06/24/2023
This photo represents hope y’all!
To be truthful with you, I’ve been very discouraged and depressed about flowers. I hadn’t stepped foot in the field or hoop house in over a month. It was so grown up with w**ds and grass in the hoop house that my hubby had to w**d eat in there. I feel so shameful even telling you that. He gave me a kick in the butt. He told me to get in there, that there were flowers blooming. What?! This y’all, THIS. I harvested the most beautiful echinacea this week from perennial plugs I started last fall.
My hope had almost run out. First, my first and second successions of summer flowers were ruined - malformed, stunted, and just plain disgusting. Then, my business hemorrhaged overnight as I had to refund thousands in revenue to customers on what was to be my first, profitable year as a small business. Heartbreaking. No customer was angry with me and I got so many words of encouragement from these precious people. I love them so much. 🤗 Lastly, I called to inquire about my case to the Texas Department of Agriculture and they said not to call back and check until 180 days had passed. That’s a long time in our instant gratification world. Frankly at this point, I’m not even sure if my crops sustained chemical damage or if it wasn’t some sort of virus spread by insects. Who knows.
If this picture doesn’t represent hope, I don’t know what does. A month ago, I had fully expected me to pull myself up by my bootstraps, replant, and jump back into farming. That hasn’t been the case. I’m tired. It will be a slow process to mentally get back to where I was. But now I just take this process to be part of the evolution of myself and my small business. I fully suspect that the beauty of growing flowers, the same beauty you see here in this picture, will be what draws me back in, just as it did in the very beginning.
