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‘Master florist’ Haruko Adkins, 90, had a passion for flower arrangements and tennis - The Washington Post

She would say that some were “too edgy compared with her formal training,” Morhart said. [Those we have lost to the coronavirus in Virginia, Maryland and D.C.]He said Adkins’s arrangements were unique because she “understood the idea of negative space.”“Others fill up all the space” in a vase, he said, whereas Adkins “understood that you didn’t have to crowd things in. She was an artist. She was definitely talented.”Morhart recalled Adkins as “totally sharp,” saying, “You would guess she was 80.” She was an avid tennis and ping-pong player and played both games well into her 80s, her friends said. When she and a friend visited the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I., Morhart said, the trip was a “thrill for her.” Born in Nagoya, Japan, Adkins studied the art of floral arrangement and earned a four-year degree as a “master florist,” her friends said. She married Earl A. Adkins, a criminal investigator in the U.S. Army Military Police Corps. With his work, the couple traveled and lived in several places, including San Francisco and Germany, before settling in Arlington. He died in 1999.Adkins had a large group of friends and was known for helping others. If someone else wanted flowers she planned to use in an arrangement, she would happily give them away, Morhart said.“She was very, very generous,” Morhart said. “She was always willing to say: ‘Help yourself. Take that if you need it.’ She had a very sharing nature.”Adkins also did volunteer projects, including making sweaters and bags to carry food for those in need. She was once named Volunteer of the Year at Goodwin House.Valerie Burke, the chief philanthropy officer at Goodwin House, said Adkins also enjoyed working at a thrift shop on the property as a volunteer and was good at making displays.“She loved getting to know people and helping them find just the right trinket,” Burke said. In... https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/haruko-adkins-coronavirus/2020/08/18/58bc3c7a-e13e-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html

Ham Lake couple trust God as they grow family flower farm business - The Catholic Spirit

When they began researching farming, they planned to grow organic food. They were inspired by the writings of Joel Salatin, a Christian farmer in Virginia who has become the godfather of a movement favoring small-scale, sustainable, family-based farming. The Carlstroms were thinking produce and chickens when, in the winter of 2019, Kristen came across a book titled “The Cut Flower Garden” by Erin Benzakein, a florist farmer in Washington.“Basically, I just fell in love with it,” Kristen said. “It was kind of out of the blue for me.”She had always kept a small flower garden with sunflowers and zinnias, but nothing large-scale. But once she began to think about flowers, she became convinced that was the direction she wanted to move.“I knew we were going to take on something really big,” she said. “It was really important for me to be really passionate about it. And so, this was something that just really took a hold of me. And I had so much energy with thinking of doing really hard stuff to make it happen.”She and Jonah took Benzakein’s online course on flower farming, and dove into researching what would grow well in Minnesota’s climate. “Before we knew it, we’re like, we’re really doing it,” she said.Jonah gives Kristen all the credit for the flower focus. “I never thought I would be a flower farmer — I don’t think many men do think of that,” Jonah said, sitting near the field. He agreed to the online course, “and I was just sort of open with the Lord; ‘Wherever you lead us.’”“Ever since leaving school, I wanted to do something in nature. I love working outside. I’ve been praying along the way” for God’s guidance, he said. “Basically, I want to come home and I want to work from home.”The Carlstroms don’t know any other young farmers, but they’re not alone among Catholic millennials. Jim Ennis, executive director of St. Paul-based Catholic Rural Life, said there are like-minded young Catholics across the United States who are exploring and adopting a rural lifestyle, including small-scale farming. Many are drawn to a slower, family-focused pace of life away from the demands of city living and corporate work.Like the Carlstroms, many don’t have farming backgrounds, Ennis said, and it’s hard work without the guarantee of financial sustainability. But it’s rewarding, he said. Farming is creative work, where people can work in nature, with their hands, alongside family members, for the benefit of their own tables and their community. And even young children can see, understand and participate in their parents’ work, he said.“There’s something very innate in many people’s DNA to connect with God’s creation in a closer way,” he said, “and I think that’s very Catholic and very Christian.”Kristen admits that sometimes she’s thought the idea of turning stay-at-home mom to cut-flower florist is “crazy.” But, “there was a lot of discouragement that came whenever I tried to let it (the idea) go, and a lot of joy that was there when we kept pursuing it,” she said, so they forged ahead.The field is easily accessible from the Carlstroms’ house through a path in the woods. Kristen spends patches of time throughout the day tending its 20, 100-foot rows as she learns to orchestrate timing their harvesting with flowers’ longevity onc... https://thecatholicspirit.com/news/local-news/ham-lake-couple-trust-god-as-they-grow-family-flower-farm-business/

Business at local flower grower Three Little Buds is blooming - My Buckhannon

Three Little Buds owner Joanna Webb, who is a chemistry professor at West Virginia Wesleyan College, talked to My Buckhannon from her beautiful gardens, located around her home in downtown Buckhannon.Webb said this is her fourth official growing season, but she has been growing flowers for a long, long time. She said her husband jokingly told her she could not grow any more flowers until she took part of her bounty to a local florist to see if they would be interesting in purchasing some of her blossoms.A market-style bouquet of flowers grown and arranged by local flower grower Joanna Webb. / Photo courtesy Joanna Webb“I had always kicked around the idea of selling flowers to local florists,” Webb said. “So, I took some of my dahlias to Anita’s Flowers of Buckhannon, and they told me they would love to buy local flowers.”She said she learned on the fly about growing flowers and started growing ones she found most beautiful.“I like the market bouquet-style of flowers,” Webb said. “With COVID coming in when most of the flowers were blooming, most of the florists were closed, and I had all of these flowers, so I offe... https://www.mybuckhannon.com/business-at-local-flower-grower-three-little-buds-is-blooming/

Tulip Fest had to be canceled, but Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm finds new life for flowers - OregonLive

Family members set up a farm stand, sold a few flowers, and figured they’d be forced to let the rest rot.The family then received an email from a West Virginia nursery owner who had an idea and wanted to pass it along to nurseries across the country. The idea: Take flowers in the fields to assisted living centers where residents were living in isolation.Emily Iverson, 21, a family member and Wooden Shoe’s social media coordinator, teamed up with Lexie Criscola, 22, the tulip farm’s marketing coordinator, to make it happen.They created a ticket order on the farm’s web page where, for $15, people could pay for a pot of tulips to be delivered anonymously to an assisted living center.So far, the farm has delivered 6,000 pots of tulips to assisted living centers in Mount Angel, Molalla, Canby, Albany and Eugene.“The farm will never see back the lost revenue from the festival,” said Iverson. “The $15 covers just a bit of the costs it takes to do this delivery. But this is not about money, this is about goodwill.”Criscola said a person can request tulips be delivered to a specific assisted living center or let farm officials figure out where the tulips would bring a bit of joy.“We reach out to a center and figure out the protocol for a delivery,” she said. “We make sure everyone in the center gets a pot. We deliver them to the front door, and then step back.”Iverson estimates all the tulips will be given away within the next couple weeks.“It makes us feel like we are doing something for the community,” she said.[embedded content]-- Tom Hall... https://www.oregonlive.com/hg/2020/03/tulip-fest-had-to-be-canceled-but-wooden-shoe-tulip-farm-finds-new-life-for-flowers.html