Flower Humor for the Valentine Countdown

Flower Humor for the Valentine Countdown

#Valentine's Day Flower jokes Humor Lady Aster

The Final Week of Valentine's Madness has begun!

We hope the holiday has been going smoothly for all of you floral industry folks out there. I know the Go!-Go!-Go! paired with lack of restful sleep and minimal leisure time can start taking its toll during the final week.  For me, this is when my daily diet becomes a Holy Trinity of Horror--sugar, carbs, and caffeine rule with an iron fist, which first leaves me feeling like an omnipotent flower goddess, queen of problem-solving, but then quickly dissolves into a junk-food induced mental breakdown, where my only redemption seems to be that last handful of licorice and just one more cup of coffee.

Lucky for me,  here at Sun Valley I am surrounded by good people who tell me the hard truths like, "Hey there Lady Aster, you should probably switch to water," and, "Are you sure you've been showering?" This kind of support reminds me that laughter is indeed the best mental medicine, so to pass on this healing antidote, I have gathered some flower puns for the stressed, jokes for the restless, memes for the frustrated, and a video for the grumpy.  Enjoy.

 THE DUEL OF THE FLORISTS

Cartoon by Tony Zuvela

REINCARNATION

Cartoon by Kes

LADY ASTER IN 1 WEEK

 (Cartoon by Brainless Tales)

CONTROL ISSUES

Comic by the beloved Bill Watterson

CULPA VACCUS

A VALENTINE'S DAY POEM

Last week's  Groundhog Day post got me thinking about all the great Bill Murray performances.  One of my favorites is his improvised Cinderella Story scene in the classic film, Caddyshack.




Keep up the good work and keep smiling.

Start With Flowers, Valentine's 2014

Start With Flowers, Valentine's 2014

#AmericanGrown Flowers #Valentine's Day

"To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides." 
                                                                          -David Viscott

Life is about moments; moments with your spouse, moments with your kids, moments with your friends, and sometimes moments by yourself. These are the composition of our memories.

Valentine's Day is an opportunity to make a moment that you will remember forever. Sure, there is a lot of glitz and a wee bit of consumerism rolled into Valentine's Day, but you know what?

Why not seize the opportunity to make a moment?

Sun Valley's own "Jack of Hearts"...sorry ladies, he's taken!

You don't have to take out a second mortgage on your house to have a wonderful Valentine's Day. All you need are a few bucks to buy your sweetie some flowers. If you live where it's warm, like Florida, just go pick some yourself... legally of course!

Leonardo Da Vinci said, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." and this thought should be your guide to Valentine's Day. Bells and whistles? No, how about tulips and lilies? Yes, a simple elegant creation of romantic flowers is all you really need, as well as the sincerity in your heart.

This is the crux of Valentine's Day, sincerity in your heart is more important than any present. Your love will know, whether you spent $2,000 on a getaway Valentine's or $9.99 on a bouquet of American Grown flowers, if you have a true heart.

Perhaps this is why so many people have a pessimistic view of Valentine's, it really is a mirror back into our own hearts. For those of us that enjoy Valentine's and are excited to create a special memory,  start with flowers and go from there.

Don't have a special someone? Send flowers to your Mom, since no one loves you more than her, and you will be creating a moment for her that she will surely cherish.

Kiss, Kiss, Happy Valentine's Day XOXO,

Holy Ship!

Holy Ship!

#tulips #Valentine's Day trucking Valentine's day 2014

"East bound and down, loaded up and truckin'
we're gonna do what they say can't be done.
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there.
I'm east bound, just watch ol' "Bandit" run."
                                                           -Jerry Reed

T-Minus 32 days until Valentines Day. Much like astronauts at NASA preparing for a space mission, Sun Valley is preparing for the holiday.  There are check lists, meetings and a strong sense that the more pre-planning we accomplish now, the smoother every aspect of our operation will be as we approach the big day in February...and no I'm not talking about the Super Bowl on Feb 2nd.

Tulips = Love

It is thrilling to see Sun Valley scale up for Valentine's Day, this is when we flex our muscles. This is what we train for all year, an opportunity to bring our customers the freshest, highest quality, American grown flowers for the most romantic day of the year.

I headed down to the warehouse to find our transportation manager, Andrea Pesenti, and get the scoop on how all this works.

Andrea Pesenti

Lily: When do you start preparing for Valentine's Day?

Andrea: Mentally, just after Thanksgiving. we need to have a firm plan before Christmas happens. Right now our planning is full bore. This time of year, we actually rent additional cross-docks. One dock in Oxnard and one in Watsonville. So we are planning on many different levels.

Lily: What are the biggest challenges?

Andrea: Finding trucks that are coming to Humboldt County is my single biggest challenge since Highway 101 has some load restrictions. We are able to get what we need, but I really work hard dispatching and organizing our drivers. The other wild card is the weather, this time of year the roads and skies in any part of the country can be severely impacted by bad weather.

Lily: How many trucks will leave Sun Valley this year?

Andrea: With our carriers such as Armellini, Prime and Florida Beauty we see a lot of traffic, add in all the customers picking up at the farm, we are looking at a bunch of trucks.

Brrrrr its cold in here! Upright hampers getting ready to ship.

Lily: How many pallets on a full truck?

Andrea: On a 53 foot semi we get 26-30 pallets...the average is 28.

Lily: How many boxes on a pallet?

Andrea: I usually say an average of 35 boxes per pallet, which is about 100 cubes.

Lily: So about 980 boxes of flowers on each truck...gosh that's a lot of stems! When do you get to relax?

Andrea: When we make it to February 11th, I will be able to tell my team "We did it!" and we will be over the hump. I have a staff of 8 people spread across the farms, all working to get the flowers where they need to be. ...until then I sleep with my cell phone next to my bed to ensure that all the planning we are doing comes off without a hitch.

Lily: Thanks Andrea!

"East Bound and Down"

We talk a lot about growing flowers on this blog, so thanks for coming along today to learn how we prepare for a big holiday. We will be following our Valentine's Day prep, so stay tuned.

Special Valentine's thought from Lily

Special Valentine's thought from Lily

#tulips #Valentine's Day Hyacinth

Valentine’s Day has a really strong power. It is the power to remind people of the joy flowers bring. Many people only give their spouse or partner flowers this one day a year. Yet scratch their heads the rest of the year with what to grab on the way home from work, or how to express the inexpressible. Flowers are so much more a deep experience than can be explored in a single day, once a year. Watching a bouquet of flowers develop and change over a week’s time is an exercise in slowing down this hurried world in which we live. It returns us to wonder, it returns us to the details, to the small picture, to what is happening at our own dining room table. By combining different flower varieties through different seasons, across a year’s time, you build a tapestry of emotion and memory that affects all our senses. It makes you rich.

As sweethearts and families celebrate Valentine’s Day, let’s hope that after the red foil wrappers are tossed and the fancy dinners eaten, that the flower’s enduring natural beauty and the kinetic bliss which they possess will lead to keeping that vase full all year round.

Valentine's Day Push (Part 2)

Valentine's Day Push (Part 2)

#Flowers #Valentine's Day Flowers for Valentine's Day LA Hybrid Lily Oriental Lily Oxnard

This week we dive into how our Oxnard farm is coping with Valentine’s Day 2013, Oxnard is a chaotic blend of world class flower farm and our national transportation hub. 

In the fields, greenhouses and hoop houses, Oxnard is a growing some amazing flowers. Right now beautiful lilies are being harvested, as the light levels are just perfect. 


Oriental lilies enjoying the Southern California sun.

Alberto, our head lily grower in Oxnard stands among our Royal Lilies. This variety is called Party Diamond, which is a pink LA Hybrid, grown for Valentine’s Day. These are being harvested fast and furious for the holiday.

Alberto Arroyo

Our Oxnard farm is broken up into three properties. There is “Home Ranch” where we grow primarily lilies, asters, gerbera daisies, celosia, dianthus and lisianthus. Then there is “Golden Coast” where we grow oriental lilies, brassica, and even some French Tulips. Lastly are our outdoor fields of iris, called “Channel Islands.” These three areas are a short drive a part, and generally surrounded by strawberry fields.
The gerbera greenhouses are my favorite aspect of the Oxnard farm. It is like walking into a Dr. Seuss story. Big, colorful blooms balanced on top elegant stems, reaching for the sun. The gerbera are the only flower we grow hydroponically, and the bright white of the green house contrasting with the bold colors of the blooms immediately make you smile when you step into the greenhouse. I think we could bring groups unhappy and disheartened people here, and this warm and colorful environment would cheer them up.


Prepare for JOY.



A rainbow of color awaits you.

Many of the asters, lilies and gerbera daisies grown in Oxnard go straight to our bouquet division, Sun Pacific Bouquet. At this time of year, crews are working around the clock creating bouquets, featuring the red and pinks of Valentine’s Day. All these bouquets have an enormous amount of personality, from the big and bold like On Fire For Your Love to the playful and fun Sweetheart. These bouquets are all made by our dedicated team of artisans in Oxnard.

Marisol in Action!

I spoke with the Oxnard Sun Valley Head Quality Control person, Marisol Hernandez, about how things were going on our Oxnard bouquet line.

Lily: How are things going this holiday season?

Marisol: Overall, we are doing great. The team work has been awesome and production is flowing smoother than I anticipated.

Lily: Any issues?

Marisol: This year, the main challenge was dealing with some crop availabilities. When you are making bouquets you need to be able to adapt to crop supply and demand, and maintain the up most quality Our team, came through with flying colors, and the bouquets looks great.

Lily: Is your team still working around the clock?

Marisol: Luckily we have been winding down our super long shifts. Late last week, I was here for a few 12 hour days…glad that is over.

Marisol is one of those people at Sun Valley working tirelessly behind the scenes. She is on the farm at all times of day and night, making sure that we ship out the best quality flowers possible. Like a lot of the Sun Valley team, she will be taking a deep breath of relief once the last Valentine’s Day order has shipped. This little bit of relief will be short lived however, as we roll right into filling Women’s Day orders. For us this is another big bouquet holiday, so on Friday, March 8th expect to see some really colorful and creative bouquets, meant just for the women in all our lives.

Oxnard is also our national transportation hub. From this unassuming facility we distribute an enormous amount of flowers and bouquets.


The majority of the flowers we grow in Arcata are brought to Oxnard, where many of our customers come pick them up. The Oxnard shipping dock is busy place. Many of our customers actually use our facilities to stage their eastbound trucks. They will coordinate with other California Growers and use our dock as a consolidation point to fill up entire trucks full of flowers. With Valentine’s increased volume, we expand into another facility we keep for just such occasions. This facility is called “Del Norte” and it is a huge refrigerated warehouse, perfect for flower distribution.
If you receive flowers from our Arcata farm, they get to you a few different ways. Every evening, two or more semi-trucks leave Arcata. One truck goes directly to San Francisco, and then continues on to Southern California. The other trucks go straight through to Oxnard, about 600 miles. These rigs generally stop at both the Armellini and the Prime shipping docks and cross dock our freight onto their trucks for points East. The trucks end up at our Oxnard Farm, dropping off bouquet ingredients and other crops from Arcata.  Then they often get loaded up with supplies for Arcata, turn right around, and return to Arcata on the “back haul”

As Valentine’s Day rolls forward like a huge wave, the warehouses ebb and flow with product, the trucks ride through the night and our team pushes through no matter the hour. Luckily, right now the majority of our flowers are reaching their final destinations and lovingly being prepared for the big day.

Whew!

Valentine's Day Push (Part 1)

Valentine's Day Push (Part 1)

#tulips #Valentine's Day flower shipping Sun Pacific Bouquet

¡Ay, Caramba!

A little over a week to Valentine’s Day, and Sun Valley is humming at top speed. Being relatively new to the Sun Valley team; this my first Valentine’s Day on the farm and it is truly something to behold. In Arcata we have been literally working around the clock picking tulips and lilies for Valentine’s Day orders.

At Sun Valley one of our mottos is “…creating the best floral experience through operational excellence.” This is the time of year when you see what operational excellence really means. We have a huge capacity for growing and picking flowers, this is the time of year when we get to flex all the muscles we have built over the years.

Tulips fresh from the ground.

Out in the greenhouses, the tulips are coming in fast and furious. Crews are picking them as quickly as they mature. Tulips get pulled out of the soil and put in crates, and then a team member drives them right into the grading and bunching warehouse. Here they go on conveyor belts and get sorted by size and color, then bunched and sleeved for various customers. This is space is designed for high production, and that is what is happening now.


The Tulip Line

The vibe on the tulip line is really great. Music is blasting and our team members are all up for the big holiday push. 


Here our team member, Tara Pack, holds some beautiful “Jan van Ness” yellow tulips.

After being bunched and graded, the flowers get put in buckets for their first drink of water and a dose of special flower food.  Next they are wheeled into the shipping coolers. It is a great sight to see a train of tulips, iris or lilies being pulled through the big warehouse doorways.


David Long with a train a tulips.

The shipping warehouse is where the “rubber hits the road”, it is one thing to grow a huge amount of flowers, it is an entirely different thing to get them all boxed up and put on trucks and planes in an orderly fashion. I took some time to talk with one of our most experienced team members David Long. David has been working here about 20 years and he has seen firsthand the wild ebbs and flows in the floral industry. He was nice enough to take a moment and give me some insight into how our operation is functioning this holiday season.

Lily: So David what is the difference between a Valentine’s Day rush today, and ones in the past?

David: The amount of product we can ship today was impossible 20 years ago. Back then we didn’t have the proper organization to ship the huge orders we do today.

Lily: What’s changed?

David: Today, we have the skills and technology to see the big orders through. Years ago, a big order would take a whole day to put together, now those same big orders are just one of many orders we do in a single day. Our computer system allows us to plan, layout, organize and flawlessly ship immense orders.

Lily: How does this affect the packing crews?

David: In the old days we would be here literally 16 to 18 hours a day. Team members would get burned out, people would just hit the wall with exhaustion. Now, we are still working some overtime, but with the technology in place, we are working much smarter and much more efficiently.

I noticed David starting to get impatient and look down the line for the next train of tulips, so I figured I better cut this conversation short, and let him get back to his task.

After the tulips are boxed, they patiently await shipping out on the loading dock. This is the coldest warehouse space, and the semi-trucks are being loaded with pallet after pallet of fresh flowers. This vast space is usually about half full as orders are made ready to leave the farm. Right now there are boxes up to the ceiling and crews enduring the frigid conditions to make sure the flowers are sent on their way in perfect condition.


Boxes of flowers in the shipping cooler.

Walking through this area, making sure all our “i”s are dotted and “t”s are crossed, I found Vickie Balke. Vickie coordinates the order labels for our computerized system. All orders must have a label, and Vickie is one of the behind the scenes people at Sun Valley that is crucial. Somehow she sees the big picture of the shipping warehouse, and yet can tell you where a single box among thousand is located. I asked Vickie, how things were looking this year.

Vickie answered, “You know, we are doing really good this year because the managers have done a great job of spreading out our most knowledgeable team members."

She continued, “We bring on new, inexperienced team members for these holidays. This year we have our experienced people spread out evenly among the day shifts, night shift and cooler shifts, this is working out great. The packing is being done at the highest quality I’ve ever seen, and moral is high because everyone is feeling supported.”

It takes a lot of moving parts to live up to the excellent industry reputation Sun Valley is honored to hold. Bringing flowers to market at the highest quality is what we are all about, and to see the latent technological and human potential of our organization expand and activate into a dynamic force is pretty awe inspiring.

A big semi-truck closes it’s back door, and the driver hops into the cab for the haul. As the truck pulls out of the farm onto Upper Bay Road, it is kind of a bookend on a process that starts with a truck arriving with some crates full of bulbs. Soon those flowers and all this effort will be shared with loved ones somewhere across the county.

Smiles and heartfelt feelings will warm up this February and we will know we have done our job.

Next week we will follow our flowers as they head south.  Many go to the Prime or Armellini shipping docks for distribution, while others arrive at our Oxnard Farm for customers to pick up and also to be included in Sun Pacific bouquets. ...until next week.