Toadally

Last summer was hard for me. We were not moving flowers as much as we would like, though I felt our bouquets were gorgeous. I still had seedlings in trays that I started months ago but never transplanted. My seedlings were having a slow but eventual decline, which weighed heavily on my heart. 

It was just so hot and muggy, and doing any task was twice if not three times harder on my body compared to the spring. While I have these photos of flowers at that time to remind me how gorgeous they were, I don’t think I could fully appreciate them then because I was tired all the time.

When seedlings were young and happy…

Look at these flowers that were blooming in early summer (all bouquets are from July 18)! Why did I not celebrate my success wholly, and was depressed with things that I couldn’t get to.

One July afternoon while watering the seedlings still in trays, I found a visitor. It was a small toad bathing in the seedling tray. It was a sign. You are going to be toadally okay, I decided that was his message. 

A small toad bathing in my seedling tray

About a month later, our flower field was flowing with summer blooms. I finally got around weeding our dahlia beds and had another encounter. I would like to think it was the same toad, only larger. You will never know for sure, but you believe what you want to believe.

When we first made our farm beds, our soil was very poor and I hardly encountered any earth worms. Not only the soil was lacking in many vital minerals and elements, it didn’t have much organic matter. It will take several years for our soil to get buzzing with all the activities of biology from microbiome to earth worms to toads. I already see quite an improvement in soil after one and a half years (we laid lots of compost on our farm beds). For now I am happy with one resident toad (would I see him again this year?), and many small earth warms that I now run into whenever I dig our farm bed.  Hopefully there will be more exciting encounters this year. 

Maybe Dan will make me a tiny pond in the middle of farm beds? Let us see.