It’s Thursday evening and I’m sitting outside in the faint breeze with a couple of the neighbor’s dogs. It’s been a muggy day, our first of many, and the breeze and shade of a Japanese maple are kindly taking the edge off. It’s quiet, but for the occasional sighing exhale of Chaos, the birds chirping, guineas cacophonously being guineas, and Kali and Naomi laughing over in the studio while trying to film a video for Instagram and realizing the absurdity of all the little details required to do something like that in a way that seems effortless to the viewer.

Everything is blooming on the farm!

We are smack dab in the middle of Georgia spring here. Dogwoods blooming, spirea bursting with white in an effort to compete with the snowball viburnums. Loropetalum, not to be outdone is throwing splashes of purple 20 feet high and 40 feet wide. The lunaria is a bit sparse this year, but oh so beautiful wherever it lies. I don’t know what it is about it that constantly draws my eye, but it seems to make every vignette pop. It makes the snowball viburnum more snowy and the Japanese Maple more mapley (pronounced May-pull-eee). Maybe I’m just a sucker for electric purple. It sure is pretty. We need more next year.

Spirea blooms!

The eleagnus is aggressively springing forth in all directions and the grass suddenly shot up to thigh high, so I had to mow it 5 times last night before it came under control. The occasional car is driving by on their way to the Farm Store. It’s after hours, but folks are still swinging by to see if they aren’t too late to grab their plant orders. Fortunately for them, work is running late, so we didn’t close the store on time.

The Farm Store in all its colorful glory!

We have such an abundance of flowers in there that we decided to make a “Bulk Buy Sale" in the Farm Store.  This sale is targeted at all you folks who like to sprinkle happiness about the world.  The folks who want to be their neighborhood’s flower fairy and drop bundles of beauty and cheer to friends and neighbors.  Today and tomorrow, if you buy 3 bundles, you get one free and if you buy 5 bundles, you get 2 free, so come on down, fill your back seat with flowers, and spread some love and beauty and brighten some peoples’ week.

Spread joy this weekend with our Bulk Buy Sale in the Farm Store!

Love flowers and bargains, but not local???  Don’t worry, we got you too:). We’re doing a sale on ranunculus and butterfly ranunculus shipped directly to your door!  $10 off all bundles of each to celebrate the peak of the season.  This heat has ramped everything up and the harvests are bountiful!  That also means that the end of their season is only a couple weeks away,  so get while the gettin’s good and the deals are on the table, because these flowers won’t be here past April.

$10 OFF Ranunculus and Butterfly Ranunculus sale!

We just got a copy of Debra Prinzing’s new book (founder of the Slow Flower movement and flower podcast by the same name) in the mail that we’re featured in, called Flower Farmers…….and the strangest thing happened.  As I’m walking back from the mailbox, looking through it, I found a beautiful 2 page spread of a photo Daniel Dent took of a dinner we hosted for The Plate Sale in our dahlia field in the Fall of 23’.  It’s a gorgeous shot taken from high on a ladder, showing a hundred smiling faces at white linen tables, surrounded by thousands of flowers, happily eating dinner in the low evening light,  Mandy walking towards guests with a bottle of wine, Kali in the far background sipping a cocktail.

We can't wait to read this book cover to cover!

I scanned the faces and remembered meeting one of the fellas that night that I’d never seen before or since and how he told me of his farming venture. I put the book down and looked up to see someone accidentally drove onto the farm instead of making it to the store. Rare. Never happens, but the gate was open for a minute for Fedex and someone slipped in. As I walked up to redirect him back out and around to the store, he popped out of his truck and stretched out his hand in greeting. To my surprise, it was the fella from the picture in the book that I just set down. What are the odds. Wild synchronicity. I had to show him his photo.

Plant Sale plants waiting to go to their new homes!

Turns out he was coming to buy tomato plants for his farm.  The plant sale is midstream, but it’s not too late to take advantage of it and get your garden started.  You can see what is available here.  Next week is the last week, so don’t let it pass you buy.

We’ll chat more about the book soon. It’s not quite available to the public, but it is beautiful and has a lot of practical advice from a ton of flower farmers about a wide variety of flowers. Our section was about poppies of course.

The beloved Ice N' Roses Hellebores!

Hellebore lovers and growers!! We significantly underestimated demand for these awesome Ice N' Roses plants and sold out of our supply four times now, so we are happy to announce that we’ve worked it out and are now offering more!  Check out our availability now to get these amazing flowering plants that pretty much grow themselves, are disease and deer proof, and are crazy abundant with beautiful forward facing blooms.  They’re truly the best!

Let's care for this beautiful land we inhabit together!

Lastly I’d like to call attention to the river system we live in and near.  The Broad River is about to have a million gallons of water per day siphoned off for a Pilgrim’s Pride chicken plant and they are going to pump all the effluent from the shit and guts back into the river.  It’ll effect the water supply for all the farms and homes in the river system and add an immense amount of pollution for everything downstream.  Please sign this petition to protest this clear violation of basic human decency.

Rivers are not supposed to be dumping grounds for corporations poisons. Water supplies shouldn't be robbed from the people who’ve lived by and depended on it for hundreds of years. One company’s plant, shouldn’t be more important than the lives of the tens of thousands of people who live and work downstream, let alone the animals and ecosystems dependent on the quantity and quality of that water.

Steve