Important dates:

October 1, 2025: monthly email subscription giveaway drawing! Today the newsletter reaches 188 of you. One of our goals is to reach 200 by the end of the year, and the month that we do get to that goal, we will have two drawings to celebrate. We have really loved the organic way the list has grown, so no rush, of course.

October 26, 2025: SAVE THE DATE We are planning on hosting a landscape painting day with our new friend Kit from Artmarkit Covington. If you have ever wanted to paint a landscape and have been a little apprehensive, this might be the perfect time to dip your brush into and see how it goes. She will give us a little tutorial to get us started, so all experience levels are welcome. Stay tuned for registration info!

Flowers and Sound happened, but you will have to wait another week to get the deets if you weren’t here for it in person, as this post was finalized ahead of time since we were in the zone at the time that I usually pluck out the blog post for the week.

It was an interesting week here at the farm, with some ups and downs and all arounds but overall, we moved forward in the direction we are aiming at, one bulb at a time. Yeah, you read that right, bulbs. Our purchases from months back are coming back to haunt us in the hot September air. This week we have planted 100+ allium bulbs and 100 daffodils, with the 1000 tulips resting in the cool dark underneath the house until it cools off outside a little bit. I am honestly not sure if we should have planted the other bulbs in this warm weather, but we really had little choice. Well, maybe we had choice, but moved forward quickly before realizing we maybe should have waited. Our justification about feeling good about our choice is that allium and daffodils are perennial, so even if they sprout a little bit before the frost, they should continue to return regardless, year after year. Additionally, we watered in a buckwheat cover crop on top of them which should add a nice layer of organic matter to the tops of those beds. The tulips are a one-and-done flower that we don’t want sprouting ahead of the winter if we can help it. We do have a place picked out for them though, which should be fairly easy to dig out and plant them in.

We had the opportunity to make homecoming flowers for a neighborhood kid and his date. That was fun. You would not believe it by looking at our farm that such beauty could have come out of it, as dry and crunchy as it is outside, but we had just enough lisianthus in the perfect color to pull it off. One key item for a corsage that I was lacking at home was ribbon, but if you know me, you know I had to drive to Northern Kentucky for a doctor’s appointment last week (yes, it is sarcasm) so I made it a point to check with Kit at Artmarkit to see if she had any ribbon in stock. I am in the throws of a social media detox, checking Instagram on the computer as opposed to my phone so I called the shop instead of sending a message. Wouldn’t you know it, she had so much to choose from that I had to walk away from the ribbon drawer with my selections, knowing Kit is there if I happen to need any more in the future? The ribbon I chose for the corsage was the perfect length and oh so vintage looking. The rest of the ribbon will surely come in handy for an upcoming event this fall.

We also cut a good bit of fresh flowers to use for our event on Sunday which was fun to have all in aggregate in the house for a bit. The mini grapevine wreath bases are going to be perfect for the rest of the summer flowers to wrap around: marigolds, celosia, basil, goldenrod, sedum, wormwood, and some other little doodads to round it out. I am so excited to see what people choose to create with! We also cut a bunch of sage in case someone wants to make a to-go smudge stick to take home too.

Perriee made oatmeal cookies and fresh bread to snack on and we tag-teamed some shortbread thumbprint cookies filled with our friend Alice’s blueberry jam. I hope we don’t sneak too many before the guests arrive! The ones we have tried already are YUM!

While ironing out the details for our event this week, we have also been getting ready for our greenhouse which we were told would be coming this week, then not, as it was an error and not really done yet, so now we have a gravel pad, basically ready to receive it, whenever it is finished. Did we tell you we received a grant for a greenhouse? It is still unbelievable. Thank you RAFI-USA. Thank you so very much. Check out the link to see our little write-up! We also got to get our big water tanks set in their respective places on their gravel pads, moved one shovel at a time, just like old times. The water tanks are for rain water catchment off of the Flower Studio.

Anyhow, before long it will be time to mow down the pollinator patch in preparation for the next season. She is looking all wild and crazy right now, but that is exactly what we expected. Transformation takes time. We are so entrenched in this world where the mindset has absolutely shifted into thinking things should happen overnight. Packages that used to take a week or more to transport now arrive days later (sooner for some of you folks in the city). Land that took thousands of years to form is often razed in mind shattering speed, comparatively, to build new buildings in months that used to take years to erect. In fact, the initial request for the establishment of our pollinator patch was to douse the entire space in glyphosate (yeah, Round-up) to decimate all of the life in that half-acre section of our field and likely whatever is in the part of Johnson Creek (and obviously, beyond there, because…water) that borders it also. We told them we would not be doing that. If you know Perriee and I, you know we are not interested in quick solutions especially when it comes to land management. You just need a vision and can see the end result as beautiful as we do.

PS: We had a beautiful day at Gracious Farm and saw some great friends AND some Twig and Leaf.