I'm rolling a big boulder up a hill trying to put together flowers right now here at Struan Farm. It's only a brief time before the hellebores come out, I can see them gathering their strength to bloom. At the moment I'm left with the last gasps of summer, transitional varieties like echinacea, snapdragons and nigella that hang on just that little bit longer. The flowers for our weekend dinner table are a case in point. The rain stopped briefly so I made a dash outside with jar and scissors in hand.
My moral dilemma is that I can't bring myself to pick a flower when I see a monarch butterfly around it sipping nectar. They are about to depart for wherever it is monarch butterflies congregate for winter here in NZ, and this one will need its strength for that journey. I also will not cut a flower with a hungry bee diving in. I leave those for my friends in the garden and find my flowers elsewhere. There should be enough for everyone here at Struan Farm.
Here's what I came up:
I'm happy to have them. It's not summer but then that's where we are.
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