I had so much fun wandering the meadow and the tree line and taking pictures of the flowers I found. When I returned to the campsite, my fiancé, PT, asked me where I had gone. I showed him the photos I had taken. “Where did you find all those flowers?” I laughed! Like I was before working at the flower shop, PT was unaware of the wildflowers surrounding him at that very moment. Once I started pointing them out to him, of course they were obvious.

If you follow this blog, you know I’ve made it a priority to fill our yard with pollinator friendly flowers. I’ve also tried to focus on perennials so our flower beds grow fuller each year. As I’ve been buying pollinator friendly perennials, I discovered most of the plants I’m buying are yellow or purple. Initially I put it down to my love of the color purple. Once you start to notice the wildflowers around us, you might also start to notice that most of them are in shades of yellow and purple. Coincidence?

It turns out it’s not a coincidence! Bees can’t see red. Red looks black to bees. They can see yellows and oranges. But according to scientists, the most likely colors to attract bees are purple, violet and blue. My photo shoot around the meadow resulted in pictures of yellow and purple flowers, and when I researched them, of course they are all favorites of pollinators.

There’s something really peaceful about taking photos of wildflowers. First, you have to slow down enough to notice the wildflowers around us. Then you have to break away from what you’re doing to get close and focus on the unique beauty of each blossom. I have seen details of flowers through the lens of my camera that I’ve never noticed before.

As we head into Memorial Day weekend, maybe you’ll take a hike through the woods. Maybe you’ll notice the wildflowers around you. Maybe you’ll even stop and take some photos. I hope so! It’s guaranteed to feed your soul and bring a smile to your face!

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Focal Flowers

Each arrangement starts with the stars of the arrangement. Right now, my favorite flowers are ranunculus and dahlias so those will definitely be in the garden. Unfortunately in this area, neither flower survives the winter. Dahlias are tubers so you can dig the tubers up, store them in a cool dry place for the winter, and then plant them again in the spring. So I’m told! Last year was the first time I planted dahlias and then dug them up before winter. I’ll keep you posted on how successful I am at replanting and growing them this spring!

Vertical Flowers

My favorite arrangements also include tall slender flowers. This year I’m going to try gladiolas and snapdragons. I planted gladiolas in my front yard last year. Supposedly gladiolas can survive the winter in Northern Virginia. I’ll let you know if they come back up! I’ll plant more gladiolas in my cut flower garden so I’ll know if I can leave the bulbs in the ground or dig them up at the end of the season.

Accent Flowers

Finally, every arrangement needs what I call, “pops of whimsy.” These are flowers that are added for texture, height, and color. I’m going to start with bupleurum, billy balls, veronica, and scabiosa. Bupleurum adds a light airy feeling. Billy balls are just fun! Veronica and scabiosa will take a ho-hum arrangement to wow with their stunning colors and textures.

Stay tuned for updates and hopefully photos of fun arrangements from my cut flower garden!

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Chamomile

…is a happy little white flower with yellow centers that can be made into a tea. As a tea, chamomile is known for its anti-anxiety properties. It’s a wonderful sleep aid and might also reduce inflammation.

Lavender

…has a calming scent flower hue. Lavender oil helps with anxiety and depression.

Jasmine

… was one of my dad’s favorite flowers. The oil eases anxiety, and the wonderful fragrance promotes sleep.

Chrysanthemums

…come in lots of colors and textures, and a bouquet of them is sure to make you smile. The flowers are a wonderful air purifier, and the tea has relaxation properties.

Gerbera Daisies

…are a highly requested flower that comes in bright vibrant colors. Their presence alone will cheer someone up, but they also remove toxins from the air.

Peppermint

…is a great flavoring for ice cream and hot chocolate. As a tea or an oil, peppermint will also lower frustration and relax muscles

Chives

… are a great herb to cook with but also provides delicate wildflowers. The flowers can be made into a tea that helps with depression by blocking a chemical that inhibits “happy” hormones.

Aloe Vera

…, as every beach-goer knows, has healing and soothing properties. Having a plant will also improve the air quality at home or in the office.

Snake Plant

…is another good plant for the home or office. It removes several different kinds of toxins from the air that help with sleep and reducing stress.

If you or your friends and family need a vase full of flowers and plants that are calming and cheerful on election day, we’re just a phone call away!

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I am resilient, born to be brilliant

You’ll see me grow right through the cracks, yeah

‘Cause you’re gonna watch this flower grow right through the cracks

We’ve all seen those photos of ugly canvases of grey concrete and asphalt with that one brightly colored flower somehow growing out of a crack from the middle of nothingness. I think this is one of the reasons flowers always brighten someone’s day. Among a flower’s many wonderful qualities, they are so resilient that flowers grow right through the cracks!

Mint growing under our shop’s front door

Another testament to flower resiliency is in my pollinator garden at home. A couple of springs ago I sprinkled a package of wildflower seeds over part of the garden. Because I had no idea what seeds were in the mix, I downloaded an app for my phone called Picture This. The app identifies a plant using a photo of a leaf or flower. Using the app, I was able to distinguish flower seedlings from weed seedlings.

My pollinator garden is well-established now so I know what flowers will re-emerge each year. When weeds do come up, I quickly pull them. A couple of weeks ago, a plant started to come up that didn’t look like a weed so I took a photo of it. Picture This identified the random plant as a Peruvian Zinnia. As part of that initial sprinkling of wildflowers, the zinnias came up the first year. I haven’t seen any since until this year and not until the summer was almost over! Talk about resilient!

2020, especially, is a year that we all need an extra dose of good vibes. Flowers are the perfect way to deliver joy and resiliency to family and friends. Not only do they epitomize resiliency themselves, according to studies, flowers bring positivity and productivity to both men and women. So don’t forget the men in your lives! As Katy Perry sings, ” Won’t let the concrete hold me back, oh no…’cause you’re gonna watch this flower grow right through the cracks.”

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Turn the TV Off

It’s not that I really need to know when stimulus checks will be deposited, it’s just that it’s all over the news! That has been my biggest take-away from this lockdown. It is time to turn the TV off. We are glued to the news, and that is not a healthy thing. 24 hour cable news has to find something to fill its airwaves with. We get bombarded with a lot of opinions because there are not enough actual news stories to fill a 24 hour period.

Plant a Garden

That brings me to my garden. Since I won’t be watching much TV, I will actually have time to plant and take care of my garden! I’m excited about that. I had a great time browsing an online seed catalog last week. My go-to seed source has been the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, but it seems everyone else must have had the same idea I did. They are so swamped with orders, they aren’t accepting any new ones until they get caught up, but that’s a good thing! It means there will be lots of gardens this year using sustainable heritage seeds. It also means Southern Exposure is thriving during the lockdown. For me, it meant I got to meet another cool sustainable seed company called Truelove Seeds. My seeds arrived on Saturday with a handwritten note from Owen. “Thank you Margie! Seeds and Solidarity, Owen.”

If you have never bought seeds from a seed exchange, you should! One of the seeds I bought are for Pippin’s Golden Honey Pepper. Why Pippin’s? “Horace Pippin, the now-famed painter, shared this variety (and many others) with H. Ralph Weaver in the early 1940s in exchange for bee-sting therapy. Weaver’s grandson (William Woys Weaver) found the seeds in a baby food jar in his grandmother’s deep freezer a couple decades later, many years after his grandfather’s death, and was able to reintroduce via Seed Savers Exchange.” With a backstory like that, I can’t wait to plant them and be part of this history. Yup! I’m in love with Truelove!

Write a Novel

I recently watched a TED Talk about trying something new for 30 days–The 30 Day Challenge. It was inspiring! The author, Matt Cutts, “went from desk-dwelling computer nerd to the kind of guy who bikes to work…for fun!” When I was a little girl, I dreamed of becoming a novelist who lived in Australia on a big ranch with lots of animals. I got the animal part! Cutts mentions that one of his 30 day challenges was to write a novel. I’ve never written a novel, but the extra free time that this lockdown is providing is the perfect time to become the novelist I’ve always wanted to be. Who cares if it’s a good novel or even a published novel? I can accomplish one of my dreams.

Save the World…or at least a pangolin

A good college friend of mine, Maria Diekmann, started an animal sanctuary in Namibia many years ago called Rare and Endangered Species Trust (REST). Someone brought her a mama and baby pangolin that were rescued from poachers. Mama was too traumatized from the abuse of traffickers and fled, but she had protected her baby so well that Honey Bun survived and thrived under Maria’s care. That was when I first learned about pangolins, how highly trafficked they are, and thus how endangered they are. They are often described as the most trafficked animal you’ve never heard of. That has all changed thanks to the coronavirus. Pangolins and bats have been linked to this coronavirus’ origin.

Many are hoping this will lead to crackdowns on the sale of pangolins at wet markets and hopefully bring them back from the edge of extinction. When will stimulus checks be deposited? I’m not sure. If you are looking for something to do with it though, there are lots of organizations like Maria’s that would grateful for the help!

What’s Next?

I know I’m not the only one that has been forced to reassess life and priorities. We all want to get to the other side of this as soon as possible. In the meantime, we have learned to slow down. Spend time with our children. Zoom and Facetime with our parents and grandparents. We have time to plant gardens and go for walks and write novels. My hope is that we take the lessons we are learning with us to that other side.

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Butterflies

According to National Geographic, “The eastern population of monarchs has declined over 80 percent, and the western population is nearly extinct, with just 3 percent of its population remaining.” There are a lot of contributing factors, but the biggest and most immediate cause is the loss of milkweed.
“Milkweed, often considered a nuisance by farmers and residents, is the lifeblood of the monarch butterfly, which uses the plant for food and breeding. But herbicides and development have wiped out milkweed across the Midwest, compromising one of the monarch’s most critical habitats,” explains an Indianapolis Star article. The article does goes on to highlight farmers who are swapping out their cash crops for milkweed. Good news!

Weeds

I was on the phone yesterday with a woman who was placing an order for flowers to celebrate the birth of a baby boy. She wanted to focus on blue and yellow and white, but she was very specific about which flowers she wanted to include in the arrangement. I mentioned salidago, also known as goldenrod. It’s a beautiful, tall, filler flower that adds gorgeous yellow color and texture to arrangements. “No salidago please. It always reminds me of a weed.” This is a common sentiment.

As I little girl, I didn’t know the difference between flowers and weeds. I remember walking to elementary school at the end of summer. I loved milkweed! It went from tall flowers that were almost eye level, to hard pods, to this wonderful angel hair filling the pods. I loved cracking open the pods and watching the silk waft away on the breeze. Now I realize I was helping mother nature sow next year’s milkweed seeds. As sometimes happens, the adult in me did not appreciate milkweed as much as the child in me did, until now. Like so many others, I considered it a weed. This week, I planted three milkweed plants in my yard and hope to plant more. I haven’t seen a monarch butterfly since my boys were little. I hope that changes soon!

Flowers

We’re always taking pictures of our arrangements at the flower shop. Once I started looking at an arrangement through the lens of a camera, I started to notice the exquisite beauty of each individual flower. This actually prompted me to start taking videos of some arrangements so I could highlight each flower. Every bride loves peonies and ranunculus. Orchids and calla lilies lend elegance and a touch of the exotic. Hydrangeas add a soft summery feeling. But it’s the wild flowers that add texture and uniqueness to an arrangement. They make arrangements fun and help to highlight the showier flowers. Yes, arrangements can be fun!

Bees

I think a lot as I drive to and from work. The other morning I was pondering what to write for the next blog post–something about flowers, of course! I was sitting at a traffic light and looked absently out the passenger window. On the side of the road was a stretch of the most beautiful wild flowers. I turned down a side street and parked to get photos. There were a lot of bees and butterflies enjoying the flowers so I had to step carefully. All of the photos above are the wild flowers I saw from my car.

As I was planting my own wild flowers last weekend, I was smiling at the full circle I had come from the little girl who loved milkweed, to the adult that thought it was just a weed, to a more understanding adult that not only loved the flower but appreciated its important place in our little world. A delicate white butterfly hovered around me the whole time I was planting–never more than 8 inches off the ground or more than a few feet from me. I like to think it was thanking me for understanding and appreciating.

“One man’s weed is another man’s flower,” ~Gloria Naylor

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