Ojos Del Sol 2/23/24
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Happy Friday!
It’s starting to warm up a bit out here. It’s still been freezing every night until last night, but the mornings have been warming up faster and we’ve got multiple days in the 70’s coming up, so I imagine we’ll see some new leaves and flowers out in the world this week. The spirea are putting out fresh leaves already.
This week’s gift of divine fragrance is bequeathed unto my grateful nostrils by the Winter Gold Paperbush (Edgeworthia Chrysantha). Love that dang plant! Smells sooooo good. We’ve got a newer one in front of the house, but a much more established one out in the woods by the generous mulberry tree in front of the cabin. Surrounded by hellebores, this unique and lovely plant first caught my attention and lifted my spirits a ton back when Mandy was gone for a few months during lockdown. It imprinted on me in a big way that year. There’s something about these fragrant bushes I keep talking about that literally sends happy chills throughout my whole body and they bounce around in there for a good while even after I stop imbibing their delicious scents. 
Edgeworthia chrysantha or Paperbush-- check your local nurseries for this plant!
The poppies are picking up speed and I imagine they’ll be going extra strong in the upcoming week of warmth. And I guess I was right about the butterfly ranunculus being impressive this year, because Kali was gah gah over them to the point where she was sending vids to her old flower shop and telling them that they were doing flowers all wrong if they weren’t using them in their events. For context, Kali doesn’t do sales, she is just really enthusiastic about how big and abundantly bloomed this year’s butterfly ranuncs turned out. I love the enthusiasm. It’s great to have Kali back! She just re-joined us this week and is back in the studio organizing, bundling and packing all your flower orders for shipping and generally brightening up our day.
Kali beaming over these Butterfly Ranunculus!
Our whole team is awesome. Everyone is really invested in doing a great job and making the farm as good as it can be and that means a lot to me and Mandy. Not only that, but everyone is so pleasant to be around. Lotta good vibes permeating the farm. It sure makes the days more enjoyable.
Rachel is doing a great job at taking care of all of the programs and sales and order flows, in addition to managing the website, customer service, and helping Mandy and I with planning out how everything is going to flow from one week to the next and one season to the next and jumping in whenever a hand is needed in the studio or the field. She’s integral to all the inner workings of the farm. All the things we never dreamed we’d have to do when we dreamed of starting a farm and she never dreamed of having to do when she started selling flowers at our market booth, we now do daily together. So much planning!!
Rachel coordinates her colors as well!
Naw, Eh Play, and Marry, can tackle any project you put them on, faster than you can come up with the next project and they’re always either laughing or singing in the process. We are very lucky to have them.
Our newest team member, Sarah, has come in with boundless enthusiasm for organizing our mum cutting project and brings a lot of knowledge and experience. She has melded seamlessly into our collaborative style of assessing the best strategies on how to respond to stimuli and proceed with calculated haste, while also bringing a far more rigorously structured and data based approach, filled with detailed record keeping and living spreadsheets to the table. That approach is pushing us out of our comfort zones and we’re glad for it.
Sarah taking our mum propagation to the next level!
Mandy and I have cultivated a very functional approach of using the force to find our way successfully through a season. It’s not guesswork. It’s more like amorphous calibration derived from years of experience and familiarity with how all factors coalesce to reveal a certain outcome with a decent degree of accuracy. Somehow we’ve navigated our farm through each season more by looking at the stars than by using a map. In this analogy, Sarah uses GPS.
It’s always good to take another vantage point and broaden your perspective, especially if it allows you to see potentials more clearly and improve your approach by expanding your tool kit. We’ll keep learning til we die. We’ll keep getting humbled along the way.
Speaking of mums, we’ve got some pretty big news. If you ordered for the first 2 weeks of shipping, check your email. We are way ahead of schedule and are giving folks the opportunity to get their orders early and start growing and taking cuttings off their own plants even sooner. For those on our waitlist, this means we’ll be reaching out soon as we finalize our projections and add new inventory for more heirloom mums this whole spring. We are really excited to be exceeding our projections so significantly!!
Hellebore customers!!!!! Your orders will ship either next Wednesday or the following Wednesday, so keep an eye out for your shipping notification. Fedex will scan the orders Wednesday between 4 and 5p.m., so check your email then to see if your order shipped and for your tracking info.
Dahlia tuber customers, if you missed your shipping info, storage, planting, dividing, and growing recommendations and FAQ’s, please check this link to find all of that juicy info.
This week’s golden nugget to share is a song that’s enchanted me for years. Check out Ojos Del Sol by Y La Bamba if you want your heart to be greeted by a warm hug of sound.
-Steve