Blog | Rose Red & Lavender

Someone came and stole my eggplants!!! I had a beautiful white and a beautiful purple eggplant and someone stole them, right off the plant. All I hope is that they had a good dinner and that they didn’t just take them and chuck them. They got eaten, right?

We all say that death is a part of life, the reality is that that is true. When we opened our shop we decided to be a full service florist to service the wonderful people in the neighborhood we live in. Part of this involves funerals. I always think of the people that I am designing for, I like to talk to the families about their loved ones and try to create something that will make them happy and that represents their lives. Most of the time, the departed are elderly and have lived a long, full life.
This week, I had the honor of arranging the flowers for a friend of mine, who is also a mom. Her life ended way too soon, but she always lived it to the fullest. It was both the saddest and most gratifying work that I have done. She was from Scotland and I created a casket spray of grasses, heather and wildflowers. It was beautiful. Nothing can remove nor should remove the grief of loosing a loved one, but flowers really do help to say a last goodbye.

Everyone loves chickens, right? Well for for those of us without any outdoor space, or for those of us who are to chicken to have live chickens in the city (like me) here is the ultimate Chicken Purse! Just in.

My parents live in West Virginia, near the Maryland border. Their property sits on the site of an old tomato and melon farm. There was once a thriving tomato industry in their area but the local farmers could not compete with the big factory farms in California so they went out of business. Unfortunately, the farmers used chemical fertilizers which left the soil depleted of organic materials and nutrients and pretty poor. It has been siting fallow for about 20 years.

They said that nothing can grow there but offered to give me a small piece of land to try to grow something if I could, I saw it as a horticultural challenge.

I fell in love with lavender when I first visited the south of France and had the opportunity to visit lavender fields while it was in full bloom. My parents had seeded their property with wildflowers and registered their property as a wildflower farm and lavender seemed like a good fit. Lavender loves to be planted in well draining soil on a slope without many nutrients. It doesn’t need much maintenance, water, pest control or fertilizer and if planted correctly, can be maintained by mowing in between rows a couple of times a year. Turns out it loves it in the mountains of West Virginia where there are hot dry summers and lots of silty, rocky soil. It also tolerates being ignored by my parents. We planted a few thousand plants on mother’s day a few years ago and it has thrived.

This year has been especially dry and while the harvest wasn’t huge, the quality this year was exceptionally fine. While you spent the 4th chomping on hotdogs or fauxdawgs trying to keep cool, we spent the holiday weekend at our flower farm in West By God Virginia picking lavender from our fields in triple digit weather. Yea Haw! Our lavender is grown without the use of chemicals or pesticides and is perfect for use in your home or for cooking.

Here is a great recipe for Lavender Sorbet

Lavender Sorbet

The vodka in the recipe makes it very soft. It’s not the kind of iced dessert you scoop into an oversized waffle cone. It’s a slushy, uncooperative dish that, in small doses, will refresh your heat-addled senses. While this style of sorbet is similar to the palate cleansers served at high-end restaurants between courses, I like it as a mid-afternoon refresher on a scorching hot summer day.

Makes 4 very small servings

1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup water
1 heaping teaspoon fresh lavender flowers (food grade only*)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon vodka
In a small sauce pan, dissolve sugar and water over medium heat.
Stir in lavender. Bring to a boil then quickly reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes.
Allow to cool for 10 to 15 minutes, then strain lavender syrup through a fine sieve.
Stir in lemon juice and vodka.
If you have an ice cream maker, make the sorbet according to the manufacturer’s directions.
Otherwise, pour the syrup into a flat-bottomed glass dish, cover, and freeze until semi-solid. Break the sorbet up with a fork and freeze until solid. Place frozen sorbet in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Cover and refreeze until ready to serve.

Moss!

During our breaks, we combed the woods and fields to look for the ultimate mosses and managed
to find about six different varieties, just right for terrariums! Our moss
was cultivated from private land and is 100 percent organic! We took care to make sure that it was harvested in a responsible manner, leaving some behind to grow even more moss. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Etsy folks, come and get it.

We are all pretty tired of all of the construction that has been going on, especially those of us who have to look at a stalled construction site every day. Take a walk down Orient avenue and you will see what I mean.

Orient avenue is a small street near Cooper Park. It used to be called Doctor’s Row because that is where the Doctors who worked at the Greenpoint Hospital lived. The hospital has been closed for some years now an now it is home to nice elderly couples, young families and a handful of twenty something singles. There was an especially beautiful house on 59 Orient that thanks to a greedy developer is now a shell that is home to crack heads and a huge eyesore.

Our shop is next to a vacant lot which was surrounded by an ugly construction barricade. Not only did it block the visibility of our store, it was a hazard. I painted it pink this became a topic on a popular blog, http://www.newyorkshitty.com/williamsburg/?p=38615. This past spring, the barricade started falling down and was a serious hazard. We tried calling the police and were told unless someone was hurt, they couldn’t do anything. Thanks, Police. We tried the fire department, no luck. The building department said that they could send an inspector in a few weeks WTF!!

I had some reed fencing left over from the year before and a bunch of bamboo stakes. Hammer in hand and full of spring fever, I walked over and tore down the wall. It sure felt good. We then built a new one and because there was a concrete slab, we had to move it back a few feet leaving a spec of dirt in the front.

This left us with a great place to put a Guerilla Garden. I actually did contact the owner and he asked me to put some grass or something in that space, I said, “No Problem”. He acknowledged that we did him a big favor by tearing down the fence. A week later, the new owner, a bank, stopped by and took some pictures, they didn’t mind the garden there. What an asshole the previous owner was for asking me to paint the fence because it looked unsightly, when he was days from loosing the property. Yes, its confirmed, these developers are assholes.

This is our garden today, we are very proud of it. We have also been putting vegatable plants in tree pits and will give 30% off to anyone who can prove that they are using plants for Guerilla Gardening.

This is a closeup of a pineapple Lilly, a beautiful specimen.

Hi, Jessi here! I feel so wonderful because I just had a few moments to spend in our garden oasis under the beautiful sunshine hydrating moss in a big tub of water! The moss was so soft and wet and with the sun sparkling in the water I felt like I was at the most peaceful and refreshing lake.

Some of you who have been at the shop in the past few months may have met William. He is my 4 month old son and has been with me since he was born in December.

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Yesterday we went on a road trip. It was quite an adventure, we picked up an antique pedicab in a seaside village and stopped by to visit our friends, The Black Cowboys, and get some Brooklyn manure.

The town we went to is actually part of New York City, called Broad Channel and is on the way to Far Rockaway.

The Federation of Black Cowboys is a group of African American men who are dedicated to keeping the tradition alive of Black Cowboys, http://www.federationofblackcowboysnyc.com/, yes there were a lot of black cowboys!

Anyhow in keeping with our tradition of keeping things local and organic I picked up some manure which we will be selling at the shop.

We can also get you a truck load of manure if you like. Yeah Haw!
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Can’t say enough about them , my favorite style of gardening. Potagers are French styled gardens that mix fruits and vegetables with flowers. If you have been fortunate enough to have been to Paris. These are the lovely little gardens that you see on Montmartre with grapes and herbs.

This gardening style is a permaculture techniques where you must use organic fertilizers for them to thrive. I have been using these techniques for years and have happily enjoyed fresh lettuce for Christmas dinner.

This year we are offering our design services so you can have your own little bit of Paris in Brooklyn, chicken not included.

Spring is a busy time of year and we just finished wrapping up our June weddings and are now scheduling our fall weddings. This is when I reflect on weddings past and think about the brides and all the beautiful flowers. Here are some pictures of my favorites. I try to use locally grown flowers as much as possible and think the best results come when I have flowers to work with and the leeway to chose what I think looks best when I am buying flowers.

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Venus Flytraps have arrived!

We have been waiting for spring and are very excited to have venus flytraps awake again. Venus Fly traps and Pitcher Plants are native to North America. They thrive in acidic soil that has little to no nutrients. We plant our traps in a mix of peat and sand and make sure that their feet stay wet and their shoulders dry. You can plant them in a BOG garden if you like in your Brooklyn Garden if you like.

Flytraps love full sun and need to have rest in the winter time. I recomend that people put theirs in a cool spot in the winter, or put them in a plastic bag in a refrigerator for a few months. They need their beauty rest!