On Again, Off Again: Frost Cloth

 

Can we just talk about the weather for a minute? Hey—don’t roll your eyes! This is a farming blog, after all. Weather factors in to everything!

So, as to be expected in April, we have had some snowstorms. I grumble about those, but they melt off fairly quickly, and here in the desert—any water is good water, usually.

What I hadn’t expected this month was the super low night-time temperatures we’ve been having. I’m talking January-esque temperatures! There have been 2 different nights that we have gotten down to 15 degrees. Cold enough to kill a lot of plants. Several more nights have been in the low 20’s.

Mother Nature makes a rotten business partner! So what can you do to anticipate and plan for her mood swings?

First up—only plant things in the spring that can handle spring weather! All of the plants I’ve got out there right now are cold hardy annuals—they don’t mind a light frost, and laugh at a snowstorm. (Well, I assume they’re laughing on the inside.) Any warm weather lovers like tomatoes or basil are going to take a lot more work to keep alive if planted before nights have warmed up reliably.

Secondly, protect what you’ve got. While my snapdragons do fine with overnight temps in the mid-20’s on up, if it’s going to be colder than that, they need some help! One thing I’ve gotten on board with this year is frost cloth—specifically, Agribon-30. It’s all the white up there in picture, if you didn’t catch that already. Frost cloth keeps your plants a couple of degrees warmer than the forecast. It doesn’t sound like much, but it can be the different between slimy, frost-nipped plants, and healthy happy ones. Believe me.

A few of things to be aware of if you’re using frost cloth:

1. It lets rain through, but if you get snow on top of it, it can crush your plants. Rain—YES. Snow—NO! (Hey, that’s kind of catchy. Let’s make it into a rap! Or…you can do that on your time. Carry on!) I left it on through a rainy day last week, because the following night was going to get very cold again, but the one day it snowed I was out there pulling it off.
2. If your daytime temps get above 50 degrees, your little plantlings can get too hot under there, and that also will not be good. Off it comes.
3. It can be doubled up to provide even more protection, which is what I’ve done on those super cold nights.
4. It is quite difficult to put on by yourself if there’s any sort of breeze blowing. Just be forewarned.
5. Don’t waste your time with Agribon-19. It’s as thin as tissue paper and rips very easily, while not providing very much protection for your plants.

I am happy to report that nearly all of my plants survived our super extra cold nights so far this month! Have I been taking frost cloth off and on far more than I ever wanted to? Yes. Have I protected my investment from the wild swings in temperature? Also yes. The extra hassle of putting on and taking off the frost cloth has been worth it.

As a sidenote: I didn’t cover up anything that wintered over and they all also survived. So my parsley, Bells, the perennial cutting beds, bulbs—nope. I figured they’ve already been through a lot worse than this. They can take it!

I would love to get a cold frame at some point to help in these “shoulder seasons.” Another project for another day.

Time to Farm

Well, hello there! It has been a long month, hasn’t it? Since I last wrote, the coronavirus has swept through our nation and shut down all kinds of businesses in its wake. Including mine. My county issued a Public Health Order last week (seems like a long time ago!) asking all nonessential businesses to shut down. Not demanding—quite yet.

I had a hard decision to make. On the one hand, flowers are essential to me. On the other hand, I was having to go here, there, and everywhere to a) purchase the flowers and b) deliver them. I guess what tipped the scales towards “closed” for me, though, was that I’m doing this out of my home. There is really no way to guarantee that surfaces are sterilized. Not when I have my 2 year old climbing up to help and other children coming in and out every few minutes. Also, my husband works in the medical field, so the chances of him being exposed and then possibly bringing it home are higher than either of us would like to think about.

This one of the last ones I delivered last month, prior to shut-down.

So…until my temporary shut-down, I actually had taken 2 or 3 different orders from my Google listing and delivered them. That was fun while it lasted. I also have at least 2 people wanting to sign up for a spring CSA subscription (yay!), but I have told them we would just have to keep in touch on that. Here’s hoping I can start back up in time for that goodness.

Even though my floral design work has stopped for now, I have been using any and all extra time FARMING! It has felt good to get back out there and get my hands in the dirt again. I am happy to report that I have had some success with seed-starting this time around, as well. YAY!! I’ve got 2 trays full of forget-me-nots that I just potted up from 2” blocks to 4” peat pots today, in hopes of Mother’s Day sales, along with another full tray of petunias, and a smaller one of pansies for the same purpose.

I also have ammi hardening off, and rudbeckia getting close to being ready for that. I’m thinking maybe one more week for the rudbeckias and they should be big enough to put outside.

Just today I started 6 more small trays of various and assorted flowers: orach, more rudbeckia, 2 types of phlox, statice, and dahlias.

I also bought a whole bunch of starts from Plant & Grow Nursery in Clearfield. I had been debating about buying starts, but in the end, they had a great sale (50% off retail!) and I just went for it. So I have them to thank for my 2nd cool weather succession planting, which ended up filling 3 rows! One whole row of Ammi ‘Visagna Green’ (there were more than I expected of that one), Madame Butterfly snaps, 3 varieties of scabiosas (Red Velvet, Candy, and Raspberry Scoop,) and 2 varieties of dianthus (Amazon ‘Neon Rose’ and Amazon ‘Rose Magic’).

I’m not exactly sure where I’m going to put everything that I’m currently starting, but in the past I have always had bare stretches, so if nothing else, these can fill in all the bare spots out there. Although, I do believe I will have room for maybe 2 more long flowerbeds to fill up.

Other than farming, I have been doing about the same thing as you, probably: homeschooling my kids, hardly leaving my house for any reason, trying to get outside every day for some fresh air and sunshine. Keeping my distance and becoming even more socially awkward than usual with those who do want to chat (from 6 feet away, of course).

Here’s hoping we can get back to more normal life soon!

How are things with you?

Spring Fever

Since Saturday, we have had our first true spring weather around here. In fact, up until last weekend, I still had several inches of snow outside covering every flat surface. Guess what? It has melted off in 4 days!! I am thrilled! Even with more on the horizon. I laugh in your face, March snow! HA!

(Now please don’t hit me with a blizzard. Pretty please.)

 

Hyacinths are the scent of spring.

If this keeps up, my soil will be dry enough to plant this week! That will be a first since we’ve lived here. In fact, I planned all my seed-starting calendars based on the first week of April as the earliest planting date, because last year we had snow on the ground or wetness from the sky until then. I really want to get my first round of early spring flowers in ASAP: ammi, bachelor’s buttons, dill, daucus, buplureum, poppies, atriplex…. probably more that I’m not remembering at the moment. If I could get them in THIS week, just think—I could have flowers by May! That would be amazing!

I’ve also cranked up the seed starting machine. So far I’ve gotten decent germination on forget-me-nots, great germination on the petunias, okay for pansies. These are all flowers I’m planning to grow up big in time for Mother’s Day. 2 months away now.

I feel like a seed-starting elf over here—making a list, checking it twice!

It just feels so good to get out in some sunshine without even a jacket on! My kids are all wearing shorts. I had to make them go back and put on shoes this afternoon—okay kiddos, 50 degrees is not THAT warm! I’m feeling it, though. The fever gets in your blood and you just have to be outside! They had their first picnic lunch this week. It was awesome.

I can hardly wait for my Spring CSA to start up! Alas, I have 6 weeks to wait. Again, last year—no flowers until very end of April—so I wanted to be sure I would have something to put in these bouquets! Do you know what CSA even means? Let me tell you. It stands for Community Supported Agriculture. The idea behind it is that you lovely people purchase a subscription in the winter or early spring months, when farms are experiencing a slower time for revenue. Your purchase allows us to buy what we need to grow all the pretty things—seeds, irrigation equipment, weed barrier—all of that. Then when we begin harvesting, you get a share of our harvest. Yay!

I’m so tickled to share flowers! So this makes me excited. Here are the details for my Spring CSA Subscription:

1—Starts April 24, runs for 6 weeks until May 29.

2—Every FRIDAY I will drop off a paper-wrapped bouquet for you. It will be a mixed bouquet of whatever I have growing that week.

3—Delivered to your door…or the door of a friend if you’ve purchased it as a gift for someone else. :)

4—No vases. I’m not charging you for them, either. As I mentioned, these will be wrapped in paper. What I ask you to do, so your gorgeous flowers don’t die, is put a clean bucket or vase filled with water on your porch Friday morning for me to drop the flowers into.

Just think about it: 6 weeks of daffodils. 6 weeks of tulips. 6 weeks of alliums, and bachelor’s buttons, and grape hyacinths, and so many pretty flowers! It’s going to be so beautiful!!

In the meantime, get off your computers and get outside!! That’s what I plan to do, anyway.

Valentine's Day Flowers: A Recap

 Valentine’s week was amazing and busy! I ended up making 45 arrangements!! It was such a great learning experience for me, particularly in regards to systems and the business end of things.

Yes, you get to see my messy garage right here too. #keepingitreal or #toolazytocleanforapicture

The week before Valentine’s I counted vases (and bought some more), and made sure I had the hard goods that I would need.

I also put in my biggest ever flower order that week, by phone. That was a mental math problem that I grappled with for a couple of days, actually! There were so many variables to add in, namely: total number of arrangements ordered, size of arrangements ordered, types of flowers needed, numbers of stems of each flower type to put into each arrangement, number of stems per bunch from the wholesaler, and of course, cost per bunch. Then after all that, I got to move on to total cost vs. total budget and make them align. Fun times!

Added on to that was the fact that I am a very visual person, particularly when it comes to putting flowers together. I really prefer to go in person and wander the cooler, choosing what looks freshest and what colors will complement each other well. It was hard for me to get on the phone and work from a list. It was a long phone call, even with all my number crunching beforehand, as I tried mightily to picture colors and textures, and how they would work together. For this order, though, that was not an option. I needed to reserve the flowers in advance or I ran the very real risk of what I wanted selling out.

So after I got the flowers ordered, I went and picked them up the following Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon my oldest son helped me prep flowers for a couple solid hours in the afternoon. This entailed removing the plastic sleeves and rubber bands, stripping any lower foliage, re-cutting stems, and organizing them into buckets by color. In the past I haven’t organized them in that way, but with so many arrangements to do I felt like it would save time to have all of the same color in the same buckets.

I went back and forth in my mind between thinking “I spent way too much money on flowers!” to “I’m not going to have enough—I’m going to have go back and buy more!” Yeah, two extremes.

Wednesday was go time! The majority of my arrangements were orders from my BNI group (YEAH!) so those needed to be ready Feb. 13, Thursday morning, because I was taking them to the weekly meeting. So we homeschooled until 2pm, then I put my 2 year old down for a nap and started on the flowers! My oldest 2 helped me with several of the bud vases, which accounted for more than half of the total orders.

It was a little overwhelming at the beginning, even figuring out where to start. So I started on the arrangements that were going to be the most unique in terms of colors and flowers, then moved on from there. I started filling up our kitchen counter and table with the finished arrangements, which we then had to move aside to eat dinner. (Oops! Hey, at least I had put dinner in the crockpot early on, so I didn’t have to stop for that once I got going.)

From there I just kept going and going until they were done, packed into boxes for transport, and ready for the next day. It was very late/early when I got to bed that night.

At first I thought buying the purple statice was a mistake, but I actually loved how it played off the purple eye of the anemone!

Between Wednesday and Thursday I received 3 more orders by phone—from my Google listing! Yay! All 3 were for large arrangements. At that point I was thankful that I had built in a bit of a cushion in my flower order. I knew it would be close and I could always just go see what was left at the wholesaler, but I was pretty sure I could make it happen.

I was able to get those 3 orders done Thursday afternoon, which left Friday morning for delivery of the remaining arrangements.

A couple of things I learned from this:

1— I need to get back to work on building out systems for my business, including writing out specific, stem-count recipes for my different arrangements. I am reluctant to do it, in a way, because I don’t want to be tied down to a specific recipe—I like to make each one unique as much as possible. However, as my business grows, I am going to need that structure more and more. It can always be a jumping off point, but for figuring out how many flowers I need to either cut or order, I need hard numbers!

1A—If I ever get employees, this will be even more important! It was great to have in mind exactly what I wanted in the bud vases, so I could tell that to my kiddos.

2—Anything I can do in advance, should be done in advance! The right number and size of vases, all washed and ready to go; even labels pre-made and ready to put on boxes. Anything would be helpful!

3—I love the “everyday flowers!” It was so fun for me to deliver flowers to people and share in that moment of connection—even when it was just at the door for a moment.

3A—I need to rethink my delivery charges, in terms of TIME! I don’t think I’m charging enough for how long it took me, including packing the flowers for transport and actually finding the addresses.

Connections, Numbers, and Dance Flowers

 The past couple of weeks have been very full.

I’ll start with some happy news: I received my first customer from my Google listing! Woohoo! That was exciting, and I was more than happy to make an arrangement for them. I had to go buy more flowers to have enough, but it was great!

This ranunculus was so very gorgeous! Man alive, I need to plant some this year!

Then, thanks to my husband coming home early one from work one night, I was able to drive down to Pleasant Grove, Utah, to Snuck Farm and attend the Utah Cut Flower Farmer Association meeting. That was such a great night! It was so energizing to be around like-minded people, to see friends I met at the first meeting last summer and make some new ones.

Plus, the topic was just what I’ve been looking for: NUMBERS. In other words, knowing my numbers as a business. What is my profit? What are my margins? What is my breakeven point? All of these things that I currently don’t know. We were given a basic overview of a specialized spreadsheet to figure this all out—the “breakeven” sheet—and even given a free copy of it via email to use.

Since the beginning of my business, cash flow has been an interesting struggle. As the old saying goes, “It takes money to make money.” Well, that’s certainly true when you have to purchase products in order to fulfill orders that come in. So, essentially, you have to already have a portion of the money in your bank account, in order to pay for the stuff so that you can make the money. I keep falling short beforehand. So I plan to get to work right away on this spreadsheet and see how I can help myself do better in those areas.

Now let’s talk about dance flowers. I finally called the high school and just asked when their dances were going to be, since that information is nowhere to be found online. I learned that there was a Sweetheart’s Dance on Feb. 1. Yes, last weekend. I purchased some floral supplies that I’ve needed for quite some time, and I watched several online tutorials, and then I put myself out there and advertised on a local Facebook page. I had made boutonnieres before, and silk corsages, but not fresh flower corsages yet.

I received 2 responses from that, plus a repeat customer from before. When I first saw that DM pop up on my screen, my heart was pounding so hard. Why was this so scary?! I don’t know, but it really was! I ended up with 3 couples that bought both a corsage and a boutonniere from me. I gave them a discount if both were purchased through me. So 3 corsages, 3 bouts. Ready, steady go!

I knew that the day of, Saturday, was going to be quite a busy day because 2 of my kids had basketball games in the morning. So I knew I wouldn’t be home to even get started until 11am or so. I prepped the flowers the night before, using Sue McCleary’s hydration chamber technique.

Saturday came, we got home from basketball, and I started making flowers. I used Oasis Floral Adhesive, which is obnoxious. It was my first time using it, and there was a bit of a learning curve. It’s a lot like rubber cement—in fumes output as well as habit. The bouts were wired and taped the traditional way.

I had staggered pickup times, to give myself some leeway for getting each thing done. The problem was that one customer had ordered both items and so needed them both done at the same time. (Everything else had separate pickups.) I had done all the corsages first and was just starting in on the boutonnieres when she came to the door. That was when I realized my mistake.

I had to tell her that the boutonniere wasn’t done yet. It was awkward. She was super nice about it and said it was no big deal, and she would come back in a couple of hours. I even offered to drive it over to her as soon as I finished it, which she refused. Then I found out that she just lived up the street from me, so I felt a tiny bit better. Still, though—fail! If you tell someone it will be done at a certain time, it needs to be done by that time! Also, realization #2: I didn’t have a phone number for her to let her know in advance that it was going to take longer than anticipated. She and I had only interacted via IM online.

That was stressful. The middle pickups all went off fine. Then my last one came and I actually wasn’t quite done with that one either! Luckily, she’s a personal friend and was also very kind about it. It still added some stress, though to have to tell another person to come back later! I was going from one to the next nonstop, but it was taking longer than I had planned on. I was also a bit worried that with the glue, some of the flowers might fall off. They all seemed stable by the time I was finished with them, but that would have been bad to have this corsage that you just paid for start to lose flowers. Last week, I finally got up my courage and asked a few customers directly if their corsage had lost any flowers. The 2/3 I talked to, said they hadn’t. So that was a relief.

One reason I didn’t post last week was because I was still kind of coming down from the stress a little bit. It was still too recent. Actually making the corsages was fine—except for the annoying glue—but yeah, the timing. That was the kicker.

What worked well:

1. I was able to make each set unique from the others, even using some of the same flowers.
2. I think I did well with color matching for the colors I was given.
3. I finally just purchased some plastic clamshell-style boutonniere and corsage boxes from the wholesaler. I still want to find some that are not single-use plastic, but I needed something other than Ziploc baggies I had been using (those don’t give off quite the professional vibe I’m hoping for.) They were surprisingly affordable and were definitely a step up.
4. My awesome husband kept the kids out of the kitchen so I could work, then while I was still going and going, made lunch around me and got them all fed, and toddler down for a nap. Bless him!
5. I thought the finished creations were pretty. Hope the recipients liked them!

Here’s what I will do differently next time:

1. Get phone numbers for ALL my customers, not forgetting those who contact me via IM.
2. Use the full conditioning/hydration method so that I can make flowers the day before!! This one needs a couple of underlines!
3. Only promise pickup at a specific time if the flowers are already made, done, and waiting.
4. If I am running behind, use those phone numbers collected in #1 and let people know in advance so they don’t show up and not be able to pick up their stuff.
5. Learn more boutonniere finishing off tips and tricks. I get so focused on the flowers that I forget the boutonniere is supposed to have something tied around it to finish it off. I seem to use up all my creativity putting it together then I’m like “Well, now what?” That, or learn how to do the natural stems look. I didn’t put ribbons in the corsage, either. I don’t love that look, and even though it’s expected, I shy away from it.
6. Find some magnetic boutonnieres. The one gal said when she picked hers up—so how do these ones work, then? (I had forgotten to put a pin in with it! I quickly grabbed one.) She had only ever used the magnetic style.
7. Practice, practice, practice. I know the more I do these, the quicker I’ll get, and the less stressful the whole process will be. I just hope my current and potential customers will bear with me on those bumps in the road (like their stuff not being ready—ack!).

Some great experiences that filled me up, and a bit of struggle, which led to some good learning experiences. Definitely a net gain overall.

Then just a few days later, I made 9 mini corsages for the Daddy-Daughter dance at the school. Two of those were for my own cute girls. In fact, my 10 year old made hers with just a little assistance from me.

I think she did a great job! For those I was on the ball with my timing for the prep work (hydrating/ conditioning) and was able to make them the day before. Much, much better. Still not loving the floral glue, but I was able to get online (good old YouTube) and find some good tips that should help me have a better experience with it next time. I hope.

This coming week I will be doing Valentine’s flowers! So excited for those!

Always Learning

I love learning, especially learning more about flowers! The past couple of weeks I have been slowly getting caught up on my backlog of online learning videos. I signed up for Flower Farming School Online, which ran November into December, but fell behind when the December whirlwind came along. So now I’m finally getting to the end of those classes—almost! I have a few more hours left to do, but I’ve done all the main sessions. I’m actually glad I waited until now to take that class. I think if I had taken it back in the beginning, I wouldn’t have even really known what questions to ask.

For some reason, I seem to retain the information better if I have struggle a bit with it on my own, first. I think my brain is more actively engaged in finding answers to my questions and fixing my mistakes that way. I know I have taken all kinds of notes with it, particularly in regards to seed starting. It’s amazing, though, how you can pick up little tricks and things as you go along that you weren’t even looking for.

For instance, in this last session I watched, on Harvesting and Conditioning flowers, the teacher (Lisa Mason Ziegler) demonstrated how to strip the foliage from several different types of flowers—how much she leaves, how much she takes off, basically. So one of her examples was bachelor’s buttons. Now, I have grown bachelor’s buttons for the past 2 years—it is one of the few I have had some consistent success with. 

These purple bachelor’s buttons were volunteers that came up this spring. (Bells of Ireland on the left.)

However, it is a pain in the neck to harvest! I would put it off and leave it for last, because with the side shoots, stripping off the leaves seemed to take forever and they still would get all tangled up in the bucket! Guess what Lisa did? She cut off every single side shoot and all the leaves, leaving the one lonely little flower at the top! Wow, that really gave me something to think about! That would save a ton of time, and they are so prolific, that I could probably still get enough volume to be useful doing it that way. Even if not, I could save all the longest side shoots and strip them the same way, so I would have a single flower on a single stem.

In the picture above, there are several flowers already too old to use—they’re the ones that are a darker purple than the rest. Procrastination just makes your job harder. (I knew this already, but this picture is proof.) If you don’t keep a bed harvested, they start to get away from you, and then you have to hunt and peck to find any useable stems. So having a new way presented to me that would save me all that time and frustration? I’m going to take it and run with it! One flower, one stem on buttons. Ready, go!

See what I mean? I wasn’t going in to the class wondering how to save time prepping bachelor’s buttons, but there you go—a hidden gem.

There have been several “aha” moments like that throughout the class. I feel like it has been well worth the money spent on it. I understand succession planting better than I ever have. Also, I’m really wondering if my seedlings haven’t done very well the past 2 years because the dining room is too cold. I have been thinking about ways to make them a little warming chamber or something to keep the heat up in the 70’s. Another little bit of information that she had mentioned in one of the videos.

If you do what you’ve always done you’re going to keep getting the results you’ve always gotten, right? I feel like I had respectable germination rates last year, but then my seedlings just sat there in the trays and didn’t grow for a very long time. Then also, I tended to kill them off in the hardening off process. But maybe if I had much bigger, healthier transplants going into the hardening off they wouldn’t be so fragile.

On the Floral Design side of things, I have really wanted to get better at my personal flower skills. You know, corsages, boutonnieres, crowns, etc. The one lady I know of who is a rock star in the world of wearable flowers calls herself "Passionflower Sue” online. Anyway, she teaches courses! She has tutorials, but you have to pay for them, of course. For a long time, the only option was to pay $1000 to get full access to all her stuff. I just couldn’t spend that much! Several months ago, she came up with a monthly payment system. It is only $37 per month! Well, that’s definitely within my budget!

I have been signed up for it for 2 months now, but December came along.… (see notes above re: Christmas whirlwind.) So just today I have finally taken the time to sit down and listen to some of her tutorials. They are amazing! I have already learned so much about wiring flowers! Again, something I have struggled with on my own for the past 2 years now. In just a couple of 20 minute videos I learned game-changing techniques that are going to make my boutonnieres and corsages so much better! In fact, I’m excited to have a high school dance coming up in a week so that I can practice my new skills!

The more I learn, the more there is to learn…and I love that! Give me all the lessons! I feel like every class I take bumps me up to another plateau. From my new height, I try things out, succeed and struggle, until I’m in a place where I’m ready to add the next piece to the puzzle. Then up I climb again to a new plateau.

Who are you inspired by? What have you learned lately? I’m all ears!

It's a Jungle in Here!

 

I have started putting together planters this past week. I had one order, then 2 more came in. So I have spent some quality time purchasing various houseplants to put together into planters for my customers. It’s fun! Also, I may have purchased one or two for myself (cough, cough).

There were 2 maidenhair ferns that were just begging to be rescued from the Clearance shelves, which I did. They are getting some TLC now, in hopes that they will revive and live long! No, they’re not going into the planters just yet. I’ve never been great at keeping houseplants alive, so only paying a dollar or two for them helps with the guilt a little bit. Hey, I do try. So who knows? Maybe they will do great this time! One is upstairs on my bathroom windowsill and one is down here under the lights.

My first planter had a mini orchid in it, 1 dracaena, and one maidenhair fern (a healthy one.) It was pretty, if I do say so myself! I’m going to do a very similar one for someone else—and I even was able to find the same orchid, which is what she wanted. Woohoo!

The other planter will have red anthurium, a small croton with red in the leaves, and either a silverleaf fern or possibly some ivy. I’ve just got to double check and make sure they all have similar care requirements.

Hey, by the way—I found out today amidst my wanderings that Home Depot and Lowe’s use the same supplier for their houseplants. How about that? And for the most part, Home Depot was cheaper, but Lowe’s had a better selection.

I also have 11 amaryllis potted up now. I opened up the gift boxes I had in my booth for sale. It stays pretty warm in the store, so I wanted to see what the amaryllis were doing. Sure enough, 1 of them had a 6 inch long bud and stalk, all white from lack of lights and growing sideways up against the side of the box. Another couple had buds just coming. So the 3 that were already growing in the boxes, I brought home and potted up. Plus I FINALLY got the rest of mine potted up that I had ordered back in November. They were all growing crazy directions, too. In fact, one of them was blooming—barely poking out of the burlap sack it came in! I’ve got 2 more of those almost ready to bloom.

Not to mention all my anthurium from last year that I’m trying to keep alive with varying degrees of success, and all the aloe vera plants left from my sale last spring. I would love to have some houseplants with pretty leaves that I could add to arrangements. Think how pretty the ivy would be! Just have to keep the blessed things alive.

What houseplant tips do you have for me? I’m all ears!

If you want a planter, let me know! They’re fun to make and then you get to take care of them! 

Hee hee.