My Mother

Some people scratch their heads when I tell them that I want to be a flower grower and florist. When they do, I always chuckle and think to myself... 'clearly they don't know my mother'.

If they did know my mother Dru, they too, would be aching for a few beds to plant delicious flower seeds and searching Craigslist endlessly for a few acres or a barn to test out the "farmer lifestyle" for a while. 

 You see:

My mother makes farming look incredibly romantic. With her soft windblown hair, bright blue eyes, innocent smile and calloused hands, she makes even the toughest farmers crumble like the softest soil in pure adoration. 

Even goats, the most stubborn of the farm animals, follow her in awe as she leads them confidently across the farm. 

She is a goddess in farmer form, and is known to many-a-future-farmer enthusiast as one of the pioneers of organic farming. She, along with a few others helped to start one of the first campus gardens in the United States, and in the 1980's went against the conventional grain and began a sustainable and organic farm in Northern California. Full Belly is now one of the leading examples of a profitable and ecologically conscious farm. 

If that doesn't sound exhausting enough...

While working full time to create one of the most fertile farms in California, my mother and father also raised four adorably-blonde-energetic-screaming children. 

So, when I say that I grew up with the flowers that I now dream about arranging is an understatement. When I was young, my sweet mother would spend hours picking buckets filled with florals to arrange for countless orders and farmers markets. While she worked, her hands a blur of clippers and blooms, I napped in the back of trucks and in boxes, exhausted from my days of difficult exploring.  

As I got older, I began to stop sleeping (as much) in the back of the market trucks, and started sharing in my mothers enthusiasm for arranging flowers at various community events and farmers markets. To this day, there is no one I have more fun designing with, than her.

My mother is one of the main reasons I have gained experience with flowers, and want to pursue a career in this industry. 

While she gives off the elegant farming vibe, she is also the first to remind me that my dream will not come easy, and it will not be as "picturesque" as many people believe farming to be. 

My mother has managed to grow some of the most unique, colorful and gorgeous flowers on the land that my farming family owns, She has also somehow managed to make a place so abundant and beautiful that us four still-sometimes-screaming-now-adorable-adults want to return back to, to start our own journeys among the fields. 

I love my mom so deeply.

She truly is my most precious flower fairy.

My mother in the center of an issue of National Geographic

My mother with her beautiful blooms

Napping with the snapdragons

My favorite