After weeks of extreme heat and humidity and rain we have today which is just about perfect. Clear blue sky, cool temps and a brisk breeze to keep the bugs at bay. And July still for one more day. Is this what August has in store for us? We will have to wait and see what Huey, the weather god brings us, but as we know, be prepared for anything.
We are truly in the thick of summer flowers now, zinnias, celosia, marigolds, rudbeckia, all the famous “dirty flowers”. Remember to change your flowers water daily if you can so the water doesn’t go skanky, and if you can’t remember to do it, add a drop or two of bleach into the water to act as a bactericide to keep your stems lovely. Shame on me on Friday with my flowers because this morning the water was peeyou. I changed the water, recut the stems, rinsed the stems, removed yucky stems and am enjoying the flowers again. It is also really good, in fact critical that your vases are clean. Don’t laugh but I wash my flower buckets and vases with a round toilet brush. It does a great job of cleaning the vases. If you are using an opaque vase, like this one,
remember to check the water levels as well. This is last Thursday’s #windowframethursday and when I looked at it this evening it was droopy. No water in the vase. Oops.
Your flowers are being harvested on Mondays and Thursdays so you have the freshest flowers when you come to the flower shed. They are cut first up in the morning before the sun hits the gardens, put immediately in water in the shade. Then after all is collected, into my cave we go where they are stripped of foliage, graded, put in fresh water and put into the cooler. I don’t think the summer flowers last quite as long as the winter and spring flowers and am happy if I get five days out of a bouquet as long as I do the proper steps, like changing the water daily.
The dahlias are coming, slowly. I have pinched them hard to slow them down, but I am ready for some wild color so harvesting flower stems when they happen is starting. Yay! The asters are showing buds, the fillers like the basils, scented geraniums and mountain mint are rocking on to give each bouquet a zing and the celosia, holy moly, do I have celosia. It has reseeded everywhere. I am not complaining mind you, but wow. Oh well. I can always dry it.
Speaking of drying, now that the humidity has vacated for the week, I have a bunch of peonies that have been in storage and other flowers that I am going to start drying for late fall and winter happenings. That is something to stay tuned for. Trust me.
So, this is a VERY COOL project that I am doing with my friend BJ. We are taking flowers, and pounding them onto fabric that has been mordanted. A very good upper arm workout, believe me.
I mean how cool is this. We are still in the trial phase, but I have plans. Oh BJ, are you reading this? I have plans and you are involved. As usual, I might add.
So I leave you with this, even though it is 90 degrees out, raining, snowing or tornado warnings I have flowers on open flower shed days. I have flowers by the single stem, by the bouquet and by the bucket. Yup. I have flowers. And to prove it, here I am in all my flower growing glory.
Or not.
Hope to see many of you soon, and until next week. Allie