Flowers in the House

I almost always have flowers in the house after a market day, especially in the late summer.  Most of our customers are able to grow flowers too and although we ask them to leave their landscape alone and buy from us, we still end up with leftover flowers.  If every room has a large bouquet in it, it was not a good day.  But a few bouquets in and around are nice and enjoyed.  

I made a few little vases of flowers because we have lots of short stems right now and I hate to see cute stuff go to waste.  We suggested that these were for Grandparents' Day which was yesterday.

                                         Cute and colorful little vases for your kitchen table.

Well, as with the way the season moves sometimes, they all did not sell.  So I have two little vases for my windowsill.  Sweet and colorful and really not leftover flowers, but something special.  Flowers for my house.

Check out Jane's Flowers in the House today at smallbutcharming.blogspot.com  The best part is that you will see beautiful flowers from around the world. 

Quotable Sunday 09/30/2012


The Colors of Fall

After a long and very busy day at our market and a very late football game which we won,  I am just now getting to this blog. I am  sorry this is much later than usual and I am not feeling very inspiring, so I think I will let the colors of fall speak for me today. They are inspiring and truly colorful.  Happy Autumn!

 

          "The season for enjoying the fullness of life -- partaking of the harvest,
sharing the harvest with others, and reinvesting and saving portions
of the harvest for yet another season of growth." -   Denis Waitley

Flowers in the House

It is Flowers in the House Monday over at Jane's SmallbutCharming house.  The last Monday of the month we bring in flowers and make our homes' more lovely and charming.  In my case it was first removing all the dead arrangements that have been here far too long.  Most ran out of water but hey when you are really busy planting, picking and planning for next year, stuff gets missed. 

 

 Anyway here is a few arrangements around the house, they look and smell better than the others.

My first autumn colors arrangement. Does this mean that it is time for nesting.  Getting out all the cool autumn decor and getting cozy.  Enjoying the smell of baked apples, scented candles and getting snuggly under  fuzzy blankets. Seems early but I am starting to feel it.  Check out all the other wonderful arrangements over at Jane's house.

Quotable Sunday 07/01/2012

Its Still Raining....

For the second week in a row, our Saturday Farmers' Market was rainy.  Last week it was just showery but this week it Rained.... its June 30th for pete's sake.  While the rest of the country is so very hot, we are wet. It was warm and humid for us.  I forgot my camera but you would have seen canopies filling with water and massive waterfalls splashing down on people, tables and flowers.  I know the flowers like the rain but the rain kills a market day.  God bless all the people who came out and bought from us drippy farmers.  At the end of the day , everything and I mean everything is now trying to dry out.  The cube van has all 3 canopies drying inside.

                                     All the tablecloths and the banner and our windsocks  are drying inside

I have loads of wet laundry and there is work to be done in the fields but it is raining again.  After being rained on all day, an evening of a nice dinner and warm coffee is planned.  Tomorrow we will be out planting again.  Hopefully not in the rain.

                                                           Whether the weather be fine,
                                                           Whether the weather be not,
                                                           Whether the weather be cold,
                                                           Whether the weather be hot,
                                                           We'll weather the weather,
                                                           Whatever the whether,
                                                           Whether we like it or not
                                                                   ~Author Unknown

 

Quotable Sunday 06/17/2012

Kindred Spirits

Sunday again.  Mmmmm, What to talk about, mmmm, let's take a walk.   If you have been following us on this blog, we had a super wet snowstorm on the second day of spring.  Trees split, low tunnels collapsed and rose arbors buckled under the weight of roses and snow.  

This is the arbor after the roses were cut down out of it.  That is hog wire that is twisted and mangled and the rose debris is at the base of the gate.  The roses are still alive and this all needs to be fixed.

One of our best apple trees for making applesauce.  There are too many apples so we will be thinning them out.  Wish I could have them all.  Oh well.

                Lots of pears are setting on and we love fresh pears and canned pears in January. 

           The fig tree is loaded with figs, more than we can eat fresh.  Should try making fig jam or newtons.

Got a new sedum bed started.  Great flower fresh or dried.  Not many stems this year but in a couple of years, oh boy!

       Dahlias are budding up.  Maybe a couple of weeks away, if it stays sunny and warm. Fingers crossed.

          First cuts of lilies were this week.  We should have lilies for the rest of the summer.  Hopefully.

Some of the flowers I picked special for making some vases for fellow vendors at our market.  We love it when vendors want to display our flowers and we love trading.

     Just a couple of vases for the house.  Nothing special just like being surrounded by flowers.

Well, that's the tour for now.  We need heat and sunny days to move our summer flowers along.  

The title of this blog is kindred spirits because I met a kindred spirit yesterday.  When I started this blog thing, I didn't know where it would lead or how it would help us with our flower business.  But we have met online many kindred spirits who are doing this flower thing.  There is something so great to know there are others who love flower growing, who are willing to share ideas and help with problems.  You just know a kindred spirit when you can talk about flowers for hours and no one is  ever bored.  Kindred spirits who get excited by all the things you have in common.  And when you finally meet, wow, fun, feel like I know you!   So thank you for stopping by, Kathleen from Erika's Fresh Flowers and Erika from How does my Garden Grows and Grandma Dixie.  It was so nice to meet you all and I look forward to our blog friendship!

"Inside each one of us is a beautiful flower garden.  This is the garden of the soul.  With each lesson we learn, the garden grows.  As we learn together, our individual gardens form a tranquil paradise."
-  Sri Chinmoy

Quotable Sunday 05/06/2012

Taking the Good with the Bad.  Always learning....

What a Great year for anemones.  This was our first year growing them in a hoop house in crates and it was wonderful.  We started cutting on them on Feb. 22 and we still are cutting on them this May 6th.  They grew with very long stems, huge flower heads and bright cheerful colors.  They are still putting out great stem length but the heads are getting smaller.  The colors are still vibrant and now are perfect for my little vases. 

The bad news is the ranunculus are finished and we were not able to cut them as long and hard as we had hoped.  They also were grown in our first large hoop house.  On the weekend of April 21st, we had three days of 80 degrees,  the hoop house was warmer, and they all went to bloom at once while we were at the market.  Thousands of stems of glorious colors went to waste.  The temps cooled, but the plants were done.  Lessons learned.... have a backup plan in place when the biggest day for flowers (Mother's Day) is still a week away and plant less dense and vent the hoop house way more.

So now the ranunculus come out and hundreds of heat loving celosia are going to go in after a bit of soil amending.  We are growing about a dozen different types of celosia and they were all started in our mini soil blocks.

These will be transplanted this week to bigger soil blocks and moved to the propagation house to get bigger and hardy for the hoop house.

These celosia were planted on Thursday and germinated on Saturday,  boy they are ready to grow.

The  big fig tree is setting on many little figs.  They are really tasty but too many can upset the tummy.  Sometimes during the summer we will get a dust devil wind blow through and the ready figs will go flying.  Maybe that's where we get the saying: "Don't give a flying fig." 

We are excited about a new tomato variety we are going to try this year.  It is called Indigo Rose and it is a purple tomato.   Rain Drop Farms here in Corvallis grew this beautiful little plant.  Can't wait to get it planted. 

The downside to our veggie garden is we don't have much planted, some strawberries and spring peas.  With so much to do with the flowers, we got to make time for the food side.

We have some beautiful flowering cherry trees, which are very large and can be seen from the road.  They are a beautiful pink color and for a few days are just lovely.

Then the spring rains come, the wind blows and the petals go flying.  We have tried to capture the pink snow with our camera but the evidence is on the ground, on all the plants, the roof, the car,  the greenhouse.  It becomes a brown slippery mess that takes a few weeks to clean up.

So now we are in that transition time where our spring flowers are coming to an end and our summer flowers need sunny warm days to grow and flower.  So we don't have a lot of flowers to offer but I still had a few left for my windowsill.

Hoping you all have a cheerful day in May.

"You've got to take the good with the bad, smile with the sad, love what you've got, and remember what you had. Always forgive, but never forget. Learn from mistakes, but never regret." -unknown-