Chapter 3: Refelctions on an attempted Flower Growing Year

When I look out at my autumnal garden this season, I have to laugh because once again, this thing called gardening is out of my control. My efforts to have more flowers in the garden paid off. There they are, winding down in their end of season glory. However, I got different flowers than I thought I was planting. That intriguing six-pack variety of supposed Double White Comos turned out to be all standard pink. And the Salmon Pink Zinnia pack ended up being a bright mulit-colored mix. It certainly was cheery looking out upon the garden, but not what I wanted. So I learned some lessons on plant sourcing this year. But all in all, I am very satisfied.   The garden actually looked like  a Flower Garden this year, but only enough to snip from (as harvest would imply way more flowers than I had) and I've got what I really was hoping for - access to a vast quantity of home-grown flowers, though I cheated because they are not home grown and I had to travel to the next county for them-
to Aztec Dahlias- which became my garden away from home.

 About mid-season, I started working with Kate Rowe of Aztec Dahlias on a developing my first destination floral design workshop. Kate and her partner Omar had taken over Aztec just a year prior and were dealing with the growing pains of a new business. They were awash in dahlia blossoms and orders. First year out the gate they had all kinds of press and had become the darling of the Northern CA Dahlia world. The fact that they were the only grower specializing in dahlias and that the dahlias and Kate were amazing- she being a passionate and smart little powerhouse; catapulted them into instant demand. 

But the constant long days were taking a serious toll on Kate. So I offered to help her harvest some orders. Which meant harvesting by head-lamp after dark when temps were cooler- quite an adventure!  She would teach me how to cut the flowers and I would get free dahlias and be able to hand pick my flowers directly from the fields. 

How I loved walking those fields in early morning all by myself discovering yet again another favorite variety of dahlia. In a weird way, I felt like I started the garden in my own backyard, with all the early planting, coddling, feeding and pruning, but concluded it at Aztec Dahlias with the harvesting of so many beautiful blooms for events and orders through the season.