more thoughts on the fall

Autumn is my favorite season. I guess I'm still talking about it.
I wait all year for it and when it gets here I try so hard to make it stay.
I watch it like a hawk


The flowers were the best right before the end; when the temperature dips the flowers get brighter, rusty some; hearty and boisterous.  At some point I gave up on the field and would go out there in the mornings just to watch the dogs hunt for field mice under the straw mulch. I left all sorts of tomato volunteer plants in the dahlia beds this year and I would walk around eating them; chewing around the rotten bits and the worm holes - looking at the half-spoiled garden. A beautiful riot. When things in October were so hectic in the Saipua realm this was a calm in the eye of the storm. Just watching the last ditch efforts of plants hang on before the end.




It felt like I grew dahlias just for myself this year, leaving most of them in the field instead of selling them. At times it felt indulgent, but I'm still figuring it all out - the growing part, of course - but also the being both florist and farmer. Saipua has developed a huge appetite for anything Worlds End grows, our two businesses now so inextricably linked.

Now that the farm is frozen I see how lucky we are at Saipua to have this resource. Making flowers in the city this week with only market flowers feels relatively cold and lifeless.

We have been making progress on the barn, which I hope to be finished before I die. It's been painfully slow and expensive. The floor is finished now, and has an incredible sound to it when you walk across it. We made a wedding in it at the end of October for a bride in Hudson, NY. Even without doors or lights or a dope sound system we managed to make it work.



Once the barn studio/greenhouse is finished, the next big renovation project at Worlds End will be to renovate the other half of the barn; another 2000 square feet of bunkhouses and living space where people can stay when they visit. You know, for my dance classes and astrological exploration weekends.

Integrating our city work with our upstate work is the key to better flowers and business but we need the infastructure to make it happen. Only so many people can sleep on air mattresses on the floor of our house. It's so exciting to me; I just have to be patient and keep my head down in the thick of the work we're doing to make it happen.

Something must be said of Genevieve Rainsburger who joined the Saipua coven a few months back. She was one of our summer interns and at first I didn't think about her too much; I've met hundreds of enthusiastic girls. She's basically my polar opposite; she's warm, full of positive energy, she likes people and talking to people. She uses the work 'magical' A LOT. She smiles A LOT and it's the most beautiful, genuine thing you'll ever see. And it makes me smile, which is not something I do. She literally shines from inside and I'm kind of grossing myself out as I type this but it's got to be said because it's so true. I hope to god you get the chance to meet this woman. I fall for her more everyday.

I haven't mentioned it here but we have a new dog - Zelda - calling her Ziggy. She's a border collie and will be our herding dog. She will hopefully help us move the sheep from field to field and also round them up when they decide to  go to town...literally. Zelda is a nut and after a long bit of not being sure about her (face it, she's not Nea) I can say now that I love her.





Autumn feels like a race, doesn't it? In the city and in nature. The scurrying, the preparations. We all have to get our nuts and store them. But the season also brings a certain weighted sadness with it. It's a particular aesthetic, timeless and placeless. It's time running out. There were not enough afternoons for walking with the dogs. (There won't ever be)

I revel in the melancholy of autumn. The romance of the end is so much more interesting than the flightyness of the beginning. Like when being broken hearted feels kind of good because you're feeling something so much instead of nothing at all. This time of year I just want to drive around listening to nick cave and smoke cigarettes in graveyards. What the hell? i say to myself. snap out of it. But you know I don't really want to.

Thinking of spring I think of innocent new yorkers walking by on an unseasonably warm 70 degree day in March and maybe you're carrying a huge bale of dogwood down the block and people stop with gigantic grins and pronouce "OMG cherry blossoms! IT's SPRING!!!" and you want to be like; "yo this is DOGWOOD and was actually cut in February and forced open in a humid rat infested basement on 28th street." But so it goes.






Time marches on. 34 falls. The meaning of life? Sheep help with those fucked up contemplations because when you hang out with them you realize they are just as alive as you are and all they care about is grass (and avoiding the ram we got to breed them).

I wanted to be an astronaut but I'm a florist. I'm mildly claustrophobic so I'm probably better off.