies in what is the most gardeny portion of our farm.  You can see a bit of it from the window of our farm store.  This section of the farm slopes down almost in the shape of a bowl, down towards the woods and if you...

  Good afternoon!  Has the pecan pollen been messing with you Georgians as much as it has with us?  Everyone here is all sorts of allergic to it.   Mandy and I are rushing out the door to bring the tractor and a van load of plants over to her folks place to move their garden from an over-shaded area into the sun and into raised boxes, so I’ll be a bit brief as we need to harvest and prep the team before we head out.   We’ve started doing garden party bouquets for delivery to your door, so if you have an event that needs a big burst of colorful cheer, we’ve got you covered! Order Here!   Mother’s day bouquets will go...

And so it goes.  The maples have all turned green.  The lunaria’s purple flowers have turned into silver dollars studded with partially formed seeds.  The viburnums’ snowballs have melted. The ranunculus are breathing their last.  Butterfly Ranunculus too.  (Speaking of which, I saw our first monarch the other day.  Always a treat.)  The carpenter bees are attempting to undo 13 years of my efforts, rafter by rafter.  The dogs and cats are adorable as ever.  The guinea that found itself tangled in bailing twine from the neighbor’s field is doing quite well.  I guess I should tell that story.   Last week, Kali saw a guinea that looked like its shoelaces were tied together.  Being expert biologists, Mandy and I knew...