December Photo Project 2012

Day 15


                   All hail the mighty rose that blooms in December!

Quotable Sunday 06-03-12

All The Lovely Flowers

People often ask if they could come to our farm and see all the lovely flowers.  They imagine acres and acres of blooms blowing in the breeze.  Awwww....... I can see it, a beautiful sea of flowers.....That's not our place.  The beautiful flowers you see are in the farmers' market right on the table or at your feet. There is nothing to see behind the curtain at our farm.  Well, there is.... but not what you think.  There is grass that is growing faster than we can cut between the rows, there are the wild blackberries here and there, the weeds that need to be pulled and there are flowers that need to be planted.  Although the days are getting longer, sometimes there are not enough hours in the day to get it all done.  So if you want to see the lovely flowers, you need to visit us at the farmers' market each Saturday.  

Old fashion Sweet William in so many colors and some with what they call eyes.  Lightly fragrant and very long lasting.

Campanula is just starting for us.  Long sturdy stems with lots of bells.  Purple seems to be first, following with the white and blush pink.

Snapdragons, the variety is Chantilly, which has no snapper to them.  I find them more dainty and sweet than regular snapdragons.  Customers are mixed on them at this point.

                     I love the colors in the mix we planted, soft and creamy looking.

Here we have some new types of  poppies.  We LOVE the colors but we are still working out the post harvest treatment for them.  We flamed these gals( seared the stem ends) and told everyone to give them a try and report back how they performed.  Quite a few test subjects took up the trial.  Who wouldn't, the colors were great.

Lastly, for me,  a few of one of my fragrant roses.  Three big blossoms, that the deer missed.  We have tried fencing, a dog, netting and chasing them off but still our roses get hammered by them.  So we are still trying to figure out how we can deliver some fragrant old garden roses to those who love them and want many more.

                                          "It is the month of June,
                                          The month of leaves and roses,
                                        When pleasant sights salute the eyes
                                         And pleasant scents the noses."
                                 -  Nathaniel Parker Willis, The Month of June

Bouquet Parfait

I am drawn to very bright colors.  I like the pastels but the bold colors are what catch my eye.  Our peonies are starting to bloom and we have many of the soft pinks and the creamy whites but I always go for the hot pink gals.  

The roses are for the fragrance.  The rose, Gertrude Jekyll is an old fashion garden rose that has a wonderful fragrance and a billion swirling petals.  It happens to be hot pink as well.  Got to have a couple of the gals also.

I have to cool this grouping down a bit with some old fashion Sweet William which also is fragrant.  I added another rose, a shrub variety called Bouquet Parfait which is a small blush pink rose that can have so many beautiful blooms at once, it is its own bouquet.  It has a tiny sweet fragrance.

It is all served up in a crystal bowl of my mom's.  It is a remembrance of mom, she would have love this bouquet.   Bouquet Parfait!