At the End of the Season

     October 14, the eve of my final farm market of the season, a white frost settled over the grass. It dimmed the zinnias, turned the marigolds to a faded amber drift, wrestled the tomatoes and peppers to limp black rags. Summer is over. For that final market, I offered vivid bouquets of variegated "Fish" peppers in all stages of ripeness, set amid the last of the dark red dahlias, fiery sprays of burning bush, plumed bronze miscanthus grasses and graceful Ruby Silk Looooove Grass. (It must be said that way, just as grits can never be ordered without a drawl.) Most of those bouquets came home with me. It was a better week to sell dried bunches of Japanese lanterns. Perhaps with the blaze of color everywhere around, nobody needs bouquets; we're living in one.
     The need for bouquets has been a bugaboo all summer. I was doing pretty well back in lilac season selling seven bunches at a market, I now realize. Back in May, even here in the country, shoppers must have been hungry for a little captive springtime to put on the dinner table. The start of the summer bloom season, however, coincided with a floral glut: buckets upon buckets of bouquets brought by the local BIG farm, which has a farmstand open seven days a week, a full greenhouse and bakery, and a presence at all the larger farm markets as well. My bouquets sold between the moment theirs sold out and the end of the market. Four bouquets per market is a good take. I had to learn to accept that and look away. My price was the same as Big Farm's, I really think my quality and overall loveliness was the same. I even invested in plastic sleeves like theirs, thinking the presentation might make impulse buying more inviting but the addition made no noticeable change in sales. The fact is, a tiny stand can't compete with a huge stand that offers one-stop shopping. If I'm going to sell flowers again next year, then it will have to be during the shoulder seasons, it won't include the sunflowers or glads other vendors have done so well with that I can't compete, and it will have to be with some niche flowers no one else has thought of. Maybe no flowers at all? What, then?
    Will there be a "next year" for First-Flower? During this month of Last Flowers, it's time to tally up the successes and failings of the spring and summer now past. Discounting major one-time gifts from family members, my first year's labors cost a grand total of $3,333.64. Most of that wasn't the kind of one-time expense I'd hoped; it was the cost of market fees, health department licenses, sugar and canning jars. That means these costs will be annual ones. There is no way to spend less. My total profit after expenses? $2,606.36. Not a living wage. Pretty humiliating, actually.
     And yet, the voice inside my head keeps scheming. Even as the Math Major tells me "Mom, you should look for a job" and her gainfully employed elder sister pounds the pavements looking for even more ways to make herself useful and rich, I'm mooning about, expanding garden space and looking up seed possibilities. There's a new greenhouse of sorts rising from the newly cleared tangle at the back of the property, and 100 mixed late tulips tucked among garlic cloves in the cutting beds. 100 mixed tall Dutch iris are setting down roots beside them. Three elderberries are rallying to make syrup-perfect flowers and fruit come spring. I'm happy when I'm out there in the dirt and the fresh fall air. That's where the math fades into the background, and all this labor makes perfect sense with no calculus needed. I may not have a job, but I have a livelihood. Bloom where you are planted!