Chasing the August Sun
The flowers looked beautiful in this morning’s early sunshine. And yet the pretty pictures of our flowers does nothing to portray the lived reality of 2020 for a flower grower. What our flower pictures don’t show are the stresses and strains of the year; the drought, the storms, cancelled orders, postponed events, too many funeral flowers.After the financial hit of COVID-19, losing late summer crops to storms is devastating and a reality for friends in other parts of the U.K. Another massive blow.
Finding the energy and finances to invest in next year is challenging, there is so much uncertainty for small business owners right now! And not much money to ‘take a punt’. I say all this because the posts that reach the most people online are the pretty ones. Pictures of the reality (slugs, muck, toil, rain damaged flowers, the tears) do not get much insta-traction!
Thank you to everyone who has been ordering flowers from our honesty shop, we are so grateful to you. Flower farming isn’t easy, and it has been such a difficult year. We are currently making plans for next year - not easy with all the uncertainty - and having fantastic customers who keep buying our flowers is very reassuring. Thank you.
For more photos and updates you can follow us on Facebook and instagram.
Love Harriet x
Roses are so evocative of English country gardens, hazy summer days, the country living dream. So here’s a beautiful rose in this morning’s sunshine, conforming to the bucolic idyll the lifestyle mags enjoy promoting, and betraying nothing of the exhaustion, heartache and grumpiness of the person who grew it!
Our Cafe au Lait Dahlia have never been this good, definitely worth growing under cover in Cumbria to stop them getting beaten up by the elements! Earwigs are being a bit of a nuisance though, and slugs too! (so many slugs!)
Rosa Cumberland; our flower field is very much a working space and everything there is for cutting not ornamentation..... except.... I couldn’t resist a couple of these climbing roses simply because of their name. Perhaps they will prove to be great cut flowers or have amazing rose hips?! And it is a joy to see Rosa Cumberland’s fabulously rich red flowers, in big clusters, for the first time! Maybe it’s my equivalent of the office pot plant?!