A Walk through the Flowers

Ok, so I can’t actually show you around the farm these days.  But I wanted to try the next best thing: a photo walk-through (psst: corniness alert!  Suspend your incredulity and walk with me 😉 )

Sea Change Farm is on a beautiful parcel of land near Kingston, NY.  Our field is on a hill that slopes gently down to an uncultivated field where deer graze in the evenings and frogs croak by a small creek.

Let’s go into the growing field!  Watch the front gate, it’s a work-in-progress.

Straight ahead are the zinnias, the Queens of summer.  They are a riot of color right now, and the monarch butterflies can’t get enough of them.

The zinnias share their bed with a small gomphrena patch, which looks like living confetti!  It’s a very festive little corner of the farm. 

Next door live the scabiosa, statice, and feverfew.  They are kind of like the artsy kids in school who all hang out together and do weird things like make sculptures out of dried-up used tea bags.  Oh wait… that was definitely me in high school.

Up the hill a bit are the snapdragons, who think they are quite regal with their tall, proud heads.  But really, they are prone to fainting fits, so they have netting to help hold their fluffy heads upright.

The snapdragons and celosia are besties.  They share a bed, too.

Around the bend lives lemon basil, who nods many happy silvery flower heads in the breeze.  Bonus: lemon basil smells like froot loops cereal!

Across from the lemon basil are the lisianthus, but they asked me not to show them here.  They want their very own newsletter, and think that a picture here would ruin their big moment.  They’re like that.

Moving up the hill, we’ll pass by the now-tired biennial bed, where hard-working Sweet William is sending up a last hurrah of blooms and starting to make its crispy brown seed heads.  You did well, billie.

Way at the top of the hill, in their own little neighborhood of three whole beds, are the dahlias.  They take their time, soaking up the best of those hilltop sun rays, and are now juuuuuust starting to bloom.

Way, way at the top of the hill, beyond even the dahlias, is a slightly mysterious, off-grid area where experiments are happening.  We’ve tarped four beds’ worth of new ground and allowed some ornamental squash plants to take over.  They do their own thing… and we don’t ask too many questions about it.

We can walk through the greenhouse on our way back down.  It’s a little weedy in here!  What can I say?  The summer just gets away from you.

In here, some eucalyptus and chrysanthemum plants are quietly bulking up, waiting for the fall when they will have their moment and this greenhouse will protect them from early frosts.  It’s not heated, but it still gets toasty!

Let’s see… oh!  We missed the rudbeckia.  They are just starting to bloom now, too, with their bedfellows the china asters right behind them.

Mm, well I’m ready for a nap now.  Thanks for coming along with me, I hope you enjoyed the tour!  See you at market, out in the world, or back here soon.