Important Dates:

May 8^th 10:00 am – 2:00: Volunteer day to help get our pollinator patch sorted out or prep some flower bed space for some annuals! Or plant some daffodil bulbs. If you have an extra flame weeder to lend, let us know.

Come at 10:00 and stay the whole time or come at 1:00 and stay for an hour. Feel free to participate in any capacity you are able, even if it is just to sit and chat while we do stuff. We love that kind of support too! It is completely flexible and whatever time you have to spare is appreciated. Bring a snack and a water bottle but we will have a water and a snack of some kind.

June 1, 2025: Next subscriber giveaway drawing!

Weekly update:

Perriee and I put some time in on the road this week between farm school and doctor’s appointments, all of which are an hour or hour and a half away, and in the middle of it all still got to “flower” a bit. Perriee picked up our lisianthus plugs from our local flower bestie, Blooming Valley Flower Farm,

I prepped some of our new beds for planting into, pulling out some winter wheat we planted late, which was so satisfying to remove, soft and loose, leaving a great place to plant into. We were approved for the Kentucky State University Small Farm Grant and put our deposit down on the trailer that we will be converting into a FLOWER COOLER! The other super cool thing that happened was getting a fun order from one of the neighbors for a couple of sweet spring bouquets ($10.00 local price). It was so much fun arranging them, feeling my flower muscles waking up inside. We paid our local garbage collector/neighbor with that money which really illustrates the power of local commerce and neighbors supporting neighbors. Feel free to share your own stories of supporting your local community.

The daisies are opening, peonies are budding. Lupine is absolutely here.

I have included our cut list below to show what flowers we are harvesting for the week. As always, let us know if we can help supply anything local for you.

This week was also a big week for the cats. Having a mix of indoor and outdoor kitties lends itself to needing consistent maintenance of the fleas and “stuff”. Oscar, Tux and George are easy to treat with anything. You can pick them up and give them a pill, put some treatment on their back, administer liquid, clean their ears, whatever. George is the easiest of all of them, almost knowing what we do to “doctor” him is what he needs in order to get back out there and do his thing.

Max and Gray however, are children of a feral mamma (being one myself, I relate), and in the grand scheme of things are quite domesticated, except when it comes to medical treatment. They know when we need to give them a medication and refuse to be held, least of all even touched. Period. Consequently, they are both the ones who needed the last rounds of medications the worst. One would imagine a topical medication would be simple to apply. Not to Miss Gray. Max said nope.

Our approach instead was for me to pop it on during an activity they do normally. For Max, that meant waiting for him to visit in bed first thing in the morning. Perriee snuck out to grab the tube, passed it to me while he was doing his “wake up wallering” and I got it on him without as much of a blink! For Gray, it was a visit to the human potty to sit and wait for her to come and visit and love on my legs. If you have applied topical meds to a cat, it always seems like their body appears to be in the correct position when putting it on, then when they move, the blotch ends up somewhere entirely different. Would you believe when I got Max and Gray’s from the weirdest angles ever, they both ended up with the most perfect application ever? You take the wins where you can.

To thank our local vet for their help all of the time managing our pride of tiny tigers, we brought them a cat-safe arrangement and asked if they would want a jar a week for their counter to display and they said yes! We are so excited to give them something beautiful each week and get our flowers in front of fellow crazy pet people like us. I know they have had at least one kitty who wanders freely in the office, so we are going to challenge ourselves to find all of the things that are safe in each arrangement we bring. Here is a list we started, but please look into them all yourself if you feel inclined to have another opinion.

Our cats are pretty good about not munching on arrangements (or at least the plants they should not have) but some kitties will eat ANYTHING frilly in the house that is available. One hard “no” in our house are lilies and poinsettias. We do grow a lot of the plants on the Not Safe list but with a plethora of good things to snack on outside, they know what is good to eat and leave the others alone.

Safe: arugula, fleabane, cress, catnip, chamomile, clover, basil, amaranth, calendula, zinnia, sunflower, bachelor buttons, wheat, snapdragons, celosia, strawflower, sage.

Not Safe: Queen Anne’s Lace, bergamont, lupine, globosa, iris, peony, lilly, marigold, blue flax, lavender, yarrow, dahlia, mustard.

Cut list: Iris, daisies, wheat, crimson clover, lupine, ranunculus, dianthus, fleabane, carrot salad (look it up! It is so cool, and edible), chamomile, dianthus, cress.