From Now On Flower Farm

08/30/2026

This season is flying by. We’re enjoying it!

08/26/2026

We’re looking forward to this!

The countdown is ON! 🎶🔥 Bernard Blues & BBQ is officially just TWO WEEKS away!

Join us September 12–13 for a weekend filled with live blues music, delicious barbecue, talented artisans, family fun and so much more. We can’t wait to celebrate 10 years of Bernard Blues & BBQ with you!

08/25/2026

Flower farms generate piles: a debris pile, compost pile, a pile you don’t know what to do with. Debris trucks come monthly, so questionable piles become community piles. Just remember, you started it.

Earlier my neighbor put a dead copperhead snake in that pile. Thanks for telling me (I think). We live on a busy road, but I wanted to know which way the dead snake was facing. Was the deceased coming to my garden or leaving it?

Because lately we’ve had “something in the air” outside our courtyard. I’ve asked neighbors about the smell but they hadn’t noticed. You could not NOT notice. I was so embarrassed of the smell, I gave up Walmart deliveries for a week. I met the mailman in the driveway so he wouldn’t suspect we were hiding a dead body.

He thought I couldn’t wait to get my packages and said, “Were you expecting your throw blanket to be bigger?” Actually, I was since the box fit in the palm of his hand and came from Hong Kong a little too quickly.

I upgraded my smell search and cleared w**dy areas like the Poltergeist lady: “This place is clean.” I buried that dead snake ten times over with mounds of w**d debris added to the pile. Until finally, I found…

A dead armadillo. Google said the best way to get rid of the smell was to bury it. Of course. Back to the pile to retrieve debris for burial, most likely re-burying the dead snake on top of dead armadillo. You can’t make this up.

People often ask to visit our flower farm, and before they can even finish the question, I’m rigorously shaking my head no. Smell solved.

*photo of fireworks gomphrena because you don’t want the other.

08/24/2026

You can tell the state of my life by my garden. If it’s a w**dy mess, my life is harried and chaotic. If it’s thirsty and barely hanging in there, I feel the same. If it’s tired and spent, there you go. We both started well and had a lot of potential. Perhaps we did our part and now we’re moving on.

Here’s a picture of what I mean. Some flowers are managing to pull off a bloom and entice hummingbirds amidst the passion vine and Virginia creeper. Not an easy feat. (You have to love spellcheck which typed “virgins” just now).

Violets and garlic chives are screaming, “Are you trying to kill me? You never will.”

An entitled peony is punishing me with ugly leaves, claiming it deserves more respect than to be among the regular perennials.

I am one with my garden. Own it!

08/23/2026

Today is a fantastic day for a market!

08/19/2026

Any early sunflower lovers out there? This u-pick is only minutes from my house. How convenient!

Looking for a Great Photo shoot? We have you covered! We offer both Sunflowers and Zinnias

08/19/2026

I love hardy hibiscus which returns every year. This white one came from 3 houses ago, and we move it with us like an heirloom antique.

Yesterday, I spied a pink hibiscus with maroon leaves as we were swimming at a private residence. I’ve coveted one of these, but haven’t seized an opportunity yet. And there it was at the peak of blooming! Destiny, right?

The owner was out of town, so I headed straight for the plant to deadhead spent blooms, you know, help out the hibiscus. Win-win. My husband said: I know what you’re doing and you know you’re on camera. Never mind deadheading spent blooms means stealing seeds to him. Semantics.

I’d love to grow the pink one from seed but I won’t try eating it. Last year, I read where hibiscus/mallow family was edible, and stuffed the white flower in my mouth. It was like chewing bubblegum…for awhile. Just because you can eat something doesn’t mean you should.

Thai roselle hibiscus-that’s the one! Around Sept, this plant will give incredible red roselles for tea and skincare. In the meantime, its leaves taste like Sourpatch Kids candy and are packed with vitamin C. One is eye candy, the other is garden candy.

08/18/2026

I used to have a hammock in the shade…until yesterday. We anticipated a pop-up storm when the wind chimes twisted together and arm hairs stood up with the lightning.

So like the little children we are, we ran under the canopy of a tree (yeah, I know) and started splitting limbs. I hung onto a tree branch to lower it enough so my husband could cut it. When the branch dropped, so did I. I’d pick myself off the ground and we’d do another one the same way.

It sounds nonsensical as I’m typing the melodrama, but we wanted to save our mimosa tree. It’s one of my favorites: grandsons climb it, shades my hammock, blooms smell heavenly, hummingbirds are thankful, and makes a happy tincture.

But every time a storm whips up, we lose another branch. We thought to get ahead of the storm and cut the weaker branches so they wouldn’t strip the whole tree. Well, guess what-it worked.

But we never got the storm. Everyone else did, but not us. We did get the cotton candy sky afterwards. And a hammock in the sun.

08/17/2026

I’m fascinated with passionflower. There’s no other flower like it. It had me at hello.