CSA Shares: Week 2

In the shares last week (6/22-28/2014):

Alyssum
Avens
Baby Blue-Eyes
Baby's Breath
Clover
Coneflower
Cosmos
Dahlias
Dill
Philadelphia Fleabane
Shasta Daisies
Snapdragons
Sunflowers

Zinnias

Updates from the garden: 

As more and more is blooming, I'm fumbling my way through the mistakes I made like planting too much of some flowers (celosia, I just don't love it) and not nearly enough of others (Dahlia, Cosmos, Snapdragon, Peonies.)  It's helping a ton, though, in figuring out how I want to plan for next year already.  I thought I'd love having some of the mixes of flowers in specific colors as a sort of "insurance" this first year, but I'm already sort of sad that I didn't allocate more of that space used for specific flowers.  Now that they're starting to bloom, it's nice to have a variety, but it's also tons harder to figure out what's a weed and what's a flower unless it's something I can immediately recognize (like that darn crabgrass that's coming straight up through a layer of weed barrier AND mulch! or thistle!) 

I've gotten into a good routine of checking for blooms each morning and evening as I weed and water, then processing and sorting the flowers into buckets and that feels good.  It lets me get a lot of the work done while the kids wake up or after they go to bed and leaves time in between. 

I told someone this week that I'll grow all of these flowers again in a heartbeat forever and ever, even if I can't or don't do a CSA again.  Because I love it that much.  I knew I'd enjoy it, but I'm enjoying it so much more than I could have imagined.

I'm loving the chance to get to see and talk to so many great people on a regular basis.
I'm loving the extra reason to get my body moving and out in the sun.
I'm loving the research and planning as it continues.
I'm loving the knowledge that's growing.
I'm loving the anticipation for the next growing season already as I think about fall plantings for the spring and plants that can be over-wintered and what I want to add or take away next year.
I'm loving watching everything grow and bloom and still loving walking through daily with a 7 year old who is just as excited as I am to find the very first bloom of a new flower that we haven't seen yet.
I'm loving knowing that they're learning, even when I don't realize, as I watch her use my clippers to cut me a flower and ever so gently go around the stem stripping and clipping off the leaves at the bottom because she's seen me doing it so many countless times over the past month.
I'm loving watching the rows expand more and more into the walkways as the plants grow as I think about all of the time I spent in the winter and spring planning and stressing about how wide to make the pathways and how densely I could plant the rows to get a maximum harvest without crowding out the plants and hindering growth.
I'm loving thinking about seed saving and working that into the varieties of flowers I choose for next year in order to continue to create a sustainable small business.

So much goodness happening and I'm so glad to be sharing with all of you!