TheBanyanTree: stop the presses!

[Teague, Julie Anna]

Linda asked, are they micro mini flowers that I'm growing?  
Ha. No, just a micro-mini sized "farm".   There will be some very big, beautiful flowers (God willing and the creek don't rise) and some micro-mini flowers.  There will be lots of flowers of all sizes and colors.  Everywhere I can squeeze in a flower on my .3 acres (minus house), I'm squeezing one in.  First up: daffodils of many varieties. I've planted 200 or 300, I've lost count, and tulips, both the elegant, single, long-stemmed types and the fancy frilly types.  I prefer the single long-stemmed beauties.  I've planted 600.  I think.  I have records of all of this somewhere.   These have all been planted as bulbs in the Autumn and thank God we had a long autumn.  I also have ranunculus which grow from corms that look like a tiny octopi.  I've been growing them in low tunnels since late Fall and babying them along, covering and uncovering them at mother nature's whim.  They like cold, but not too cold.  They don't like a lot of wind.  They like water, but not standing water, and god forbid you get their leaves wet and don't give them enough air circulation to get dry.  They are one of the Goldilocks of the flower world but I love them beyond reason.  This is my first time growing ranunculus, so it's all a big, somewhat expensive experiment, and really, if you have any mojo to spare, send it to my ranunculus patch, I beg you.

As for annuals, I'm growing snapdragons (my favorite), zinnias, sunflowers, lisianthus, cosmos, love-in-a-mist, sweet peas, feverfew, daucus, dill, ammi, poppies, scabiosa (a terrible name for a flower, IMO), angelonia, buplurem (excuse me), and many,  many dahlias--which are actually perennial here only if one can keep the corms alive in one of the complicated and highly debated methods usually involving being dug up at the exact right stage, separated at exact points with a large, sharp, sterilized knife, and stored at exactly 35 to 45F degrees and at least 80 percent humidity. I'm not making any of this up.  Dahlias are a ridiculous amount of work in my zone but they are the main flower of most flower farmers because man do they bloom.  They bloom until you are almost (but never entirely) tired of them blooming. Most dahlias have names and are collected by dahlia freaks.  I mean lovers.  I can't get my hands on a Kelgai Anne at any price but anyone will sell me Linda's Baby. Even Linda.  I will probably get a year out of them and then kill them all in storage.  I have some withering in storage right now, in fact.   All of this stuff needs to be staked or netted or nursed, started from seed on certain dates and moved out on other certain dates, all based on a last frost date which is never the same date two years running and can vary by a month.  The seeds need darkness to germinate or they need light to germinate--and don't mix that up or you get zilch--and must be allowed to sprout on a heat mat unless they are the ones who despise any kind of heat and must be kept at a comfy, cool 65F.  There are those that must be started in pots indoors to have a snowball's chance in hell, and those that can only be started in the ground because their roots must not be disturbed at all costs.  It's a miracle that the world has a bounty of lovely cut flowers, is all I'm saying.  If I end up with a few handfuls, I should consider myself lucky.  I've got a stack of books and five thousand internet bookmarks, all of which I'm reading and reviewing and researching nearly any minute that I'm not working/eating/sleeping.

All of these tricky-trickster annuals, the meat and potatoes of any flower business of any size down to micro-mini, are built around a foundation of perennials I've planted and have been keeping happy for two years now at the "new" old house.  The "new" old house had nary a plant other than one very ancient lilac and a few scruffy, prickly, ugly shrubs that need to be dug out. I have several roses now--two el-cheapo floribunda roses that bloom their pea-pickin' hearts out despite being the commoners of the rose world, readily available at Kroger or Home Depot, or maybe because they are the commoners of the rose world.  They try hard and refuse to be humbled despite living cheek by jowl with seven heirloom or David Austen roses--roses with names and pedigrees.  Two more will arrive with their lineage papers in the Spring.  Our Lady of Shallot and Anne Harkness shall join HRH Queen of Sweden, who is currently slumming out back with the likes of Hot Cocoa (that tart!) and the rest of the gang.  I should really give names to the floribundas---I think Nelda (red) and Patsy (orangey pink) will work.  I'm putting in Heritage mums for late October blooms (they probably have names but I'm trying not to get too attached yet), peonies (which definitely have names which one really should remember), coneflower, daisies, alliums, achillea, buddleia, lavender, sage, false indigo, foxglove, geum, and natives like joe pye weed, larkspur, and others.

It's a lot.  I feel like I'm working on a PhD in flower growing/tending/harvesting.  And don't get me started on harvesting.  Everything is harvested in a certain way, put into a certain temp of water, at a certain time of day.  Or else, they say!  It's a lot. 

Julie


-----Original Message-----
From: TheBanyanTree <thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com> On Behalf Of LaLinda via TheBanyanTree
Sent: Thursday, January 4, 2024 2:24 PM
To: A comfortable place to meet other people and exchange your own *original* writings. <thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com>
Cc: LaLinda <twigllet at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: TheBanyanTree: stop the presses!

OKAY!

So, I gotta ask, are the flowers mini-micro?

On Thu, Jan 4, 2024 at 12:56 PM Teague, Julie Anna via TheBanyanTree < thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com> wrote:

> Dear Tree Folk, some of you have known me forever and a day, and 
> during the whole time you've known me, I've been here at a computer 
> screen, pressing my silly little keys and keeping my silly little life 
> afloat by writing computer programs which ostensibly provide 
> those-in-charge with the information they need to keep charging.  
> Well, I did some calculations this morning.  Or, rather, I opened the 
> handy-dandy Excel spreadsheet in which I had previously coded and 
> saved the calculations almost three years ago (when the numbers seemed 
> impossibly high and nearly insurmountable).  And what these 
> calculations told me, in the form of a single number with a lot of 
> backstory, is this--
>
> Ahem.
>
> Little Julie Anna Teague,
>
> who was born into a dirt poor family in Nowheresville, Indiana 
> (population 500), who has worked her entire life at jobs with varying 
> degrees of meaningfulness, including almost 41 years for Indiana 
> University, who has written a story or two, climbed a mountain or ten, 
> and been owned by a cat or twenty (and currently one very spoiled 
> dog), who has done yoga, breathwork, meditation, acupuncture, reiki, 
> vision-boarding, primal screaming, long distance running, art therapy, 
> sound therapy, talk therapy, and several things that were 
> self-destructive but felt good at the time, who has loved and lost and 
> loved again, ad nauseam, etc., and so forth, who has tried always to 
> be kind and giving to her friends and family and animals and the 
> environment and other good causes, who has scraped and saved, made do 
> and paid off, re-used and re-grouped, eaten all the leftovers and 
> composted all the scraps, and raised two damn good kids,
>
> has FORTY-NINE actual working days left in her working life at Indiana 
> University.
>
> Forty-nine.  LESS THAN FIFTY DAYS, FOLKS, and, to paraphrase the great 
> MLK, I am free at last, free at last, Thank God Almighty, I am free at 
> last to live my life no longer beholden to a forty hour work week or 
> shackled to my computer with the proverbial golden handcuffs.
>
> I get the key to the handcuffs in forty-nine days, and guess what, 
> they aren't real gold anyway.  I've mostly stopped worrying that I'll 
> end up eating cat food, but getting my teeth cleaned twice a year will 
> become my budget luxury item.
>
> And before anyone responds with, "You'll need a PLAN to get through 
> your retired days."  I think every person I've told has said that to 
> me.  No worries, I have plans.  I have grandkids to nurture and am 
> gaining two more in the Spring.  I have reading, classes, art, and 
> volunteering I want to do.  And my big plan, already in the works for 
> many months now, is that I'm starting a micro-sized flower farm in my 
> urban back yard and will be selling at the Farmer's market.  It is 
> hard work, but it's the work of my heart and never feels like work.  I 
> can be in my garden all day every day, doing the crappiest of garden 
> tasks, and come in exhausted and filthy and with my back aching, and it still feels more like joy than work.
>
> So, that's where I'm at.   Let the countdown commence.
>
> Julie
>
>
>
>
>
> Need to change your name, email address, or password? Or have you 
> forgotten your password? Go here:
> http://lists.remsset.com/listinfo.cgi/thebanyantree-remsset.com
>


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