What's Fresh August 22

When the availability list starts to shrink instead of grow, I know that it is mid-August and we are nearing the end of our season. Deep sigh...but we still have a few more incredible weeks of full harvest and beautiful flowers. The nights are getting cooler but the days are long and warm, perfect weather for thriving flowers.

Like the humming birds that fill the air I am drawn in by the colors of August. Deep summer flowers are vibrant and lush, the colors rich and saturated, spanning the warm side of the color wheel and accented by the last of the blue flowers--lavender, scabiosa and the last flush of delphinium. Deep crimson and hot coral zinnias call in the hummingbirds and they zip around our heads as we harvest, their urgency infectious and we cut and cut and cut. In the next few weeks we greet a few new varieties and say goodbye to some others.

Celosia
Wow, how is this for a deep saturated color! Only celosia can produce these neon hues--amazing. I love to contrast it with the bronze tones of Diablo and Chocolate Susans, the gold notes of suns or heliopsis and just a touch of verbena or lavender scabiosa. I just love painting with flowers.

Cosmos
This little flower is so popular that even though we have been cutting it for weeks I have not mentioned it here because we have had more demand than supply. It is so delicate and lovely so I can understand why. The perfect white flower to accent all the rich deep jewel tones of August.

Cleome
We are nearing the end of the cleome harvest now. If you have not tried this unusual flower yet I hope you get the opportunity. It is so gorgeous, long lived and has a clean fragrance, very similar to freshly cut cucumbers.

Cherry Brandy Rudbeckia
A cousin to Black-eyed Susans and Chocolate Susans this rudbeckia has the same chocolate kiss center but is surrounded by wine colored petals. Gorgeous--makes me crave a big glass of Cabernet Savignon and some dark chocolate.

Euphorbia Marginata
This is our most outstanding crop of euphorbia ever--I am euphoric over it! Each stem is well over two and a half feet tall with branching side stems that culminate in these beautiful white laced margins. Such a delicate finale for a long strong stem.

Betty's Blues Lavender
We planted three new varieties of lavender this year and this one if my favorite thus far. It has a beautiful deep blue velvet blossom on strong stems. This lavender will not disappear in a bouquet.

Lemon Bee Balm
In the mornings RT has to dodge the humming birds to get to this flower. He says it is their favorite flower on the farm. I like to too, it has a fresh fragrance, ethereal color--lavender melting into jade green--and it reminds me of something Dr Suess might draw.

Limelight
The hydrangea, like so much on the farm this year, have all bloomed late. The limelight is just starting this week but it is really taking advantage of the cool nights and the flower heads are stunning.

Lysimachia Gooseneck Loosestrife
Another sign of August, loosestrife blooms in deep summer. This fresh dainty head opens into a cone of white star-shaped flowers and lasts forever. The deep green leaves are the perfect complement to this lovely flower. I keep handfuls of it in jars all over the house.

Annual Scabiosa Lavender
Gosh I think I have to gush over this scabiosa--it is just lovely. The heads are so unusual, like huge lavender berries accented by a halo of blooms on long stems. My favorite this week.

Annual Scabiosa Red
Here is the sister to the lavender scabiosa and these unopened buds really do resemble ripe berries that burst into clusters of scarlet blooms accented with white confetti.

Sunflowers
The Italian for sunflower is "girasole" which translates as turns with the sun. Each morning I look out the bedroom window and see the rows facing east, greeting the dawn. Each evening the heads turn west and catch the last rays of the setting sun. "Molto romantica"--pretty romantic--this beautiful flower is aptly named.

Teddy bear Suns
So every time we harvest teddy bear suns that song by Don McLean "Starry Starry Night", his tribute to Vincent Van Gough, runs over and over in my head. Vincent is one of my personal heroes and I love his sunflower paintings. As a child admiring his work, I thought that flowers like Vincent's sunflowers only grew in France. Now I can grow (and paint) them.

Verbena Bonariensis
Another "blue" flower, the verbena is in full flush right now and it looks like a lavender cloud floating above the black-eyed susans in the field. I love the contrast this flower provides--the perfect punch to accentuate big golden orange flowers like rudbeckia, heliopsis, sunflowers and zinnias. I always plant some on the south side of our big red barn because I so enjoy this play of warm and cool, red and blue.

Viburnum
The viburnum berries are prime right now and we have a lot of them. They hold very well and are an interesting textural addition. Get them before the birds eat them all!

Grasses:

Explosion Grass
We will be harvesting the last planting of explosion grass soon. It is at the perfect bloom stage--tight lime green heads mixed with riper heads opening into bronze fountains. A very exciting textural element.

Tapestry
Our new millet is called Tapestry. Very much like Highlander millet it has much the same color and texture. Tapestry differs in its seed head structure, rather than one long simple head, the seed head resembles clusters or knots of seeds. It almost looks as if it were braided or woven, hence the name Tapestry. I simply adore it.

As always, please consult your email and fax for full availability.

What's Fresh August 1

We are still feeling the effects of the long cold wet spring, some good and some challenging. The cooler temps gave us strong plants with long stems and good foliage to support the flowers but our bloom times are still a little out of sync. As always, please consult your email and fax for complete availability but here a few of our favorites this week.


This is "Blue Stocking" bee balm, this particular shade of blue is a real tricky color to photograph and reproduce. It is actually much more blue than in the photo but I will have plenty on the truck so you can see for yourself.

Lemon Bee Balm, a cousin to the bee balm in the previous photo, this flower always reminds me of Dr Seuss. It looks like some wild creation he would make up to illustrate one of his stories. I like it and so do the humming birds.


This unusual plant is called Cerinthe. We grew it as a request from one of our plant loving clients. We love its lime green foliage and tiny bell flower.

A bucket of freshly harvest cleome. I am experimenting with it this week and will let you know about the vase life. I just love its unique structure, it reminds me of the fire weed blooming along the Teton Pass into Jackson.

Another shot of the coral pink cleome, if you look carefully to the far left of this photo you get a glimpse of the lavender pink cleome.

Lilies--yeah! The lilies have just started and we have two colors perfect for August. This bright orange that reminds me of a childhood growing up on Tang--just like the astronauts!

And we have this incredible red lily, it is hiding in the center of the snap dragons. Red is also a hard color to photograph accurately, it is so much easier to get true color with my brush! This red is this deep but it is warmer, like a deep mahogany stain. I'll bet it would be stunning accented with Black Eyed Susans and Diablo--we have both available, amazing!

This Red Scabiosa photographed a little more accurately but it is warmer making the immature buds look just like ripe raspberries.

Our second crop of Sweet Peas is in full bloom right now, we are lucky to have a shade house and cool nights that encourage this spring time flower to be in bloom now. This week we have an abundance of lavender sweet peas and next week we will have white also.

Our Verbena bonariensis is in full bloom, waving like a lavender cloud above the Black Eyed Susans. It is quite lovely. The little umbel of flowers varies in size from almost an inch to over an inch in diameter.

The veronica is still producing and is just gorgeous. It is the same color as the verbena and nearly the same shade as the "blue stocking". We grow several varieties of veronica, the flower spears vary in structure and length. We have a tiny "trident" veronica, three flower heads on each stem, the center flower one to one and a half inches long. Our medium veronica has a more regular two to three inch flower spear and our largest veronica has flower spears three to four inches long. All varieties are on strong twelve to fifteen inch stems.

White Veronica, the stems are not as long as the blue veronica, but the flower spear is much longer and a lot showier. The flowers are larger and form a spear three to four inches long.
Very delicate and pretty.

Viburnum berries--the same plants that produce our gorgeous Lace Cap Viburnum mature into these beautiful berries. These clusters of berries come in lime green blushed with red and ripen into deep red berries with a touch of green. We cut them on long woody stems with foliage. The birds that nest here love the viburnum, dogwood and curly willow and so when cutting we see an assortment of yellow warblers, Cedar Wax Wings and Lazuli Buntings--my favorite little song bird!

Grasses:

The Frosted Explosion grass is, well, exploding at the moment. RT is cutting it as fast as he can, we must harvest it before it goes to seed or instead of Bindweed farm we will be Grass farm!

We also have red millet and foxtail green millet.

We have new varieties coming into bloom every day. I will try to make another posting before the end of the week or I may just add to this one. You are always welcome to call or email and ask for a current availability list.