June 29, 2019

Looking Back at June

 Here we are at the end of June. June has been a great month with my family. We’ve taken a couple of short trips (just got back from one this afternoon, in fact), the kids participated in a really fun Track Camp put on by the High School track team, we’ve seen lots of cousins and both sets of grandparents. One the business end of things? I have been maintaining this month.

May was a fantastic month for flowers: Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, graduations, teacher appreciation—I mean, pick an event and I probably made at least one arrangement for it. Plus there were the veggie starts I sold and my regular business subscriptions. It was awesome!

Then along came June. Full stop. Kids out of school. Father’s Day, but most women don’t really buy flowers for their husbands for Father’s Day, veggie start sales done (thanks to a very late frost), maybe 1 or 2 of my “regulars” who needed a small arrangement for something or other, but that’s about it. Oh, plus my business subscriptions.

The cool start to summer has meant a slow start for my seed-grown flowers, so not much has been happening on that front either. I have found myself cutting from my perennial flowerbeds out front more so than from my field-grown flowers, which is not ideal.

I have been feeling a bit discouraged about the downturn. That late frost, in particular, really took the wind out of my sails a bit. Not only did it kill off all my tomatoes and peppers that I had left to sell, but it stunted my warm weather annuals that were up and doing well until that point. I am striving to take these failures and learn from them, but it was still quite discouraging.

We hiked through a burned area yesterday. There were wildflowers everywhere, but what really stood out to me were these beautiful pure white aspen trees, that had the outer layer of bark burned off.

I am finding that this business has a lot of highs and lows, and what I have experienced is a peak immediately followed by a valley. That’s all. No more, no less. I haven’t had the time to do as much marketing as I would like this month—I’m sure that has been part of the problem.

Overall, though, things are still going very well. Despite the slow month, I am still on track to double my earnings from last year. That sounds impressive, except I didn’t make a whole lot last year. :) More importantly, though, I feel like my business is mostly paying its own way this year. I have supplemented some from the family budget, but nothing like last year. I am still purchasing flowers as needed, but I do feel like I’m getting closer to my goal of not doing that either.

I also have some things to look forward to in July: a shop in town is setting up a monthly Famer’s Market, which I plan to participate in; I just got an order for 9 mini centerpieces for a wedding open house in July; and my favorite business client confirmed that she’s back from vacation and ready for more flowers this coming month. So, things are progressing.

Poppy—not really sure which variety, as I ended up mixing them all during reseeding efforts. My poppy plan this year is to let them bloom and reseed themselves all along this same row.

It really was a great month with my kids, and that’s the most important thing. In the meantime, the roses, poppies, and lilies have started blooming and they are gorgeous!

What do you do to move forward through discouragement?






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