I’ve become very familiar with the meaning of the phrase, “He’s growing like a weed” as my oldest child turns nine this month. 

The month of July was rough. The weeds were out of control, and I cannot recall one good rain. I’m choosing not to use weed killer around any of my flowers or produce, so I am weeding by hand as needed. My baby enjoys pulling up weeds with Mom, and I don’t complain about having my little buddy with me. Until this point, we were getting some decent rains, enabling me to water every couple days, but July required hand watering, daily, with no end in sight for August. Sunny skies and 90-degree days as far as the meteorologist can see. Weed prevention and water was the focus for July. I installed drip irrigation and covered the front flower bed with 30 bags of mulch with the boys. It doesn’t solve all of my problems, but it definitely helps.

Now that the flowers are in full bloom, the boys are very invested in their success and excited to see them take off. They create their own bouquets and are dreaming up their own ideas for how we will sell them. For now, we are just pulling what is blooming together in real time to give to friends and neighbors. We are making no money on this expensive and exhausting business dream. I laugh my head off at posts on Instagram about picking my single tomato or flower that cost 70x more to produce than it would have to just buy at the store. Still, there’s something special about growing something yourself, and every day, we learn new lessons to become more efficient and to really make moves in 2025. As we start pulling together small bouquets of dahlias, cosmos and zinnias, I think the current big lesson that I’m learning is bloom time and working backwards on plantings and seed starts. If I want dahlias as my center flower, then I need to get my filler accents like strawflowers, bachelor buttons, Chinese forget me nots and bee balm in the ground earlier next year as these friends just were not blooming at the same time on this go round. 

My oldest son is my early riser. He is up outside watering the flowers with me before he heads off to camp and I head to work. Eli can tell when flowers aren’t looking so good and is by my side offering up ideas. Assessing a plant with droopy leaves, “Mom this flower needs water” or yellowing leaves, “We may need to fertilize these, Mom” or he starts looking over the leaves for bugs. We live on a pretty busy corner in the neighborhood and part of a big loop that neighbors like to walk. We get lots of onlookers stopping by to see what we’re up to. It’s a large flower bed and hard to miss; there’s obviously something going on. When neighbors yell over to us asking what we’re growing, Eli is quick to run to the street and strike up a conversation. He knows all the flowers by name, what colors we planted and what will soon be blooming. It’s a thrill to hear him speak with such maturity and confidence about a topic as nuanced as flowers. 

If my boys are three rapidly growing weeds, let’s at least make them a goldenrod, a violet or a Queen Anne’s lace. I could certainly use those in a bouquet these days.

There is so much more waiting to bloom, in time.  For now, I stop and smell the roses.