Mostly these days I'm in the garden. I'm hammering in stakes and tying up the straggly plants. I'm weeding out the fat hen, the milkweed, the dandelion and something else that looks like it could be potted up as a succulent. Sometimes I'm listening to podcasts but most often I'm just sitting with my thoughts, listening to the bees and the birds and trying not to get stung by the march flies. I'm marvelling at the fully blossoming flower heads, admiring the different shapes and colours, encouraging the opening buds and wondering at those yet to come out, what will they become?

I am in love.

Even when I discover thrip, or bird, or slug, or Japanese beetle damage. Even when I find my fingers stained with squished cabbage moth caterpillar insides. Even when I lose my third tray of planted straw flower seeds to something unknown and unwanted.



One afternoon we went to a local botanical gardens to watch and listen to my sister Emily play. On the way out I stopped to look at the plant stall and my family laughed at my flowering plant addiction while encouraging me to buy more and more. Later on when I discovered the girls reading the labels and asking me about perennials and annuals and biannuals, I wondered if the love affair might be catchy.

One morning as we were sitting in the shade in the garden and farmer Bren was making a vegetable seed order on his phone, he turned to me and asked if we wanted some flowering sweet pea seeds. I love that he's on this flower farming adventure with me. That our mixed family farm just got a bit more diverse.

Another day as the skies rumbled and threatened a summer storm, we all got out into the garden together and picked big bunches for tables, desks, mantels and bedsides. They asked me how to cut them, they exclaimed at each new discovery, they watched their father show them how to arrange them, then they thanked us for growing them and I swelled with pride.

We've planted a range of flowering plants through out our garden but so far the zinnias are the most prolific. In one of the flower farming course videos we watched during the week she called them the beginner flower. They're simple to grow, their blooms are bright and cheery and the more you pick the more they grow. I keep thinking how grateful I am that we stumbled on the page with their picture in a seed catalogue last winter. It was luck and I feel lucky and I know that they'll always have a place in my garden each season.

In other news, the poppy seeds our dear friends Mika and Jobbo gave us early last year have finally popped in the middle of the kitchen garden. Unfortunately their flowering days are definitely shortened because they are overhead watered each morning with the rest of that garden. But still, I love them and they make me smile.

I also love taking photos in the house direction these days. How pretty the green house and the sun room look as a backdrop.


We picked our first apple for the season. A Jersey Mac still warm from the sun and a bit too sweet for my taste, but still, apple season has begun and I'm excited.


We're still waiting for the tomatoes to ripen. Each lunch time someone remarks on how much better their salad or sandwich would be with a tom. Come on babies!

We are picking cucumbers, plums, potatoes, leafy greens, spring onions, cabbages, lots of herbs, and the last of the broad beans.


I'm reading March, which one of you suggested to me when I read Little Women last year. I found this copy in an op shop the other day and bought it without even opening it up to look at what it was. Thank you if that was you.


I knitted farmer Bren a new beanie (in a heatwave). I needed something mindless to knit while I watched the flower farm course videos and this pattern was perfect.

Ravelry details here.


We started harvesting our onions.



ps. Thank you Bren for the pics of me! xx
pps. Surely it's good luck to find a double headed zinnia in your patch (first photo)?!