Looking at Weeds or Flowers?

Get flower farmers together and the conversation usually focuses on the Ws–-weather and weeds. For me July has been a big dose of both. The heat and humidity coupled with infrequent and then torrential rain pose all the predictable problems. There are also the bugs. If you are one of my flower subscribers, you’ve already read about my struggles with Japanese beetles.

Japanese beetles and MORE Japanese beetles!

Female Japanese beetles can lay anywhere between 40 and 60 eggs a season, and when they are not reproducing, they are munching through leaves and petals at an alarming rate. Because I’m committed to not using any chemicals (organic or otherwise), I rely on attracting the right kind of bugs to eat the damaging kind of bugs, and hope that it all balances out in the end, knowing I will lose some flowers in the battle. Japanese beetles, however, are an invasive species and that approach doesn’t work as well because they don’t have as many natural predators. I’ve had a lot this year, so I’ve resorted to several trips a day to the field to pluck them off the flowers and cast them to their watery death in a bucket of water with a little dish soap (to keep them from flying away). I actually find it hard to do. I hate killing bugs, but these beetles can get out of control so quickly. So plunging them in water keeps them from multiplying and destroying my plants.

The weather and the Japanese beetles, these are problems that I anticipated. The weeds, by contrast, have posed a different kind of challenge that I hadn’t really counted on. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so I always find it hard to walk into the field and not immediately be overcome by the sight of all the things that need work. This time of year, the top of that list is getting rid of weeds. It is a never-ending task. Sometimes I am certain that they are able to double in size overnight. Pulling weeds in the heat and humidity can quickly become discouraging.

Eastern tiger swallowtail

The other day I paused to wipe the sweat out of my eyes and something caught my attention. Appearing just over my right shoulder was a female eastern tiger swallowtail on the scabiosa–so graceful, seemingly effortless in her movement despite the heat, and clearly flourishing off the bounty of blooms. I stopped weeding. I stood up straight to watch her, and it reminded me to step back and look at the flowers, and bugs, and butterflies, and not just the weeds. Always directing my attention on the weeds and my never-ending to-do list, I can easily miss the American goldfinch on the spent bachelor's buttons, or my very first lisianthus bloom, which I started from seed in January—all of the sights that motivated me to start this flower business in the first place.

First lisianthus of the season

July flowers

There are most decidedly weeds in my flower field, but there are also many beautiful flowers and all that they have attracted, including, and possibly most importantly, the incredible people who joined my first flower subscription last month, friends and neighbors who took a risk on my flower-farming abilities and shared their delight in receiving weekly flowers. It has been so gratifying growing for these lovers of locally-grown flowers.

Dahlias, celosia, and so many zinnias are all on the horizon, and I’m looking forward to sharing them with a larger group of subscribers starting mid-August.

If you are interested and local, just let me know so I can share the details.

If you are just reading along to see how this flower thing is going . . .  it’s hard and I’m hot, but learning to look at the flowers, and insects, and butterflies (and not just the weeds) is a life lesson I have been trying to master for the last several decades, and this flower field has been the best place to practice.

When I head up to the field in the evenings for my last Japanese beetle eradication mission, and the sun is low in the sky, the dahlias are revealing the promise of their luminous blooms, and bees are resting inside of the flowers, I realize what a gift the natural world bestows when I take a breath and look around. Today and tomorrow and tomorrow, I vow to look for the flowers and not just the weeds.