Look what my little patch grew! Watching these viridiflora tulips dance towards there peak this week has been mesmerising. 

One of the things that really sunk in while I was away, is just how different our industry is to that of the States. It made me even more aware of the fact that we need to stop looking to the US flower industry as a model and start looking at our own industry more carefully. We are not the States and we need to find our own ways forward to a better more friendly flowery future.

Debra interviewed Jenny and I about the Flower Farmer Fellowship and we spoke at length about my little flower farm and the Australian flower industry. It really is a great Podcast, so ...

Listen Here

You can here me say 'fall' and drop a couple of other Americanisms in there. It is so strange to listen to yourself being interviewed on the spot; scared to share it with my mum in case she pulls me up on saying 'um' too much! To be honest, listening back made me a bit teary this morning. For a couple of reasons: firstly, it made me miss Jennie, then it made me miss my blissful time over there and made me realise just how lucky I had been and lastly,  the interview reminded me of the immense faith that these people have in me and quite frankly, sometimes that is just a bit scary.

On the first day of Spring I made a teeny tiny arrangement. Featuring muscari, violets, baby anemones, blossom, snowdrops and leaves off that indoor plant whose name I always forget, but it's something like pepperoni?

and the doldrums ....

It is absolutely bucketing down outside and I feel like I haven't seen the sun all week?!? I went up to the patch this morning to try and get a little protective hoop house over some of the young seed sown ranunculus; that rain is due to turn to snow up there this afternoon.

Everything was wet. There is mud every where, I can't keep anything clean - I've given up already. It was howling a gale and I presently ended up on the ground, in the mud with a 10meter long bundle of plastic sheeting attacking me. Every time I tried to pin it down the wind would whip it out again and blow rain in my eyes; I screamed in frustration and told the ranunculus that they could just (*&%!@#-well toughen up or die. And with that I stormed off ... trailing the raging monster of plastic behind me.

The horses watched me go, I felt like they were laughing at me - that funny, noisy two-legger and her odd antics ... Actually, I feel like they laugh at me quite often, most of the time I laugh at me too; just not today. Today I was grump-Y.

Funny thing is, this happens every winter. I become so despondent; I lose faith. It seems that those tiny (beautifully laid out) tufts of green will never produce anything so beautiful as a flower. Indeed, I feel that they will never get taller than my hand! And then I think that if they do grow, there won't be enough, they'll be too late, they won't be the colours I want, I've planted too close, not close enough, they will flower all at once, I haven't got my staggering right .... 

It's completely silly but it happens every time! So I told my monkey brain to kindly shut up and decided to go and do something that would make me feel better. I went and bought myself a magazine (unheard of!) and sat down with a nice cup of green tea. Then I put these flowers together from the only few things left flowering on the patch and took some photos. I suppose things are starting to look up.

Over the last few months, I have been doing a bit of wedding work alongside farming. The stand-out so far was this delightful woodland wedding that I styled back in April. I have to say, if I were to get married, this is the way to do it ... wake up in a forest, have a simple registry ceremony and then a sumptuous sit-down dinner with 20- 30 of your nearest and dearest. 

These images have just come through from Long Way Home Photography, whom I have to thank for capturing the magic of this event beautifully.

The Crimean was the perfect eastern-euro backdrop and the food spectacular - we know because my awesome assistant Ame and I stayed on for cocktails and dinner in the restaurant after bump-in! The groom was Polish and the couple were really into their food and drink ... so there was plenty of good Vodka and cake was eschewed in preference for cheese, lots of cheese.

I had such fun collecting all the props for this one. I had a my man cut dozens of slices off fallen tree logs, I went further into the depths of the gully on mum's property than ever before in search of lush, verdant moss and interesting lichens. I collected pine-cones and acorns from roadsides and ventured into the local pine forests in search of fungi. We even managed to incorporate some bare-rooted autumn flowering crocus bulbs into the display.

The bouquets were also forest-y - of course. Hardly a flower to be seen but there was plenty of scent; rose geranium, peppermint geranium, rosemary and mint. The bride had a few roses in there for prettiness but the bridesmaids bouquets were entirely foliage, herbs and texture - fun! We also bound some vintage cufflinks onto the bridal bouquet for "something borrowed" from the mother of the bride; I love traditions.

Thank you again to 

Long Way Home / Images

  The Crimean / Venue

I'm supposed to be planting, weeding and mulching but if I don't sit down and revive this blog asap, I fear the poor dear is going to slide into oblivion once and for all! 

So what happened? Where did I go? 

I didn't go anywhere, I've been here all along; farming like crazy. I got a bit swamped and a little overwhelmed by the enormously challenging year that has been my first season flying solo as a real small scale flower grower.

I am only just now, coming up for air and this is what I realise: nothing went the way I had planned, it was a gazillion times harder than I thought it would be and I didn't make a cent but I did it, I'm still standing!!!

And do you know what? There was so much beauty along the way. True, mostly I was moving so fast, it all just looked like a blur but it was there - and I grew it. It is the most fulfilling and heart bursting feeling to watch someone walk into a shop, walk up to your flowers and comment on how wonderful they are. I am the proudest of mums, with the glowing-est of cheeks when I say "thank you, I grew them".

I hardly have a photo to show for it {unless you jump on Instagram folks, that I can do whilst still moving at speed} ... but trust me, it happened.

I can't possibly catch you upon all that has happened since my last post - back at the start of Spring!!! But in summary: there were flowers, buckets and buckets of flowers, nearly all of these were sold direct to other florists who are also keen do see some diversification in the local market. There was lots of weeding, serious irrigation troubles during the driest Summer on record (or something to that effect, I've stopped listening to the news), I moved house a couple of times, took on a small pile of wedding work and then, just as I was hitting my stride, I decided to completely redesign the layout of the patch! As the Summer flowers peaked, I decided to scale back the annual Autumn planting to a bare minimum so that I could dig up 80% of the patch and turn all the beds 90 degrees, put in semi-permanent pathways and permanent irrigation lines. All I can say is thank god for Dahlias, those 3 beds just kept on giving :-)

I am please to report that the patch renovation is now almost complete, just a few more beds to shape and paths to lay. Half of it is already full with the Spring flowerers: bulbs, digitalis, cerinthe, lupins, poppies (what a hit those paeoniflorum were this year!), nigella, cornflower, larkspur, some heirloom gypsophila and sweet peas. I had to quickly build a few more raised beds at our rental because I bought too many bulbs - it's easy to do - and then jam even more in between the roses!

So folks, that's where we are at as Winter takes to the stage. I am dearly looking forward to a bit of a rest and reassessment over Winter, maybe a chance to get some new ideas and projects off the ground?! One thing that will be happening, is more of this, this blog is important to me and I have missed it. Writing posts to imaginary people in your head whilst digging, is just not quite the same.

I grew them all ...

except the forget-me-nots, gorgeous though they are, they are a noxious weed and I am personally helping to clear our native bushland of them :-)

Track 04 from the Early Demos CD that came with "Prisoner"

I wrote something, I lost it. No more words left. 

... with some wild clematis and roadside grasses to play the supporting actresses.

So, the bulbs may not have quite lived up to my expectations when it comes to size and volume, but man, I gotta say, I do have good taste when it comes to varieties; look at those tones :-)

3 weeks ago, it was snowing. 3 weeks ago, I took these photos. 3 weeks ago, it was cold, dark and grim ... and I nearly gave up. 

The funny thing about winter in the mountains is that is gets under your skin, it goes on forever (well, that's how it feels) and no matter how many you've done; you forget - while you are in it - just what a colossal challenge it is! 

On September 1st it was like someone had literally flipped a switch in the Macedon Ranges, all the trees that had blossomed at 6 weeks prior in town, finally burst forth their buds. Dots of yellow started to appear across the hills as the daffodils flowered, at last. A week before it had been snowing and sun was a distant memory and then ... BOOM.

So now that Winter is over, I can finally look back and say, it was a long, hard haul. I can see, with the perspective that hindsight offers, that it was a bit of a dark night of the soul. I was constantly being challenged on physical, emotional, spiritual and practical levels. I kept picking myself up , dusting myself off and plunging head first right back at the problem (s). I just couldn't seem to catch a break. But now I see it: sometimes there is a fine line between healthy determination and just throwing your head up against a brick wall! I remember reading once that "over-doing" is just fear in disguise and I think that's true. But while I was busily running into walls, I didn't realise that was what was happening. I thought I was being strong, resilient and healthily determined when actually I was pig-headedly trying to force things to happen because I am so very terrified that I might stuff this all up. Oh dear!

Well, we can laugh now and hopefully I have learnt something. At a particularly rough time, I came across this written up in a local cafe:

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up."

Thomas Edison

Of course, I took that to mean that I must keep trying to make things happen and off I went to connect my head to another brick wall but what you will hopefully get from it is that yes, sometimes you do just need a little extra determination to get where you want to but more often what you actually need is just a bit more faith. 

A little visual story from the Weaving Windows interactive exhibition put on as part of this year's Craft Hatch. Melanie from Cecilia Fox teamed up with Maryanne of House of Maryanne to put on this delightful work. I don't need any excuse to get my weave on so I went down and spent a whole afternoon in the shop, weaving and drinking tea. True, I'm a hand-weaver rather than a tapestry weaver but hey, the principles are the same: under, over, under, over ... and so on! I thoroughly enjoyed myself, spending time in a flower shop again, with Mel and I reminiscing of those long gone days when we were students together, revelling in experimental textiles and all the many possibilities.  Ah, the good ol' days :-)

My contribution to this week's Seasonal Bouquet Project. I do have to confess a stretch of the 25 mile rule though: the ingredients came from mine and Lentil's gardens, organically grown of course; it's just that we just live quite a way from each other!

 "Sharif don't like it

Rocking the Casbah

Rock the Casbah  "

Thanks to the rose above, this was the theme-tune for my entire rose planting afternoon!

It was a big day. I took a lovely drive over to see the ever generous Diana at Silkies Rose Farm to collect my much anticipated rose babies. Whittling my choices down to just twenty plants, because that is all I can fit in space-wise, at the moment; was a very hard process! In the end, I planted only what I loved, there's not a single yellow or red rose among them. Controversial?  Ah, wait 'til you see all the creams, corals and peaches I've got.

Sometimes you have to dig a little - pardon the pun - and ask a few extra questions to find like-minded people but it is always rewarding when you do. Diana and Graham at Silkies, are such people, their approach to commercial growing in a sustainable way is to be commended when so many others just take the easy route. Like me they have a deep respect for the land and as such, farm as organically as they can; with a bit of biodynamics thrown in there too. This is why my roses came from them and I firmly believe that this connection will make them happier plants in the long run.

 'Ey Wa-Lah!

One row of neatly planted, super happy sticks ... that come summer will actually resemble plants; I can't wait. 

The hush of winter has descended, sometimes you wonder if it will ever pass ... shhhhhh

Pilfered a friends garden a week or so back, because mine's asleep.

Nothing like getting sick to make you stop   ...    well, sort of, I am doing this ...

I cannot believe 2013, it's been crazy!  My bloggy silence has not been from lack of things to say but more, the lack of time to do them. I don't really buy into the whole "I am so busy" mentality but sometimes the universe just throws you some curlies to keep you on your toes and honestly, I'm getting foot cramps here! It's sort of just been one thing after another and me hanging in there with the "just get to the end of the week, just get this finished, all you have to do is make it past x, y ,z ..." self talk. 

To be quite frank, I am surprised that I have made it this far. It must be a good sign that my little body is getting bigger and tougher, usually I would have broken before now! Not that I plan on being broken just yet, either, a day or two off should do the trick, hopefully.

So, enough whingebaggin', what's been going on?

Me? I moved house & we moved the family farm.  See the nest? That was a hint. Quite a big deal, let me assure you; moving house is one thing (and not one to be sniffed at) but moving a whole working property is something else entirely. I'm just glad that the ultimate responsibility wasn't mine, I was just helping.

In between, there has been flower farming, so here's a catch-you-up:

There's been digging, rotary hoeing and raking: lots of it.

Darling Phil turned up randomly with some paeony plants for me. That's what the picture of the sticks in the ground is. So exciting. We live in a prime paeony growing region here and the first thing all the locals ask me when I say I'm growing flowers, is "Paeonies?" It gives me immense pleasure to reply "A bit of everything really. If it flowers and you can cut it, I'll grow it."

With the help of a delightful volunteer, Yvonne, we've built and planted the "shade" perennial bed. Hellebores, thalictrum, astrantia, Solomon's seal (just a few to start), heuchera, more hellebores, oak hydrangea, fragrant viburnum, snowball viburnum.... I have to keep reminding myself that they're not necessarily going to be pickable this year, or maybe even next, in some cases. That's going to be hard, man, I've never planned this far ahead!

Discovered angle-grinders.

Discovered how to fix ag pipe once you've rotary hoed it and it's spewing water everywhere. Did this all by myself, was pretty impressed. 

Installed a greenhouse. Levelled the ground, dug the frame down into it, laid a compacting gravel floor in it - I was on fire that day. It's just a little one but I was losing the war against the field mice who were eating all my seelings :-( The little buggers (and they are tiny) can get through the tiniest of holes or gaps, bait is not an option to my mind and the traps weren't doing the job. By the time I got this dinky lil guy set up, I had already lost trays and trays of baby flowers. Ahhh, the living, the learning.

The bulbs are all showing green now, the freesias are leading the way.

"Look lovingly upon the present, for it holds the only things that are forever true."

A Course in Miracles

Weird, strange, flat? Yes it has been. The weather has definitely taken a turn this last week or so (and I am a farmer these days so it's totally ok for me to dicsuss the weather). We have been very blessed this Autumn really but the frosts are definitely here now. Which means that even my little flower patch in town is feeling the chill. I have gone from complete abundance to just scraping it through in one week.

The dahlia's have pretty much given up the ghost. This will pretty much be the last of them, methinks. On the upside, I dug one up the other day to check out whether they had produced any decent tubers ... great success, a big (ish, to my proud parent's eye) clump of tuberous roots.

And that kind of sums up the week, lots of feeling blah occasionally interrupted by momentous discoveries, then back to blah. Looking forward to the coming week though, that tractor is apparently arriving tomorrow and a start has been made on my fence. Wombat-kangaroo-cow free flower farm, here we come!

Some scenes from last week's blissful afternoon on another's farm. We went to see Matt and Lentil: he grows organic fruit and veg, she grows organic flowers ... match made in heaven. Helped them weed and plant,* in just the same way folks have been coming to help me out and it was heavenly. Who'd have thunk that going and doing just what I had been doing all week on someone else's ​patch could be so invigorating?!

This community that I find myself in is truly a blessing.

*well sort of, everyone else worked, I did a lot of playing with the baby ... hey, it was an important role and someone had to do it!

To see more pop over and check out Lentil's gorgeous new blog: Maisy Day Flower Farm.​

Some garden leftovers for neighbours of the new patch.​