Our farm has a lot of apple trees on it. The couple who owned the property before us were true nature enthusiasts. Ken was an arborist. As we walk through the woods we find little flags he placed, marking new trees to keep an eye on. To take over a property like this is intimidating. I can identify lots of fancy flowers but am a novice at trees....and poison ivy, but that's another story for another day.

Nea is intimidated too. One night we heard what must have been a pack of coyotes celebrating a kill. Spooky stuff. Nea waits with ears on fire. Alert like I've never seen her. She doesn't know what to do. (I want my next dog to be a coyote.)

We sleep on a big inflatable air matress there. We cook outside on a grill, a generous and ingenious gift from my parents. The house inside is rough, a breeding ground for mold. Hundreds of varieties of mold. We used sheet plastic to make a shower curtain. I figured out the hot water heater the first week, a huge victory.

The lists we make of things we need is intimidating. Tractor, land grading, cover crops, greenhouses, another car. Physically, financially this list feels exhausting and overwhelming. But I said to Eric, we'll just take it one week at a time.

This week we have thousands of bulbs to plant and everything else can wait till next week.

Back at the studio things progress with beautiful, smooth, controlled efficiency. Flowers come in, they go out.
We're making the best weddings we've ever made, I say that with all confidence and knowing.
But I'm a bit tired. Tonight.
And I can be tired of flowers if I want to be.
We can't pretend to be enthusiastic every moment.

That wouldn't be very honest, would it?

(above are some outtakes from a shoot i did for a Once Wed post, see it here.)