flower design = crazyfun

Dear Readers,

Flower farming doesn’t yet pay the bills– er, any bills actually. Grow, flowers, grow! I weed, I water, I speak to the plants, I sing them silly songs, and I cross my fingers that they’ll flower in time for the first week of the bouquet share in June.

And I have other jobs. Thank you to all of you Charles Village babies who let me nanny you! I also work at Local Color, the all-local floral design studio in Charles Village.

Once upon a time, when Butterbee Farm was just a twinkle in my eye, my sister Anna asked me to look for local flowers for her wedding. The great and powerful Google led me to the exuberant flower farmer Kathy York, who connected me with Local Color owner Ellen Frost, who not only did the flowers for Anna’s wedding but also convinced me to grow flowers, which transformed Butterbee into reality, which connected me with the urban ag scene, which made me fall in love with Baltimore in a whole new way.

Okay, so Local Color. Ellen is a powerhouse of interdisciplinary farming knowledge– that is, she knows about farming, flowers, design, weddings, small business… essentially, she knows everything I want to know. So it’s awesome that I get to work with her. On Saturday, I came in to the studio early in the morning, washed and organized some vases for upcoming weddings, unpacked some candles for outdoor centerpieces, and made these adorable centerpieces with wheatgrass and orange/pink flowers:

I got to do this barefoot (my favorite way of being), while drinking tea, with music in the background, with Ellen’s husband Eric being hilarious, and Waverly Farmer’s Market goers wandering by to say hello.

Actually, everyone at Local Color is really goofy. See classic Ellen in the orange shirt below:

Ellen has several other employees– Carling and Irene are the two incredible designers I get to see the most. I love being in the studio with everybody at once because hilarity is inevitable, as we are all silly and we are surrounded by flowers…

Not to mention that Charles Villagers are, er, a little quirky in general (myself included), so whenever the shop is open to the public selling flowers and seedlings, it is a fantastic place to just be and listen and people watch…

I’ll be selling my flowers to Ellen, once they are in bloom, and I’m just itching to see my flowers in bouquets like the one my sister held at her wedding in March:

And to see my flowers among the likes of those in Ellen’s cooler…. what an incredible joy that will be……

Ahhhhhhhh flowers!

I wish you all a whiff of lilac…

Laura Beth