With so much upheaval and drama and work and animals, the thing that alarms me the most is this: The window for tomato sandwiches is closing. The end is in sight.

I think, how nice it is to be a seasonal worker...you think you just can't look at another peony then poof! peonies are done and you're on to poppies and foxgloves. Nature is so clever like that.

Here on the ranch I've been homesteading hard. My pockets are full of clothespins and alfalfa pellets. I'm not going to draw a picture that isn't true, so let me try to honestly tell you what the summer has been like.

Well, for one thing; without question my mayonaise consumption has spiked considerably in the last few months. This is for tomato sandwiches, the one thing in nature that I am always ALWAYS sad to see pass. The time of the tomato, never long enough.

What is it about tomatoes that makes them the prize of the garden? I don't even like tomatoes that much (except for the sandwiches) and yet I work the hardest for our tomato crop. Worry over it like nothing else in our garden. Googling diseases, fertilizing them, tying them up, pruning them.

In July we had fine plants, all thriving, being their little tomato selves...setting flowers and little fruits. Over 100 plants (it was a winter of big dreams.) By August we were eating sandwiches everyday, and how do I like my sandwiches? I'm so glad you asked...

Bread I'm not fussy over, it's usually a sprouted Alvarado St. sliced loaf available in the freezer section of the local Hans. But, what I am fussy for - and this is really out of character, likely a carry over from my childhood - is Sweet Munchie or Muenster cheese. I broke down and just started buying it by the pound at the deli counter, a place I frequent only between the months of August and October.

If I have those things, then I need red onion and mayonaise, Hellmans only. At someone else's farm recently they mentioned a Hellmans boycott (Hellmans uses GMO soybean oil) which made me flush and uncomfortable. For christs sake, I'm growing my own food and drinking water out of a mason jar. How far are we going to take this?

The winner in the tomato department, this year at least, for us, was Yellow Brandy Wine. A very good producer, good flavor, perhaps not better than Pineapple, but what it lacked in flavor it made up in vigor. A tomato I like better is Green Zebra, but this is not big enough for a sandwich, at least not the way I roll. I like to take a big tomato, and cut the middle into a 1" slice. That goes in the sandwich, the ends get seasoned and [wow I'm really divulging here] slathered in mayonaise and then consumed either first - a sort of appetizer - or second as a coda to the main portion of the performance. A private performance - I should mention that my favorite way to eat this lunch is alone.

So that's been the summer basically, sandwich land. Today Eric reminded me that we're almost done. We're about to pull the last tomatoes; ones we had to plant up in the flower field when we ran out of room in the garden. I actually don't want to talk about this anymore, I've indulged...gone too far already.

I'm having a coffee now, reheated from it's tepid state a few minutes ago. It's 3:35. We're alone here today, and it's raining on and off. Real gloomy the way I like it.

The season keeps creeping on, we've not had a real frost yet and the dahlias I planted late are just starting to really come on, as if they had no idea it was October.

We've had so many visitors this summer, people coming through for classes, apprenticeships, private lessons, visits, photographs...people coming through to work, camp, learn, eat. I've been trying to figure out how to have so many guests, how to balance (a word I don't believe in, but will use here for lack of a better term) the excitement of sharing with my constant desire to be alone. The truth is, as much as I love flowers I can't talk endlessly about them. Someone once said to me, 'maybe you want to think you're a giver, but you're really not a giver.' Which has stuck with me.

I'm looking out the window again and it is so beautiful. The trees are all colored against a dark grey sky. This is my favorite October party trick. I'm torn between sitting here getting to my work or going outside to take a walk with the dogs. Even if I do, it won't be enough. The heartbreak of Autumn.

There's never enough of it.

chick problems

still here. juggling a lot lately and have so much to catch up on telling you about. which  i will get to with time. hoarding most of my imagery for the book project which will hopefully help us raise money to finish the barn...the barn that will house all our visitors and interns, and be our new flower studio. The barn whose doors will have a sign that reads: NO CHICKENS ALLOWED!!!

my life as a pack mule.

This morning, like so many other mornings in my life lately, I packed my truck full of stuff (flowers, branches, grapevine rolled in a tarp, boxes of styrofoam peanuts, cartons of eggs, an extension ladder, work boots and clippers) and headed out for the city from the farm. Pack it up, move it out, unload it somewhere else. Song of myself. Halfway down the driveway this morning Eric ran after me with a plastic grocery bag full of my wet-from-the-clothesline-dew socks and underwear.

I can carry a lot - not even talking about my truck right now. I can lift more than your average man with a desk job. In the time I've been a florist which is something like 7 years, some of my favorite shirts have become tight around the shoulders, and if you think I'm bragging right now, you'd be right. There are two women who can lift more than me; Nicolette and maybe Deanna and damn straight - I keep those bitches close.

Now. What started out as a post to fill you in on the last few weeks of events around here became my own personal pissing contest. And I'm sorry for that. I'm just feeling sad because we just lost one of our best interns back to the good country of Canada. Reuben came and lived with us for three weeks and made for so much possible at the farm and in the city at Saipua. We planted hundreds of iris and peonies...we made Little Flower School classes happen, we made weddings and fashion week events.

My mind is in a hundred places tonight. I've got to fill you in about our new sheep, our new maremma puppy who is guarding those sheep from coyotes as we speak, new classes coming for winter, new soaps, an upcoming plant sale, and a very special book project we're self publishing before the holidays. All with time. But tonight I want to say thank you to Reuben (and the rest of our incredible interns) who are integral to so many things around here. And who do a lot of heavy lifting.

Saipua, sum of it's parts.

I promise more soon... I'm emotionally eating ice cream out of the container right now trying to figure out how to close this, so I'm just going to say good night.

 

Actually, I was just thinking about myself again.

Sleep is trending right now. I've seen articles all over town about it, especially in magazines we have subscriptions to that I don't read.. The Atlantic, Harpers and the New Yorker. But don't worry when people come up to visit, I fan them out all over the house. 

I desperately wish I was an overachiever in the sleep department, by which I mean an underachiever in the department of needing a lot of it. Un-achieving a lot of hours sleeping while achieving a lot during day time hours working. You know what I mean. The high end of the spectrum is reserved for people like Martha Stewart (clocking 4 hours, a fact which everyone in our world is well aware of, but, was also recently mentioned in this months Vanity Fair - one of my prescriptions which I now can read portions of, especially if I'm not sleeping on plane). The low end of the spectrum is for children and dogs. Rock bottom is for species that make cocoons. (Which are also trending right now. Along with tarot, fermentation and the return of scrunchies. And there you have the Saipua trend report; you're welcome.)

I was in California last week, working on some projects. I was traveling alone and had become strung out on the time change and the 4:00 wake up calls for the flower market (New York florists never hit 28th street before 6:00 - and the best, most fashionable of the set never are seen before 8am! If I want to run into my friend Emily I plan to have lunch in the area.) After a week of 5 hours of sleep a night, I started speaking in tongues during important meetings. I was leaving dinner parties before dinner was served. That low grade sleep deprivation headache hit me by Friday; the kind that makes me wish I could unscrew my eyeballs and take a pressure washer to the inside of my skull. 

Now I'm back at home on the farm, trying to regain my 8-hour routine. I plan to take naps but then always end up working through the afternoon...too focused on accomplishments. Counting them, stacking them up in my brain. Did I do enough today to feel good, to feel right. If I take a hot bath, a long walk with the dog, or even an hour just to lay down...these things also become categorized as things to get done. Self care? Check!

How do I get to the other side of that? To the place where rest just is. Shaking off my own expectations and judgements, walking away from my tickertape inner monologue, leaving my work persona for a moment. I glance out the window at all the trees blowing in a sudden breeze...who am I? 

Oh well, 4o'clock. Time to go tear some shit up on the tractor.

what started as a city post became a farm post, sorry.

One nice thing about trying and failing at flower farming - and sure I'm being a bit dramatic - is that it's made me appreciate buying other peoples flowers so much more. And the city. Good God I love fleeing to the city, revisiting our dusty paint peeling apartment and sinking into old routines...I have a chair by my window where I sit in the morning and in the night. I put my feet up on the wall and watch the sliver of new york harbor I can see beyond the row houses. The light coming up; I am drinking coffee. It's quiet except for the Russian construction workers across the street mangling a civil war era row house into some architects magnum opus. The light going down, I'm drinking a glass of wine listening to records trying on all my city clothes alone. Occasionally padding barefoot into the kitchen to graze on some cheese and arugula. Oh how I long now for a box of arugula, in the face of another night of purslane here at the farm. With a squeeze of lemon and drizzle of oil. Sweet sophisticated liberal arugula! Expertly cut with lasers, probably packaged in a factory with underpaid workers, a hint of danger - is it contaminated with e colli? I don't care. I skip washing it. 

Lately I've been listening to Anna Von Hausswolff. I think many of you would like her.

I've been practicing my singing because I want to perform one day. I want to make the big barn at the farm into a flower studio and performance space and invite others to perform in my talent shows. Hmm I'm going to need lighting. I've been practicing 1. Rhiannon Stay and 2. Sophie B Hawkins Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover. It's going pretty well. I sound really good in the car, speeding on the thruway one hand plugging my ear so I can better hear my intonation. 

We must dream. 

I've found a little rhythm at the farm finally. Living here this past year is teaching me many mystifying lessons which I did not anticipate. I said to Eric once a few weeks ago, this was a mistake. Then I googled "identity crisis." 

My relationship to Nature is complicated. I'm not starry eyed about it. I don't want to run into the field of wildflowers and spin around Sound of Music style. Most of the time I am just making lists against Nature, taking her to task... 

If it's not going to rain, then I'm going to crank on the irrigation system. 

If the soil is too thick with clay to drain then I'm going to order 20 tons of sand to mix into my iris beds...

If I suspect beetles are eating the dahlias then I'm going to...

One thing that I seem to feel lately is not myself working on the farm. And I figured out why that is! The old me knew everything. Or else I pretended to. You can do that pretty well in business I think, and one of my key rules in building Saipua was always fake it till you make it. But there is no forgiveness on the farm. There is no faking it. No matter how much I resist it...the farm is making me learn true humility. I hate every minute of it. But it's about time.

I turned 33 last week.

Deanna and Asheley have been boxing up all my favorite stuff at our Brooklyn studio while I've been at the farm - so it's sure to be a good sale. Also on hand will be some of our new soap trials on sale - scent blends like tumeric and sweet almond, roman chamomile, fennel and my favorite - a black charcoal soap. I'll be in town Saturday, so come say hello.

Metamorphosis.

I'm listening to that Tim McGraw/Taylor Swift pop country ballad hit "Highway" right now, hoping that Amy Febinger, the one friend who is linked on my spotify account doesn't notice that I have listened to it, um, a lot. That and a song called "Red Neck Crazy" by someone I don't know who, but I do know all the lyrics by heart;

"Gonna drive like hell through your neighbourhood

Park this Silverado on your front lawn

Crank up a little Hank, sit on the hood and drink.."

(But it's pronounced "drank" in that country classic sort of way.)

We've been doing lots of farming stuff. Lots of trial and error stuff. Eric's been working on his magnum opus; a chicken coup. I said "where'd you learn how to frame things like that?" He said in a book. So we're learning things, and learning is good. [except I hate learning. I like knowing.]

I've had lot of unstructured time to think and be depressed, which is a normal cycle for me although never easy. Fortunately I'm on the way out of it now. There is really nothing to do but wait it out; the hardest lesson is understanding there are things beyond my control. Letting things just happen to me...allowing feelings to just happen without fighting them. Here at the farm there are not as many distractions from myself.

Wait, we were talking about my recent affinity for country music. I think in the end, I'm just an assimilator. I've noticed other strange things. Like I have a new sort of swagger, and I don't know what else to call it. At the end of the day if I have to drive down to the grocery store in my farm clothes I walk in with a sort of farmer limp/swagger - I'm being completely honest. Once one of the girls at the checkout took a look at me and said "are you doing some logging in the area?" I don't even know what logging really is, but it sounds hard - harder than what I'm doing and so I just sort of nodded. Yes. Yes I am logging. And blogging.























These flowers are from a few weeks ago. The campanula is my favorite thing here, it's just about done now after a nice month long run in my cutting garden. I have not been playing much with flowers. As I mentioned earlier, things are looking up and I will start again.