Month: November 2023

I hope everyone had their fill of turkey and all the trimmings on Thursday and now everyone is ready for the exciting month of December, decking the halls with fresh and local greens and trees. Nothing speaks more than having a local and natural holiday season. Yes, the decorations don’t last as long, but either does a flower bouquet. At the end, they can all be composted and not filling up the landfill with plastics and more.

My pots and urns are filled with boughs cut from the farm, mixed with red and yellow twigs, adding some dried hydrangea, tying on dried white and red gomphrena flowers, some honesty seed pods and there you go. Beautiful. My gifts are wrapped in paper bags and festooned with dried flower posies…what could be more beautiful.

Since the gardens are all sleeping, and the bulbs are doing what they do without my help, I am going to give you a break from my posts until things at Flowers at Lottarock start rock’n. I will still be happy to do dried flowers bouquets for you, posies for gift adornment, or being creative for you, but since we will all be busy, I will take a bit of time off from doing the blog posts, but in mid January, I will be back. Promise.

That being said, if you do need my florals, contact me at flowersatlottarock@gmail.com. I more than likely will not be checking the website like I should. Bad me. But hey, everyone needs a vacation from a website.

I leave you with pics of an arrangement I did for a thanksgiving table last week. Enjoy.

All grown or harvested here at the farm. To me it reads the end of the season beauty.

Until next year my flower people. Have a safe and fabulous filled December, I will be back in January. Promise.

I dream of flowers, do you? Until next time, Allie

We are on the back half of November now. I no longer have fresh flowers to harvest, but do I have some lovely dried flowers to create many things. My first creation of the week? Check this out.

These are all made on grapevine bases, grown, harvested and made by me. The evergreens are grown by brother Sean, the dried flowers by me. The wreaths are completely compostable, no wire or plastic is involved. No, they won’t last forever, nor should they. Like your garden flowers, they are to be enjoyed, then let them go back to the earth. The wreathes measure about 18″ across, and each is different, but you probably figured that part out already. I will also do holiday table arrangements in your vessel if you like. Love the chance to be creative. So. If you are interested, send me an email at…flowersatlottarock@gmail.com. I only look at the website on Mondays and not always at the comments. I know, me bad, wicked bad.

The cutting garden is officially put away for the season now. The gate is closed. The last of the beds got their protective coat of leaf mulch on Thursday and I have but the rods in for the low tunnels. If I go in now, it is just because I am planing or dreaming of what will be.

Saying that, I am going to try to rest my wing. TRY, to rest my wing. I will still give you flower farm updates until December, then I will give you all a break until Mid January when flower farming starts all over again.

Have a great Thanksgiving with family and friends, remember to let me know if you want a wreath or an arrangement, and I will be back next Sunday.

I dream of flowers. Do you? Allie

Well here we are in mid November, and now I can honestly say the gardens are done for the year. Last Thursday’s freezing rain, and this morning’s low temp of a whopping 24 degrees has just about done it. That being said, I finished up getting all the beds, irrigation, weed mat, posts put away a few days earlier. Everything is safely tucked in now. I just have to get the leaf mulch on the beds because I don’t want any exposed soil, but there are to be some nice days at the end of the week so that is the plan.

But!!! Spring is in the air….look at this!

So at five weeks, growth is starting to happen, and this is so exciting! This is happening faster than my wing healing. Actually anything is happening faster than my wing healing. We turned the cooler system over today from cooling to heating. I hope we did it right. Even with instructions it is a challenge, but the alarm will go off on my phone if we goofed. We will know tonight.

The last floral bouquet went our yesterday. I was asked three? weeks ago if I could do a flower arrangement for a memorial service, so I did a big harvest of beautiful hydrangea blooms, kept them cool, which hasn’t been hard, and created a farewell bouquet.

I had picked the most amazing hydrangeas, blues, blues that had turned a deep purple, whites, and creams. Added some late blooming chrysanthemums rosemary for remembrance, and spirea foliage. If you are up for creativity, I can do it (sorta).

I have had a request for, besides holiday wreaths, holiday bouquets. Sure, why not. My goal this week is to make a prototype of each, with estimated prices, post photos of the next Sunday and we will go from there. The wreaths are going to be all natural, fully compostable with the material grown here or at my brother’s. That is right, at the end of the holidays, you can toss it in the compost, or hang it somewhere and maybe the sprig birds will like it for nesting. No wire or plastics will be used. Stay tuned.

The sky is getting dark, the dogs are getting anxious and I can hear the donkeys calling for their dinner, so I will leave you here.

I dream of flowers. Do you? Until next week. Allie

Well we turned the clocks back this morning and I finished putting the cutting garden to bed this afternoon. The days are now shorter and it forces me into the house at a decent hour, both are good. It’s bittersweet in so many ways, yes, the days are shorter but it means cozy time by the fire. With the days being shorter and the garden all done with cut back, maybe my wing will begin to heal. Maybe. I would love to get leaves on the beds and wood chips on the paths so spring would be easier, but we will see. I really need to get this wing to start healing.

I got a request for eight jars of posies for last Friday, and it was the night before the big freeze that took down everything but the chrysanthemums. Luckly I harvested plenty of stems to fill the order so Friday morning I had a very happy customer.

I mean who would have thought I would have had this many flowers the first week of November? Now it will just be dried flowers done to order. If you are interested in one, just drop me an email. In case you forgot it, it is flowersatlottarock@gmail.com

I know, you are wondering what am I going to do with myself now that the gardens are cut back? Well, I have leaves to spread on the beds, wood chips to add to the paths, one more tiny batch of bulbs to plants. I need to find time to study, as well as go through my seed inventory because early spring flowers will need to be sown by mid January. Then the flower growing season starts all over again starting with the ranunculus and anemone mid January, then hauling tulip crates mid January, so I need to get ready, fit and organized for all of that.

Oh, and now that the push for getting the gardens cut down, I can get back to my favorite creative floral challenge, my #windowframethursday that I try to post every Thursday on Instagram. This is a true challenge because I want to show what can be harvested from the gardens every week of the year, but I do enjoy the chance to be creative.

I haven’t given up on the wreaths yet, I know I have two people that are interested. I need to get some harvesting done next week, this week is full up somehow, but stay tuned.

So until next week, dream flowers. I do. Allie