Autumn on the Flower Farm

Autumn on a flower farm in Utah is often full of bulb planting, digging tubers, and clearing out rows of spent flowers in preparation for the next year’s blooms. It’s a time to look back on the season and its lessons.

It is also a prolonged goodbye.

I hold a duality of emotions in fall. I am sad to see the flowers go. I am sad to watch them fold in on themselves as the frost takes their color and vitality. What was previously fully animated in the wind is now rigid and snaps.

But I am also full of a strong sense of beauty as I watch the flowers turn black. It is the common sentiment that with the knowledge of death we are able to fully enjoy life. It is like watching the leaves change color in the mountains. We know they will fall and soon we'll be left with stark branches reaching out. So the trees’ final show of color is all that more meaningful. 

The dead and dying flowers are another reminder to enjoy the vitality of life while it is here.

And now that the flowers are spent, I will work hard to prepare the farm for winter, to get my bulbs planted and clear out the rows.

The work in autumn does not offer quick rewards. It makes you wait to see the results of your efforts.  This autumn I am planting over 5,000 bulbs, mostly daffodils. I am also trialing starting anemone and ranunculus in low tunnels which will be a different challenge for me here in zone 5. 

The work I am doing this autumn is for a beautiful spring. I will not know if it will be fruitful until the snow melts and tiny green tips emerge from the soil. 

But I do know that by doing it anyway, I am putting out into the world the beauty I would like to be a part of.

Autumn is a beautiful time in Utah. There is beauty in the colors and there is beauty in the work as it fills our imagination and heart with color for next spring.

Your Flower Farmer,

Heather