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...

Woooo doggie, it’s hot out there. It’s 7:40 p.m. on Thursday and I’m just coming inside from an observational run with Mandy through the fields and it’s still hot as Hades out there. The ladies have been working on black plastic and I’ve been doing some roofing these last few days and it sure is something to experience. I hadn’t encountered heat like this til’ my first southern summer on the farm in 2011. You walk out all clean and fresh with a plan in mind. You’re gonna get this done and that done and take care of a few things before the heat comes. And 15 minutes later, it’s 7 a.m. and you’re already soaked through like a drowned...

Happy Friday y’all! I skipped the last couple weeks due to festivities. I had the great pleasure of turning 50 with my family and about 30 of my dearest friends from days of yore and even some of our East Coast pals that made the journey across country, deep into the hills of Northern California, to the hidden lake where Mandy and I got married 16 years and one week ago from today. The hidden lake in Northern California where Steve and Mandy got married. I truly couldn’t have had a better time in any parallel universe. Solid time with family I rarely get to see followed by a 4 day party in the redwoods on a private lake, where...

Happy Friday y’all! Well, the rain has returned by golly. My 10 day forecast doesn’t have one rain free day in it at the moment and we’re good with that. We’ve been busting hump getting the fields ready for the dahlia planting that starts today, and it’s been hot and dry out there. You know you’re gonna be feeling it for awhile when it’s 8:30 a.m. and your shirt is already soaked through with sweat. To accentuate the weather a bit, Mandy and I have been flame weeding this week. We do it in all the beds and aisles to reduce the weed pressure on the dahlias. Our climate is too hot to use landscape fabric on our dahlias (it...

Happy Friday y’all! Well, it’s the last weekend the Farm Store is open until fall, so we’re having a sale!  Come get you some deals on gifts and stock up for the next few months. You can knock out all your summer gifting in one trip.  Some of our favorite soaps and oils will be 30% off, and we are continuing our buy 2 get 1 free Ice N' Roses hellebore plant sale! After this Saturday, the store will be closed for the summer and will open back up in September when the dahlias start blooming. Enjoy the peaceful drive out to the Farm Store this weekend and stock up on goodies for the summer! If you aren’t local, we’ve...

Happy Friday y’all! We got a ton of rain yesterday! So much so that it knocked the power out. In fact, I’m writing this yesterday (time traveler) in the pitch black of morning with a nose full of peony and garden rose fragrance from the vase by our bed. A few days ago marked the 20th anniversary of when Mandy and I officially started our relationship, so I filled one of her mom’s gorgeous handmade vases with every beautiful and fragrant garden rose I could find and peppered in a few peonies for good measure. Steve's 20th anniversary gift to Mandy: flowers from around the farm! We had a lot of work to do that day, but we celebrated by...

Happy Friday y’all! We got some rain and we’re really excited about it. The fields were dry as a bone. Everything was crispy and you could feel the dust in your throat. Now we are renewed. The soil is wet with life. We celebrated by tilling the earth and shaping beds for our upcoming dahlia plantings. Mandy & Steve driving around the freshly tilled dahlia fields! This is a big transition period for us. Not only are we doing all the preliminary work to plant dahlias and beckon Autumn, but we’ve also emptied all of our tunnels of spring flowers this week. Piles of old and tired plants as high as your chest have now been scooped into the compost...

Happy Friday y’all! The scent of jasmine and heirloom garden roses are finding their way into our home through the open door on the sleeping porch, lulling us into faintly smiling sleep. The smoke bush has burst into its beautiful billowy dark and smoky version of a flower outside our door, greeting us as we stumble out to meet the morning. A few magnificent and isolated iris plants are proudly displaying their beautiful flowers in unexpected, but much appreciated spots around the cabin in the woods. Their seeds must have washed down during a different season’s rainstorm.

Happy Friday Y’all! We just had a nice visit from a few friends old and new. One a flower farmer, one a photographer from Milan, and his old photography school buddy who is briefly visiting from Sicily. We shared stories about life in rural Georgia and life in rural Sicily over a couple of beers and had a few laughs and easy conversation…mostly in English, though I forced my fledgling Italian in there as much as possible. We rarely host guests during the week due to our schedule, but as someone who’s basked in the unbelievably generous hospitality of strangers in Cuba, Indonesia, Sicily, Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina, I’ve made it part of my heart to do...

Happy Friday y’all! The farm is really beautiful right now as I sit outside Thursday evening to type this. I hear the murmur of voices from over the fence as Mandy talks to the neighbor who’s out haying his field in the setting sun. Birdsong surrounds me, a cool breeze, the last of the pollen drifts from the pecan trees, the snowballs and dogwoods are beginning to drop petals, the grass is lush and filled with clover, the lunaria has begun to form its silver dollar seed pods that lend to its moniker “the money plant”, the smoke bush is turning purple, and there’s a giant purple iris over my shoulder. We’ve relished some cooler days and nights this week...