Happy Friday Y’all,

We’ve been chalky dry lately, choking on the dust from our dirt roads. The dahlias have been begging for more juice, and we’ve been trying to get them extra irrigation, but there’s no substitute for the magic of rain. The effect just isn’t the same. Every time we get a fresh late summer rain, we see the dahlia plants burst in growth and happiness. Hard to quantify the latter metric, but it’s just something you can plainly see and feel after awhile.

So, dry as a bone and no real promise in the forecast, then out of nowhere, just as Fedex was arriving to pick up 40 boxes of flowers last night, the sky opened up. It dumped down hard and sideways, blowing straight into the studio despite the 10 foot porch overhang outside. Lightning crashing everywhere, animals scurrying in fear, and ponds building up immediately.

Of course our man Chad from FedEx was handling it in good spirits and making sure our flowers all got on board safely despite the deluge. If anyone has connections to the higher ups at FedEx…..get Chad a raise. A big one. I can’t tell you how much of an attribute he is to the company. His and ours.

Chad, the very best FedEx guy!

The landscape is loving the fresh rains too. The all-stars (fall-stars) of the season have exploded with perfume this week. Tea Olive, Clematis, and Gardenias sharing their heavenly gifts with us. A new addition this year is the 3 huge pots of Angel Trumpet (also known as Jimson Weed, Devil’s weed, Datura, etc…) which has a pleasant smell, and the flowers are giant hanging trumpets of beauty. We’ve got yellow, pink, and white versions just outside the kitchen window, and I swear they all smell slightly different, which is fun.

Angel Trumpet & Autumn Clematis blooms. We wish you could smell these photos!

The Jimson Weed moniker comes from the history of soldiers sent to Jamestown to put down Bacon’s Rebellion, but they ate some of the leaves of this plant while there and spent the next 11 days in a wildly altered state. Yes it is hallucinogenic, and no you shouldn’t indulge. It is not the fun, therapeutic, or spiritually expanding kind of hallucinogenic, but rather a solid multi-day trip of ghastly proportions possibly ending in death depending on dosage.

According to a professor of Native American studies I had 30 years ago, during their passage to manhood, the Chumash from the Santa Barbara region would have boys consume it and proceed to perform all sorts of challenging tasks….the worst of which was to lay in a pit of biting ants, while hallucinating on the already highly unpleasant devil’s weed, and not scream. Wild to think about. Not sure what our rights to adulthood are these days. Probably TikTok related.

Rachel, Karmen & Mandy spider hunting this morning!

Joro’s are back in a big way. We've been seeing them for months, but they’ve finally exploded in size and taken over the farm. The crew fought back the other day. Each armed with a stick and some shoes, they all roamed the farm taking back the pathways and tunnels. There’s still a ton of them, but our walkways and work areas are safer. Nobody’s been bit here, but they are huge and can supposedly sting like a wasp, and it’s freaky getting caught in their unbelievably strong web like Frodo Baggins and wondering if the maker is on your head or back or neck and is about to bite. We hear screams from staff annually as they get caught up in them going from hither to thither. I wonder if we had rights to adulthood if we’d be more calm and collected when we found ourselves in an ungodly strong sticky blanket.

The mum tunnels are looking great!

Kali, Karmen, and Grace have joined us back at the farm as our work picks up, and we are so happy to have them back! We’ve got such lovely people to share our days and our work with and are always so grateful for it.

The mums are looking great and starting to stretch, and a few early varieties are already beginning to bud up a little bit.  For all you growers out there, this is aphid time!  Be vigilant!  This is the time of their growth where we ramp up aphid treatments.  See our mum care page for tips.  If you’ve missed it until now, we have the best possible mum varieties for cut flowers available for pre-sale here.  They’ll ship on a date of your choosing next spring.

The dahlias are so happy after yesterday's rain!

Our dahlia CSA starts next week, so if you’re a subscriber, keep an eye out for your shipping notification and get those beauties in a vase as soon as delivered.

If you ordered them as a gift for someone else, but used your email address instead of theirs, you need to be responsible for letting them know when dahlias are coming. Please don’t assume all will be well. That’s how they end up sitting in a box in the sun on a hot porch and get cooked! We guarantee wonderful flowers from our door to yours but can’t do anything about damage due to neglect after arrival, so if you get notifications about your gift….let your recipient know!

Dahlia fans, most of our blooms will be going out in the CSA boxes this week, so not much will be left over for regular sales. We should be able to add an increasing amount of boxes as the weeks progress and the yields increase though.

Watering the plants for the Fall Plant Sale, opening online Saturday!

Our Fall Plant Sale starts online this Saturday at 8 am.

Pickups start on Thursday the 11th, which is when the Farm Store opens.  The Farm Store will not be open this Saturday!  The neighboring field will be filled with men and boys wielding shotguns for a huge dove hunt this Saturday, so please avoid coming by.  I’m not sure if they’ve all gone through a passage to manhood, but I am sure that the birdshot will be raining down all morning.

For some off farm news,  Floret is starting her seed sale Tuesday the 9th at 12 noon Eastern Time.  They are all seeds bred on her farm for specific traits that you can’t find anywhere else.  Amazing flowers from amazing growers whose obsession with and commitment to cultivating beauty is unrivaled. I highly recommend you check out what is on offer at their preview if you love discovering new flowers.  And for a beautiful look at the “why” behind this project and the many hands that made it all possible. You can watch it here.

I was just told that I have to go fix broken stuff, so I’m out.

Have a great weekend y’all and give a hello and a smile to at least one extra person you pass by this weekend. Spread some cheer. The world could always use a bump of kindness.

Steve