The Last Sunday of June, and it’s a hot one!

It is hard to believe that this is the last Sunday of June. Summer is just zipping by, but the flowers are really starting to fill in and every week there are more offerings to be had. The bachelor buttons are a sea of flowers, and that blue added to a bouquet really makes the bouquet pop.

You might be asking, “But what is new?” Well, the calendulas and rudbeckia are starting to bloom, the grasses are really starting to look interesting, soon we will be having lots of cosmos and zinnias as well. I am hoping that by the middle of July I will be harvesting from everything that has been planted. Well, not everything, because I have some late summer flowers that need to wait their turn.

Not that I want to jump ahead in the seasons, but I have just placed the remaining tulip order for the spring of 2022. Yikes! The plan is to have 6500 tulips available starting the middle of February on until the natural season ends sometime in May, depending on the weather. I have ordered some stunners so that is something to look forward to next spring. In flower farming, planning for the next season really starts six to 12 months out. Crazy I know, but it takes that long to get crops started and grown to be available in time.

I got the pumpkins and gourds finally planted in the ground last Friday and they made it through the weekend.They are outside the fencing so I am hoping that the local critters will leave them alone.

Speaking of local critters, I have a snake living or hunting under the weed mat in the garden. It startled me when it came out but it had a rodent in his belly so I told it that it could stay and eat to it’s heart’s delight, just give me warning when it appears so I don’t get startled. It needs to live in the lisianthus right now because someone is eating the roots off the very expensive seedlings and killing them. Grrrr. (I refer to it as an it because I don’t know its sex).

I leave you a picture of Orlaya, a new plant for me to grow but I think a keeper. Let me know what you think.

Orlaya, in all its beauty.

I look forward to seeing many of you at the flower shed, and wish my international friends could visit for a flower fix. Until next time. Allie