The first flower garden we planted as farmer florists was a comedy of errors.

We were new at this, man.

That spring we feuded mildly with Dad over some fallow soil in the lot beside our house.  The plot had been untouched for years but somehow, in the same year and maybe even in the same day, we both decided to plant crops there.  (I suspect his popcorn dreams grew larger than life after we started dropping hints about flower farming.  Or maybe it was the other way around.)  In the end there was more than enough room for both of us and Dad plowed up his popcorn plot next to ours.

Well, then, we had a garden.  Now what to plant?  We dithered about in indecision for so long that we had to dash to K-Mart and Orme Hardware for our seeds.  No time to wait for a good and worthy shipment from Johnny’s Selected Seeds.

For some reason we settled on the dream recipe of cleomes, amaranth, zinnias, and dusty miller.  That was our first grave error in judgement.

Dad planted his corn and we planted our flowers.  One day it was discovered that we had planted our south row of sweet peas (that did not bloom) in Dad’s north row of popcorn.  A turf war ensued, with Dad humbly backing up his row of corn, and then returning to humbly hem us in on the far side of the garden with two wide rows of strawberries.  He won that war.  The sweet peas and popcorn are long gone, but years later those two rows of strawberries still march straight through the middle of our flower garden.

When I picked up a pack of amaranth at the hardware store I pictured the pretty little stuff that Floret grows for her market bouquets.  Hardware Store Amaranth had other ideas.  My first clue should have been the seedlings.  They sprouted instantly and in spite of my daily neglect surged toward the sky.  “Wow, I’m good at this,” I thought to myself. “Maybe I do have a green thumb.”

Hardware Store Amaranth had thick stems and stood a good 10” tall when we transplanted it into the garden.  By then we were both dubious.  The plants were almost fully grown, and it was only June!  I consulted the seed pack again, but it is hard to tell from a one-inch photo if the delicious plume-y flower shape will be two inches high or one foot high.  By about July when the plants towered over us we agreed we should expect one-footers.

I’ve never seen a pretty bouquet with one-foot long amaranth, 3 small pink cleomes, and 5 green envy zinnias.  That year taught us a very important lesson.  Farm bouquets must be planned in the winter, planned from seed, and planned by season.

We held it together by a few rusty bolts that first year, but if we had hit too many more potholes we would probably have steered that car into a popcorn patch and washed our hands.

We learned a lot.  We learned that cardboard is not a good weed barrier for paths.  We learned that Dad gets the right-of-way, and that sweet talking will get you more than corn seed flicking.  We learned to choose our seed varieties with care and not let any old flower take up that prime real estate.  Looking at you, Amaranth.

(Phone pic of Rosita gleefully tearing out the last of the amaranth.)

And we learned there are few things so satisfying as ripping out a disappointment by the roots and throwing it in the fire.

There’s always next year, we decided, and tightened up those rusty bolts.

LaRonda