Is it me, or are we getting the first whispers of Fall this week? I sat out at the cabin and watched the rain as it gently and steadily fell for hours on Wednesday evening. No violent winds, pounding deluges, or terrifying bolts of lighting crashing around me. Just soft rain and the first breath of air not forged in the heart of a volcano. Ten minutes ago I walked past our huge dog Cotton as she sat on cool concrete in a wind tunnel staring into the neighbors field and taking the strong breeze directly in her grateful face. I turned back and plopped down with her and joined her reverie.
Prior to this were too many days in the high 90’s with a heat index well over 100 and no breeze. It felt like heat had you in a nasty headlock and only now has loosened its grip. Also, what happened to fireflies? We’ve hardly seen any this year. Love those little buggers.
The Fall Plant Sale is ready to go (go online at 9am tomorrow!), which means that next week the Farm-Store will reopen its doors for your shopping pleasure. Mandy is busy landscaping the front of the store with all new plants and grasses to delight your ojos and feed the butterflies. The shelves will be filled with Linda and Tony’s amazing pottery and woodwork as well as a bevy of new delights that Mandy has been sourcing from makers for the last couple of months. And of course….your new plants that you can pre-order tomorrow at 9am for your garden or landscape.
Lastly, our heirloom chrysanthemum plant sale for spring delivery is going live to the public! Last year we had emails coming in for 9 months before we could actually take orders in the Spring, but this year we’ve got our act together, our I’s crossed and our T’s dotted, and all the little ducklings in a row, so that we can help you prepare well in advance to select your favorite varieties and schedule the exact week that would suit you best to receive them. We’ve got a whole greenhouse filled with our favorite varieties that produce the most beautiful blooms with the strongest stems and that last in a vase for up to 3 weeks. There’s been more demand than supply of these for a number of years now, so we are beefing up our operation to help get more of these plants out to people that have been trying to get them without luck for the last few years.
For you flower farmers that have yet to dip your toes into the world of mums, these heirloom chrysanthemums are tall, incredibly productive beauties that flower in November and give you a bountiful market booth filled with colorful bouquets perfect for Thanksgiving. And since they last for 3 weeks, if your farmer’s market closes that week as some do, you can sell them the week before without stress, because they’ll still look perfect during Thanksgiving weekend and Native American Heritage Day. For all of our mum customers, we also provide a link to a video instruction we’ve made on how to make your own cuttings and multiply your mums to get 8 times the plants you actually purchase from us. If you’d like to see our chrysanthemum varieties on offer, check them out here!
That’s it for now. If we get another flash of deep heat, Mandy and I have refuge. She cleaned out the outdoor clawfoot tubs and I learned to make blended Piña Coladas for the visit of one of our oldest and dearest friends last weekend. Some of you know Wheeler Munroe through Floret and likely have her handcrafted leather flower belt on your waist right now. She’s as pleasant as she is talented. To shop her belts, you can Click Here!
Sometimes getting ready for company ends up benefiting you even more than it does them. We now have clean cool tubs, a blender full of piña coladas and a heat action plan for all future weekends.
Be well,
Steve