country dahlias two

It's a magical feeling to find yourself back in a place you visited exactly a year before and notice how much you've grown. Last year we visited Country Dahlias near the end of our first season as flower farmers. Jenny's two acre garden has Australia's largest collection of dahlias with 2,250 different types and over 20,000 bushes.

Last year we'd planted two rows of tubers; we'd staked them, irrigated them, made peace with their pests, picked their flowers, dead-headed them, sold them and given them away, and absolutely fallen head over heels in love with each and every plant. All in all it was a great first season and when we arrived at Country Dahlias all we knew is that we wanted more. We were completely overwhelmed. We loved the colours, we loved the shapes, we loved the pom-poms, we loved the huge ones and the mini ones, and we wrote a wish-list so long that it went over the page. This is the blog post I wrote back then.

A couple of weeks after we visited Country Dahlias last year we experienced our first frost and the end of the season. We let the plants die down, the weather closed in and we dug up their tubers in weather so cold and wet it hurt. We tried to keep the varieties named and separated but by that time the main thing was to get them out of the mud so they wouldn't rot. We brought them in and buried them deep inside boxes of saw-dust from Bren's lathe. We only had two rows but it felt like quite a big job and had us looking over lovingly at the rows of perennial flowers that were independently and quietly taking care of themselves.

By early spring we were itching to get our tubers out of the saw-dust and into the ground. We watched some YouTube and learnt how to divide them and then in November we planted them all. Five rows this time. And again they bloomed like crazy and we adored them.

This year on what feels like it'll become our annual pilgrimage to Jenny's I still had that same heart full of love feeling and I still felt so full of joy I could burst, but we also felt like more seasoned dahlia growers. We recognised so many of the varieties - some even by name, we thought a lot about practicalities - like stem length and strength, we tried to find gaps in our collection, and as always Bren was on the hunt for the perfect white. And this time we only ordered 10 tubers - I still can't believe we were so restrained.

I still can't believe we're so close to the end of this season. I'd really love to have each plant labeled with its name and colour and description before we lose them, but I've had the tags cut out stacked in a neat pile for weeks now and it still hasn't happened. There's always something more pressing to do. Maybe I'll get to it this weekend.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend my friends. Whether it's filled with matza or chocolate or something completely different, I hope it's delicious.

Lots of love to you wherever this finds you. Where is that by the way? And what will you be eating?


See you next week!

Love, Kate

xx