Anne Long…the whole story
I’ve loved flowers ever since I was little. Many of my childhood memories are tied to flowers. For mothers day I’d go get a few dozen of my mom’s favorite flowers and plant them in the front flower bed of our house. I remember meandering outside my grandparents house and smelling every single rose in my grandma’s garden. Yet, all growing up, flowers were an occasional hobby at best, and nothing more.
In the spring of 2003, my husband Taylor and I moved to the Skagit Valley for Taylor’s job. We had two children then: Alli was 4, Emma was not even crawling yet. At the time, we thought we were just passing through; that we’d be here for maybe 2 years max while we waited for the perfect promotion to come along. I was a shopping-loving, city girl from St. Louis who found herself plopped down in the middle of, what I then referred to as, Farm Town, USA (also known as The Skagit Valley). I was not at all prepared to fall in love with this place. But, then again, I had never met a dahlia. It didn’t take long. I drove by my first dahlia patch the summer of 2003 and the rest is history (enter the only hobby of my tired-as-all-get-out-stay-at-home-mom life).
In between carpooling, PTA meetings, classroom volunteering, checking in on teachers (if you are a teacher, BLESS YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART), having two (more) babies, making dinner, changing diapers, hosting youth group and not killing my children, I’d go out and weed my garden, snip some blooms for the girls to take to the neighbors, and chat with any flower-admirer who walked past our house. I’d divide up my tubers every year or two and set them on the table in the teacher’s lounge.
As my kids got bigger, so did my growing space. In 2016, we moved into a 100 year old fixer upper on a corner lot and I began “urban farming” between the sidewalk and the street. By the time 2020 rolled around we had completely filled up our little farm(ing strip). I was officially feeling like a Flower Boss Queen. Life was good. And crazy beautiful.
If you’ve been following me for a while, then you know what comes next. If not, you might want to sit down….
Wireworm-mageddon 2020 struck my dahlias literally overnight. Ever heard of wireworms before? Neither had I. You can read that story here. In short, I lost hundreds of dahlia tubers (about 95% of my entire collection). *Insert super dramatic & depressing music here.*
It was 2020 and I had extra time on my hands. I thought about my options and decided to start a flower business (read: get a business license so I could afford to replace my tuber stock without selling a kidney or any of my children). So, I ordered up all my favorites and listed the extra tubers for sale on my website.
Guess what? I was completely sold out! Dahlia mania is real.
(Again, some of you have been customers since then and know what I’m about to say. Still sitting down? Oh good.) The tubers arrived with not a small amount of disease and I ended up deciding to pull the plug and refunded Every. Single. Order.
Yeah.
By then it was late April of 2020, I had no dahlia tubers, a bunch of wire worms and a ton of new customers. Now what?
Taylor and I mulled it around over the next few weeks. I was convinced starting a business was maybe the worst idea I had ever had. He patiently and empathetically listened to me as the discouragement poured out of my demoralized and dahlia-deprived soul. His response? I remember him looking over at me as calm as can be and saying, “babe, I think you need to keep going. You have amazingly loyal customers that appreciate your honesty. And you’re super good at this.”
So, here I am.
Xo
Anne
