Behind the scenes...

Oh, the glamor of owning your own business, your own patents and holding the direction of your life in your own hands is a glorious thing!

Yeah, ok, sometimes.

But today I wrangled with the bank for hours (they basically only loan money to folks that already have money) and collected and pressed the most boring of all botanicals - the greenery (selaginella to be precise) that we need to decorate almost all of the luminaries we make. Cosmos flowers are fun because they LOOK LIKE the typical flower that a kid would draw in first grade. Azaleas are fine because they are first in the spring and there is a warmth and a promise in their aroma. but the "Sally-G" is an August afterthought. Sweating, March through July, plowing, planting, watering, picking, and pressing the daisies, pansies, Queen-Annes-lace, Johnnies, hydrangeas and the rest of the flowers inevitably becomes a job. It becomes a grimy, buggy, back rending repetitive job. Then you realize (about the time your fingernails wear through) that you still have to procure the background greenery that every floral Honeypot needs and you are actually only halfway through the pressing pressing requirements for the year (not counting, of course, the fall offerings of Japanese and sugar maples, ginkgoes and the like).

Ahh, the freedom!