Nothing Ever Happens on Mars.

First of all, Welcome to my personal growth blog!

Every morning at the farm where I've been for a week or so now I get up and sit here with my coffee. I have a new coffee pot that is very good and so this is a better than usual event. I just look out the window and think. My mom says I get thinking from my father.

I've been a nervous wreck for the last week, with no real explanation except that I'm really terrible at relaxing. Just the way I am. With time off my anxiety blooms; spores of it mushrooming, a dark algae in standing water. Invasive and fetid ... by the time I realize what's happening it's too late, it's systemic...HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!! 

I convinced myself of dizzy spells, I have low iron, a sinus infection, parasites!, early signs of a stroke, chest pain. Lately I've been trying to just let it take over, staying in bed half the day sometimes, eating chicken liver pate with a spoon (high in iron) and going to bed at 8pm some nights. I'm getting better at handling anxiety, just letting it happen. Just being OK with the strange feelings, no matter how uncomfortable. Fighting it makes it worse. 

When I think about how I wanted Christmas to go it's like this; me and Mookie had a week with no work, no visitors at the farm and were going to relax and spend days in pajamas making waffles and reading in bed and talking like we used to, losing track of days taking long walks with the dog...

If you want to really fuck yourself, set up a bunch of 'realistic' expectations and then wait to check em off like a laundry list of happiness. Life is like this in general. I'll be happy when I fall in love, when I have my own business, when I have a farm. 

Now I have to deal with myself or invent more tasks and more distractions. Which undoubtedly I will do because I am a modern, success-oriented woman. But I know I have to keep coming back to deal with this thing in me; this deep dissatisfaction that is the result of always ignoring the moment and rushing to the next thing. 

For my sanity I keep one foot in the city. I find rest in the joyous hum of days carved up into 1/2 hour segments buzzing around in the back of a taxi cab yelling into the phone. Like magic, every single one of my symptoms vanishes when I'm there. 

PERENNIAL Calendar with Brown Parcel Press

A few months ago Megan of Brown Parcel Press and I started talking about making a letterpress calendar together; mixing my flowers with her printmaking. TaDA!

It feels so luxurious to have such beautiful prints of my flowers; Megan's interpretations of the flowers are so accurate while managing to remain rooted in her own artistic style. I'm sort of in awe of this collaboration. I hope you like it.

The prints are made with 100% cotton paper (no trees) and are intended to function with the calendar and also on their own. So in 2015 you can still keep the prints on your bulletin board. I mean, if you want to.  

I've been working on tweaking our website this week. We have a new and improved SHOP page; this calendar is up there (sold for $45) along with all of our soaps, candles and some other random things I'm offering up from the Saipua vaults. 

P.s. This is the last week to order your holiday wreaths. You can also come by on the weekend (we'll be open Saturday and Sunday from noon-6) to pick one out in person.

puppies and lilacs from the poorly kept saipua files

WARNING! THE FOLLOWING PHOTOS ARE IN NO WAY SEASONAL, NOR DO THEY SERVE AS AN ACCURATE PORTRAYAL OF CURRENT SAIPUA ACTIVITIES

(You have to be so careful these days.)

A more accurate account of current going-on's would be me doing my typical solo city dinner of cheese, bread, and a box of arugula listening to westend girls by the pet shop boys on repeat. Ignoring the work at hand to look at old photos and try not to think about how tired I am. And how I can't wait to crawl into bed with old episodes of gossip girl. 

Today was a rough day. For one thing, I've been in heels and a brassiere for over 12 hours now. Secondly my truck is at a chop shop on 38th and 10th after breaking down on the FDR this morning. Which is bound to happen in our world of constantly hustling things back and forth...suddenly I'm jamming a truck full of flowers into a cab on Houston Street, showing up miraculously on time for a celebrity photoshoot. I've learned that you don't mention your truck troubles; it's just not that interesting.  I haven't agreed to do a photo shoot for a while, and it was fun to be back on set - this time with jewelry that required 8 (I counted) separate guards. I went over to the jewelry table during a floral lull to check out the booty; "Can I look?" I asked. And I got a careful look up and down (tight jeans with tight pockets so I was in the clear) "Yeah you can look." 

What I like best about photo shoots is that they order fancy lunch, so I was happy today - despite my transit woes and the fact that I was forced to handle out of season peonies. Just feed me and I'll do pretty much anything you ask.

I don't feel like myself on these types of days. I try to remember to wear deodorant, to put on mascara. I always feel like an imposter, like the kid sister tagging along...the girl that doesn't fit in. Years ago it was because I was the youngest on set or the most naive. Now I get it, I understand most of it; the way women in magazines are, the way the photographer needs to assert his opinion on the angle of that one ranunculus. It is actually important. 

The contrast of living at the farm, working to keep animals alive and well fed and fondling fifteen dollar Australian peonies and Van Cleef diamonds is a stark one. I struggle with the uncanniness of this disconnect a lot lately. But this seemingly silly scenario is one which allows me to have the farm that I so desperately need for my work these days. I cannot have one without the other. 

Looking at these photos from last spring I recall great luxurious afternoons. They say memory is inaccurate, unreliable.  My memory is writing it's own story on these photos. A story overtop of the real one, the way it really was. (It's sort of like instagram.) In reality I know these days were average. No better than today. I went to photograph the lilacs out of obligation. 

It's weird when your job is to make things look a certain way, when you are hired for pretty. Lately I look at things and I feel like a zombie. There is just so much pretty lately. A proliferation of pretty. A million styled lives spinning. 

My sometimes astrologer cum therapist is so smart and gets all of this - got it all right away months ago when I started to try and figure out my depression. 

She said:

"Go do something beautiful and leave your camera home. Don't show anyone. Do it only for yourself. For your own consumption. You are starved!" 

Good grief, life is a grand puzzle. Thanks always for listening to my ramblings. 

november

Here we are at the end of another momentous event season. How are we all doing? Everyone still have their wits about them? I'm sick of flowers! This happens every year to me in November just when the garden is all done and the flower markets are really sucking - unless you happen to live in Portland Oregon and are one of the lucky luckies that's been to Kings Mums and posted practically pornographic images of chrysanthamums all over instagram. Jealous!!! Currently trending: mums, pressed juices, ignoring climate change and I'm sorry to say, still...flowercrowns. Discuss.

In my world the last month has been a blur of back and forth between the city and the farm, but I'm glad to report I'm sitting still for a while. Feeding the animals, wheelbarrowing something around, digging up dahlia tubers, picking ticks off the dogs, staring at my computer screen trying to write this little book I'm putting together.

At Saipua we're reorganizing again. It feels like a constant regrouping process there this year. What did I expect? The farm has really thrown a monkey wrench into things. I tend to take on too much, and then hold my work to the highest standards. And when it doesn't reach those standards I beat myself up like nobody's business. But the positive side of this is that we're always evolving, always keeping ourselves away from the dangerous, murky shores of stagnation.

You can always do something better. It can always be better next time. One constant struggle I have: it's never good enough. Which is the saddest part of me, and I'm figuring out how to work with that. Though mindfulness and meditation. (Also trending.)

 I want to tell you something helpful or give you something useful with this post. Yesterday I was talking with new friends about business. They are just starting out, and I felt the same excitement for them that I've felt over the years at Saipua at our different junctures. As I've been thinking about how to move Saipua forward, I have been thinking about what's worked for me as a business owner - one with no business training.

 First, I think diversity is key. Creating a business that has lots of different facets. Having different modalities for doing business allows for more growth, more ideas, more ways of making money. The different pieces feed off each other. And when one thing fails or slows down, you have the safety net of another. For us this has been selling soap, making weddings, teaching classes, now growing flowers. So when we slow down in the winter with weddings, we can rely on holiday sales of soap and candles. I see farms do this a lot; and they have to...it's never a good year for every crop. The more varied your crops, the more likely you are to have a profitable year, or at least get by.

 I also think good people make for good business. This one is trickier to explain, but I believe in this more than the diversity thing. In a world blown open by the internet, friendships happen so fast. Networking happens at lightning speed. Some of these relationships are great, and some are like junk bonds. Taking time to foster true relationships with people ends up benefiting your business. You ever meet someone and you can just tell they want to land you as a friend and then keep on climbing? Shake em off! Before they get to be a fat tick!!!

Reflecting on these photos from a big wedding we did in October, brings me always back to a familiar place which is how lucky I feel to have some many great people to work with. Not everyone is perfect; not everyone is the best at everything. I get to know everyone's strengths and their weaknesses. And my own too. And then I try to put us all together and make the most amazing, elegant machine. The perfect beast, big enough to defeat all my disappointments.
That monster moves forward without fear of what's coming.

September wedding

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.