A trip down serenity lane

A trip down serenity lane

California Flowers Chinese Lanterns Cotinus Fall Flowers Flowers and Emotion Ilex Rosehips

As you might imagine, one of the many perks of working at a flower farm is getting to stroll through the flower farm once in a while. Immersing yourself in fields of flowers, foliage and berries makes you forget about ringing phones and unanswered emails for a bit. Everyday stresses just melt away and in flow feelings of calmness and tranquility.

And happiness. Let's not forget about happiness.

When you're waist-deep (sometimes over-your-head deep) in flowers, you basically feel every emotion we know cut flowers invoke in people - just a much larger dose.

For the readers who don't get to frolic through the flowers on a regular basis, I want to take you on an image tour of Willow Creek, which I visited for first time since summer the other day. Hopefully sharing these pictures can help you forget your daily woes for a few minutes!

The Farm

Three months ago, Willow Creek was sun-drenched valley laced with the
scent of roses and buzzing with bees. A couple weeks ago it was blanketed
in fog (as pictured here) and bursting with fall crops.



The view from above

The neighbors



Rosehips



Fog hangs over the Rosehip crop



A few rose bushes still have flowers, soon to be completely replaced by berries



Close-up of brilliant red, giant Rosehips

Cotinus

The Cotinus stands about 8 - 10 feet tall now.
I felt like Alice in Wonderland when I wandered past this crop!

 

The Cotinus was covered with droplets from the previous night's rainfall. The rain drops
looked like crystals against the dark purple Cotinus. What a stunning sight!



Close-up of rain droplets on Cotinus leaves



Physalis (aka Chinese Lanterns)

 

A field of Chinese Lanterns, nearly ready for harvest

 

Close-up of the paper-like Chinese Lanterns

Sun Valley team members - fully clad in waterproof gear to keep dry after
the rain - harvest a row of Chinese Lanterns



A tractor-pulled cart full of freshly cut Chinese Lanterns

Ilex Berries



Gold Ilex is just about ready for harvest



Red Ilex will follow the Gold and Orange harvest, just in time for Christmas!

Here ends my photo tour of Willow Creek in the fall. Hopefully it gave you a moment of peace during your busy day!

If you want to learn more about any of these crops click on the following links:

For more on Rosehips, click here for the blog post or here for the flower resource page.
For more on Cotinus, click here for the blog or here for the resource page.
For the Chinese Lanterns resource page, click here.
And finally, for the Ilex resource page, click here.

Also, check back in a few weeks for a post on Ilex and what this crop has in common with Degas' famous paintings of ballerinas!







Sun Valley's Top 3 Fall Colors

Sun Valley's Top 3 Fall Colors

Autumn Colors CA Grown Cotinus Fall Flowers Hydrangea Lilies Sun Valley Tulips

As the air gets a bit crisper, leaves crunch under our feet, and (up here in Humboldt) rain pours on our heads, we can all truly feel fall setting in. You can even smell it, with scents like wood-burning stoves and apple crisp wafting through the air. But what does fall look like?

Around the Sun Valley farm, it's colorful! Although, not in a "spring colorful" sort of way - it's a bit more rustic. I guess it's just how you'd imagine fall looking!

Here are the Top 3 fall colors I've been seeing around the farm lately:

Fresh purple Cotinus

1. Deep Purple

As green foliage naturally starts to fade away with the warm weather, rich purple comes in the form of Cotinus (which I've mentioned once or twice before - click here and here to read more about it). Cotinus leaves are truly a treat for the eyes, with their tricky hints of dark green and even reddish-pink. The dark coloring of Cotinus makes it the perfect compliment to any type of fall arrangement, be it classic, contemporary or spooky!

2. Marbled!
Another crop you might have heard me mention lately is Antique Hydrangeas. (Click here for the latest Hydrangea post.) These huge mop tops are full of burgundies, greens, blues, purples and several other colors when you look up close. I suppose Antique Hydrangea is exactly what I meant by "rustic."

A bunch of marbled Antique Hydrangeas

3. Orange
Think pumpkin patches, falling leaves, candy corn... Orange is the unofficial color of the season. Naturally, we have plenty of Tulips, Love and Royal Lilies, and crops just coming in, like Ilex and Chinese Lanterns, that help put the Orange in your cornucopia!


Fresh orange Tulips, ready to ship

4. Don't forget about... I know this is a Top 3 list, but I certainly don't want to sell the rest of the fall colors short. I won't list them off, but I'll put it this way: if you can imagine a color, I'm sure we've got a flower for that.

Now you tell me: Did I leave anything out? What colors do you think should have made the top 3 list?

Lily's Fun Facts about Fall Crops

Lily's Fun Facts about Fall Crops

Around the flower farm CA Grown Cotinus Growing Flowers Hydrangea Sun Valley

My boots didn't travel too far over the past week, so today I'm going to share a couple Fun Facts about our Fall crops (one that's educational and another that's downright cool) that I learned right here in the office.

Fun Fact #1: Did you know that the "petals" we see on the surface of Hydrangea aren't actually the blooms?



Don't let these bloom-like flowers fool you...

Hydrangea's surface flowers are actually petal-like sepal structures. The real blooms are below the flowers. If you look closely in the photo below, you can see the pistil and stamen. This is the true Hydrangea bloom.



Spreading apart Hydrangea's surface "petals," or sepals,
reveals the pistil and stamen below.



A close-up of the real Hydrangea blooms

Fun Fact #2: During certain times of the day, you might smell Maple syrup wafting through the air at Sun Valley. Unfortunately, no one's serving up pancakes around here (that I'm aware of). The scent actually comes from one of our Willow Creek Fall Crops, Cotinus, which smells strikingly similar to Maple syrup when it's cut! One of my team members discovered that one day when she cut Cotinus at her home. Talk about a pleasant surprise!



Cut some of this Cotinus, and this is what you'll smell...



Who's hungry?

So, these are the fun facts that I learned this week. The education never ends around here! Now don't go trying to put Cotinus leaves on your pancakes...

Keep following Flower Talk for more information on our Fall crops. Also, if you ever have questions or topics you'd like to learn more about, let me know in the Comments. I'm always happy to investigate new topics and share my findings!