White Flag of Surrender
Flower Field in early July, Summer 2023
Since I started growing plants in the ground, my relationship with the weather has thickened. We have become cozy and intimate. Each day I take time to open the weather app and see what the day might offer and to glance at the week ahead. Seeing little raindrop emojis lined up day after day, for weeks on the screen, I try to keep buoyed. Regardless, I am faced with the reality that this season for some soggy reason feels like no other that I have encountered since I started this unpredictable dance of farming flowers.
Every day feels grey and the potential for rain deluge high. A full sunshiny day has become the oddity. As you’ve likely noted, chances for floods and thunderstorms run high while the need for a rain dance is low. All of this rain has really stunted the growth of the seedlings that I had put into the ground mid-May. Generally, by this point in the season, I’d be swimming in pretty petals and making armfuls of bouquets. Despite having expanded our growing space and planted thousands more seedlings than last year, I am left with empty arms.
As members of this CSA, community supported agriculture, it is my responsibility to let you all in on how things are growing or in this case, how they are not and maybe some thoughts on why. The season is not over and I don’t mean to be alarmist. I do truly believe that we will be graced with some beauty in the form of flowers planted at some point, though I am not in control so I am flying on pure hope.
What really interests me while I take stock of the small stature of so many of the annuals that were planted months back is that there is a surplus of some plants that are growing, just beyond the borders of the flower farm fence. Most perennials that I have either planted years back or those wildflowers throughout the field that nature has nurtured, are thriving!
Part of my apprenticeship with the land where I grow is to look, listen and observe the ecosystem in its entirety. Weather systems, plant habitat, animal and pollinator presence, microbial life and the presence or absence of the health of the whole. What is being shown to me is that in this time of changing and shifting climates, the fast-paced turnover of annuals cannot keep pace with the rooted wisdom of perennials which, year plus year, acclimate to the shifting weather that is inherent in changing times. Seeds that are sown from perennials that have learned to weather the storms, bend with the wind and face the sun when it shines, are the seeds that will survive and the plants that will, in future, thrive. My goal with the farm had been always to work with what is rather than against it. Even when that means, my own plans.
Pollinator Plot of Beardtongue, Penstemon digitalis
What does this mean for flowers this season? I cannot answer this exactly as I too am just learning and observing. What I observe is that St. Johns Wort and the spikey Milk Thistle are thriving in and around the field where I grow. And, Penstemom, planted in the pollinator plot three years back, has become a literal refuge. In this moment, I am a bumble bee. I flock to its tall tubular florettes to sit and wonder awhile. Standing tall and bright, Penstemons constant wave of white in a field of green calls in hummingbirds, hover flies, bees, dragonflies and me. Is this rectangle of white, rippling to and fro from a light wind that precedes the next storm, a floral flag of surrender?
I say often, jokingly, that I have quit on myself more times this season already than I care to admit. Saying it out loud to another makes me feel a bit better, alchemizing the heart break into some laugh lines. As I type this, thunder reigns loud overhead, cutting open a portal in the sky. Repetitive beats of water droplets release onto already dampened dirt below. Where is my white flag of surrender? I am ready to wave it high.
