Do You Doodle Flowers? Meet The Sun Valley Horizon

This week at Sun Valley we are excited to be rolling out a new item to keep you in the loop on what's happening on the Farm.

If you are on the Sun Valley email list, then yesterday you received the maiden voyage of the Sun Valley Horizon. This is our brand new eNewsletter, which will be arriving in your inbox periodically. The goal of the Horizon is to show you what we have on the Horizon.We are always looking ahead to the next harvest, planting or weather pattern. This is the nature of being a California Flower Farmer. We feel it is important to give you, the flower enthusiast, a heads up on what is happening next month or next season. The more we can share what the view ahead looks like, the more likely we can work together.

Wait, what? You didn't receive out fancy new eNewsletter? Oh, No!

There is a quick easy way to remedy this situation. Subscribe right here. It only take a couple minutes, and don't worry we won't barrage you with emails, the Horizon takes a while to produce, so expect it (hopefully) about once a month. As you receive the Horizon, make sure to forward it onto your colleagues, customers, friends and all those other flower lovers in your life and encourage them to subscribe. You know who they are. Here is a link to the current Horizon ...and next month we will be having a fun contest, where you will have the chance to win a few nice prizes.

Flowers are such a fun, magical item. They aren't a necessity to live (for most people), they aren't expensive, they aren't loud, they aren't fattening and they aren't pretentious. Cut flowers hold a certain purity. This is tied to their temporal nature. They will share all they have with you for a week or two, and then pass into the compost pile. They are grown with the specific purpose of whimsy, beauty and flirtation from the very beginning. The personalities in our greenhouses, hoop houses and fields are as diverse as you would find in a group of people. The way a particular iris bends out of its row and under a water pipe to reach the light, the way a certain tulip will turn brilliant red among a block of white tulips and of course the amazing freesia, whose graceful stance in the hoop house looks like a sweeping ballet as the gentle breeze touches each blossom in a different way.

An iris with "extra" personality.

A non-conformist tulip.

Freesia waiting on the breeze.

Recently I was looking through a big stack of old note books and correspondence, deciding what to keep and what to recycle...in the name of spring cleaning.

What I kept noticing in my doodles, drawings and other scribbles, was a reoccurring theme of flowers. The rudimentary shape of a tulip, the symmetrical lines of a lily and the cheerful blossoms of a sunflower are all over these journals and notebooks. And mind you this is years before I entered the floral industry.

Perhaps I have had flowers on the brain my whole life and working for Sun Valley is truly my destiny. However, I am willing to bet people in all cultures, in all socioeconomic classes and with all different world views doodle in flowers.

Is there another item you can hold in your hand which crosses all natural and man-made boundaries with universal recognition and universal emotion? I think not. What do you doodle?