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.
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