Week 6: Feb. 2-8, 2025 (+ notes on creativity)

I wish I has something interesting to tell you about week seven but, truth is, it’s still “down time” around here and I have been thoroughly enjoying and making the most of every day. And, since I want to accurately share with readers what the job of a flower farmer entails (at least one who isn’t employed outside the business, and who works full-time during the growing season), I’m totally comfortable admitting that absolutely nothing of interest happened in week seven. How about that?

This is the off-season, a time to work on both personal projects and aspects of the business (website updates/admin, financial/bookkeeping, etc.) that tend to get sidelined during the growing season.

In previous years I’d have already started plenty of other varieties aside from lisianthus and eucalyptus: feverfew, rudbeckia, yarrow, cone flower, delphiniums, etc., but because I already have so many established perennials in the ground I’m getting a bit of respite from starting those.That said,by the end of the month the grow shelves in the basement will be all filled up. Next up on the grow list are a couple of perennials I don’t already have: ‘Rattlesnake master’ eryngium, sunny ball feverfew, and the first successions of bupleurum, white statice, dianthus and a small round of early snapdragons.

Once March rolls around I’ll fire up the small space heater and lights in our other seed room outside. It’s our cooler-turned-second-grow room in the spring, which I think is awesome. If there’s anything I love, it’s multi-purpose spaces, things and maximum efficiency! This is where more established seedlings go, as well as where I store our perennial seedlings and shrubs orders that arrive mid-March.

Everlastings + Just Get Started

I have finally started the onerous task of going through my dried floral collection. Have you ever had one of those tasks that you’re equally dreading and looking forward to? I love my dried florals, don’t get me wrong, but the idea of tackling them was a bit mind boggling. There are about eight large totes full of dried flowers, and the biggest question was: where to start?

Perhaps the task itself is not entirely onerous, but as I was opening lid after lid it certainly felt that way. And then, an idea: pick a variety, any variety. First up: process the stems (“clean-up,” remove any unsightly foliage or petals, etc.), sort by size, bundle, wrap, create inventory of said information, set prices, take photos, create a listing on the website, upload photos, hit publish, tell people.

Whew. Easy-peasy, right? Like I said, not difficult, maybe just a bit tedious. After that, move on to the next colour (if there is one), or variety, and repeat the above steps.

Lesson learned? (Or perhaps, more accurately, lesson remembered because I KNOW THIS) Getting started is always, always the hardest part. I tend to overthink, when I just need to do. Like writing, just get started. Get the story down and stop critiquing along the way. It can always be improved upon later. Same goes for every other thing. The process can be cleaned up, made more efficient, but you won’t know until you get started.

Creative projects

When I’m not fully immersed in all things dried flowers these days, I’m either outside, enjoying the fresh air (walking, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing or, if I’m lucky, snowboarding with my boys), practicing weaving on a small (borrowed) table loom while I wait for my first order of warp yarn to arrive (to use with my very-old-but-new-to-me floor loom), or writing. Mostly, I’m writing. For the last three or four months I’ve been steadily working on a creative writing project. I’ll share more later, but the important part in all this is that I gave myself a deadline. Because of my freelance writing days, I’m a big fan of deadlines. They force my busy mind to get down to work, stay on track and, ultimately, make it to the finish line when I say I’m going to.

I have been writing on and off pretty much my entire life. There were long stretches of time where I didn’t write much of anything, mostly when the boys were small and I was fully-immersed in being a stay-at-home mom. While I missed writing, I also knew I had to put my writing goals on the backburner at the time. But then came three moves in a two-year time period, starting a business, renovating a house and all the things that come along with that, and my writing got put on the backburner yet again. I’d write here and there, steadily for a few weeks, and then put the project away. I’d tell myself it wasn’t that great anyway - what was the point? But I couldn’t shake it, that thing I have wanted to do, that dream that began in childhood and rode along beside me into adulthood.

I read Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver last year, and soon after came across some writing advice of hers. It is the single, most important piece of advice about writing I have ever heard. It has shifted the way I think about writing, and the entire writing process. Quite simply, it changed everything:

“To begin, give yourself permission to write a bad book. Writer’s block is another name for writer’s dread—the paralyzing fear that our work won’t measure up. It doesn’t matter how many books I’ve published, starting the next one always feels as daunting as the first. A day comes when I just have to make a deal with myself: write something anyway, even if it’s awful. Nobody has to know. Maybe it never leaves this room! Just go. Bang out a draft.” - Barbara Kingsolver

And there it was. The fear of not measuring up had been the road block I’d felt but not seen for years. Now that I knew what I felt had a name and a tendency to rain on all my carefully-planned parades, I felt much better equipped to deal with it. I could even anticipate it, learn to work through it.

That thing you want to do? Paint, draw, grow (flowers!), write a book, run a marathon, start a business? Kingsolver’s advice applies.

I’m in the “throes” of middle-age now, and when I have good, heartfelt conversations with people these days (mostly women) I am aware of a certain kind of sadness, not only for the passing of time but, I suspect, dreams unfulfilled, something unexplored. I share the above advice for anyone out there who might feel a little “stuck.” I hope Kingsolver’s advice resonates with you too, whatever your dreams.

~ Liisa