Bear with me as I learn the process of blogging. I have dabbled at similar ideas but have had this suggested to me as the best outlet for it. I will be discussing the process of building a starter plant business from the basement to the penthouse suite. Right now I think I am somehwere on the docks waiting to get in. :)
What is Plant Nappers?
I am trying to start a secondary business that hopefully will allow me to quit my regular job and do it full time. My interest started with a culmaniation of several hobbies but most importantly geneology. I had spent many years trying to find an old family plantation in Powhatan, Virginia. After several long, hot, exhausting hikes in tick and chiggar infested woods, with little or no success, I had all but given up. The land that contains the plantation is currently a hunt club. I happened upon one of them off site and we talked for a bit about its location. It was then that he dropped a bomb on me. He looked at me with a such matter of fact countenance and told me, "Just come in the spring when the daffodils are in bloom and you can't miss it!" Such a simple sentence but cut me to the quick.
Were my ancestors into gardening as well? What did the plantation look like with all of the flowers in bloom?
The following spring I went to Powhatan with my then new girlfriend "J" It was raining and cold, the type of cold that cut to the bone, but she was willing to go anyway. Trodding through mud down a long and rather dismal dirt path we made our way to where I thought the house should be. Crossing the creek I begain to have a glimmer of hope as the periwinkle was growing and blooming rather vigorously. As we approached the summit of the hill, our hopes were crystalized. There before us lay an area of better than 1 acre of nothing but trees and golden heads of thousands of pseudonarcissus blooms. I did't care that they were common, I didn't care that the rain had gone from a sprinkle to an all out down pour. The only thing going through my head at the time is "Eureka!"
J and I began to dig a few clumps of some that were in bloom but not fully opened yet to take home to the new home garden we had. I grabbed a clump for my mother who also loves all things blooming, and loaded them into my backpack to begin the walk out. Have you ever carried clumps of heavy waterlogged clay on your back? Uggh.......
It wasn't until after we got home and we had the clumps replanted that I felt safe in the fact they would live again. Some were in pots, some were bare bulbed and replanted in the yard around our first new tree, a native redbud. A few days passed and and the blooms had all but dried up to a shell of their previous beauty. Sad, but knowing that again next year and many years after that they would be back to bring a smile to my face and remind me of the place that my ancestors called home almost 300 years before, i went on with my garden projects. The pots that were sitting so patiently for me to come back to them had a suprise waiting for me. Poking up from one of them was a fading double with very distinct white and orange colors. I had missed it in its prime, but nonetheless it waited for me. I had never seen such a daffodil, and was unsure what it was. Sure I have crossed paths with butterand eggs(van sion?) many times in my life but never a wild found white double.
J and I decided that the next year we had to return to Powhatan to look for more. Waiting with baited anticipation, March finally came and it was time to revisit the homesite. Once again mother nature had a plan of her own and gave us a bit of rain that day, which made it almost feel like de ja vu. We made our way atop the hill again and once again the hill was covered with waning yellow cups as far as you could see through the woods. Jumping from clump to clump we looked carefully to see any unopened buds, or buds that appeared to be different. Our eyes were scanning the thousands of potential clumps looking for the elusive "Orange Phoenix"while hearing a rather juvenile song of "one of these is not like the others" in my head. Our time and efforts were not paying off. Our trip was fruitless until i heard from yards away J call out, "Honey, you might want to come over here!" It was in the subtleties of the inflection in her voifce that I knew she had found something worth looking at. I am not sure how far I jumped and how many unfortunate little lent lillies got crushed in my mad dash to her side. One day I will ask their forgiveness. There she was standing in a small group of many of the regular pseudo narcissus, but hiding scattered like easter eggs among them were little white doubles. The journey of many miles had paid off. We had our little elusive bulbs. I gathered them up carefully and put them back in my backpack. Weighted down we hiked back to the truck. Tired, wet, and filled with exhuberation we made our way back to our home in NC and quickly got them planted and in pots to await the next years bloom.
So you could say that Plant Nappers began with a single Orange Phoenix, and the rest of the story is soon to come.
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