Coffee, Flowers, and the New Son de Flor Autumn Collection
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Autumn is right around the corner. Can you believe it? This has certainly been the fastest year of my life. How about you? I am sure that is true for many of us. Do the years not become faster and faster as we age? I find it humorous that for so many years, I felt like I was trying to seek a life that was slower paced and simpler. While I have done so, my plate has still managed to become quite full. Instead of appointments and gatherings and major calendar events, it is filled with things like flower picking, seed saving, food preserving, animal husbandry, cheese making, and bread baking. All of these things that slow us down take more time, which is why so many of us who are not of this world are very thankful for the modern conveniences life has to offer.
As always, this is not to say that one lifestyle or the other is better. I think there is a time and place for everything and everyone. This life that I chose has managed to still keep me busy, scrambling many days, to keep up with it all. However, I do not seek slowness any longer. I enjoy the fullness, the many tasks to do, and I love having substance in my routine.
The flower gardens are fully in bloom now after many months of waiting. The long wait for dahlias is finally over. Now, the garden is abundant with them. There are roses, zinnias, sunflowers, lavender, chamomile, cosmos, snapdragons, amaranth, gomphrena, and celosia all blooming among others.
Now that we do not sell flowers to the public, we grow them for our own pleasure and for our content. This has been absolutely wonderful, if I am being completely authentic! I love the idea of having a little flower shop or flower stand or cafe. It sounds so dreamy. The reality of that as an autistic individual is that I become easily burnt out and triggered by interacting with customers. I never understood that until recently as I learn more about my neurodivergent brain, but I always thought that everyone felt that way and that perhaps I was a bit more introverted then others. Alas, not everyone feels like they are constantly performing for an audience when having casual conversations.
The change from physical storefront to online content has also been nice for my mom, who is the more social of the two of us. Farming on a small scale or as a market gardening experience is truly so difficult. There is little reward for all of the physical labor and money put into such a business, though it is nice to make others happy. I think that we truly get the best of both worlds doing what we do now. We can bring joy to others with our visuals and videos, feed the earth with our plants, and we get to enjoy the beauty without having to cut it all down to sell it.
Today, we only cut flowers when we want to create an arrangement for our home or to give to a friend. We leave the rest for the bees and native pollinators, and we tour the gardens every evening to enjoy the beauty of it all. Now the the evenings are becoming cooler and the air is less heavy with humidity, we spend several hours playing outside until the fireflies come out. It’s lovely.
Then, we find our favorite flowers and tie a little tag on them. As they bloom and fade, when the flower has died back we collect the seeds to save for the next season. The process is much slower now, and perhaps that is the true test of determining what this garden is for.
As I wander the gardens these days, I am quite thankful for the push that life gave me when I was trying so hard to turn our farm into a business. I once thought that that would be my life story. I would be a small market gardener forever. Today, I feel much more at peace. When I look back at the time that I spent toiling away in the weeds, I always think of the quote from the movie Hope Floats.
“You're talkin' 'bout the American Dream. You find something that you love, and then you twist it, and you torture it, try and find a way to make money at it. You spend a lifetime doing that.”
I feel that I still have much to learn about this concept, of turning your passions and hobbies into careers. There is good and bad to it, I know.
As we enter the autumn season, I hope that you are enjoying the time spent tending to the flowers of your own and taking in their gentle beauty. I know that not all of us have the ability to grow flowers or to make food from scratch. My hope is that we can continue sharing that beauty with you through our images and filmmaking. I am so thankful to have you here!
I would also like to share with you that the new Son de Flor Autumn/Winter 2023 collection is live today. I was kindly gifted the beautiful dress and coat in these photos. You can help support me by shopping through my affiliate link, if you wish!
Enjoy the end of the summer season, dears.
xoxo Kayla
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