The Dreaded Summer Lull
If you’re growing entirely in the field like we are, there’s a stretch between spring and summer when the first season has finished but the second hasn’t quite arrived. Keeping flowers blooming continuously takes skill, timing and a little magic. My magic wand was apparently faulty this year.
Last year I had sunflower seedlings in the ground by the middle of April. By early June they were blooming their hearts out and carried us beautifully from the spring flowers into summer. I had every intention of doing the same thing this year, but somewhere between my consulting work, traveling, and taking on two new properties, those early successions never happened.
The fields don’t look empty though. The dahlias are growing beautifully, the statice is covered with bees, the lisianthus are beginning to bloom, and row after row of zinnias, celosia and sunflowers are knee high. They’re just doing it on their schedule instead of mine. The zinnias and sunflowers probably have another month before they’ll really begin to bloom, and while I would have preferred them earlier, I suspect I’ll be grateful for that timing when we’re still cutting armloads of flowers well into September and October.
Last week I also tweaked my back, which wasn’t part of the plan either. I spent a week on the couch instead of working while Kat picked up what she could after getting home from work. My son Nate and daughter-in-law Lauren, who recently moved back to Ohio, came over to help as well. Lauren also arrived with homemade cheesecake sugar cookies, and I have to say they were every bit as helpful as the extra hands.
One of the reasons I enjoy flower farming so much is that the farm never stands still. The field I’m walking today isn’t the same one I walked a month ago, and it won’t be the same one I’ll walk a month from now. There is always something finishing, something beginning and something quietly growing toward its moment.
For now, the farm is in that in-between season. The bouquets are a little different than I imagined they would be back in January. Sometimes my plans work out exactly the way I’d hoped and sometimes they don’t. Either way, eventually I’ll find myself standing in a field full of flowers and this little pause will be forgotten as quickly as it came.
