Happy Friday y’all!

Our dear friend and former studio manager, Kali, came by last night for a meteor shower viewing. While Mandy played fetch with the dog at dusk, Kali and her hubby joined me for an evening walk in the flowers. There aren’t many folks more enamored by the magic of flowers than her, so we geeked out over the new varieties of dahlias we’ve been breeding and goofed on some potential names for them. She was mesmerized by the juicy melon colors of a new ball shaped dahlia. It's evocative of a ripe cantaloupe in color and tempts one to bite into its lusciousness. There are so many other new beauties that we’re giddy to share with the world and to get into the hands of southern growers looking for new varieties that can handle our heat and humidity.

In anticipation of emails requesting to purchase these lovelies, I should qualify that this time of year in Georgia, the dahlias are starting to flower and some of them are quite lovely, but even for the ones that look perfect, the heat stress is still too much for us to feel comfortable selling them. They wouldn’t last as long in your vase. Additionally, many are disfigured and even display burnt petals at present, but will relax into full beauty when cooler weather begins to grace our fields. The excitement is building.

After the dahlias, I brought them to our field of Formosa lilies to share in the wonder of hummingbird moths. Each evening these spectacular 6 foot tall trumpet shaped lilies are visited by a flurry of what sound and look like hummingbirds, but are in fact moths. They have evolved to fly and look like hummingbirds and to feed in the same way. With wings that flap 80 times per second, they truly hum while they hover and are less subject to predation by spiders or praying mantises since they don’t always need to land to feed. They can just float while they feed. Masquerading as a stout bird with a sharp pointy beak makes them less attractive to larger predators as well, that might otherwise be eager to chomp on a soft bodied, defenseless moth if they knew the truth.

So, safer from attack, they float at the entrance of the trumpet and their proboscis unfurls into a massive straw at least as long as their whole body and penetrates deep into the flower to find the nectar hidden within. It's wild to see them flying with their huge proboscises curled up like a giant fiddlehead, only to unravel at the entrance of a flower. I sometimes take slow motion videos of them to see what’s happening better because they’re so quick. I wish I could add a video to these newsletters, but photos are all the software allows.

Without fail these gorgeous specimens of nature visit our Formosa lilies each evening in the late summer months.  It’s one of the reasons we plant so many each year.  It’s also why we plant moonflower.  They visit them too.  If you don’t have anything that draws these natural wonders into your yard or garden in summer, you can easily spread some Formosa lily seeds and invite the magic.  You can find both Formosa lily and moonflower seeds on our site.

Mandy found one Formosa lily in a ditch outside our fence the first year we moved here. She saved seed from it and propagated the flowers and has been spreading the love ever since. I highly recommend growing some for yourself or gifting the seeds to a gardener or flower lover in your life.

Speaking of growing!  We’re launching our mum cutting pre-sale next Friday the 21st at 9 a.m. ET for those on the Heirloom Mum Waitlist!  The sale will be open to everyone else starting  Sunday the 23rd at 8 a.m ET.

If the mums are as important to you as they are to us, and you want to lock in your home run season extenders for your ideal planting week before they sell out, make sure to get your order in early.  It’s actually not too late to join that wait list if you’re eager to lock in your spring plans and want first dibs.

Have a great weekend!

Steve