Life Updates — The Whirlwind Season

I'm not going to pretend this post has been easy to sit down and write. Honestly, it's the opposite of easy — which is exactly why it's taken me until the very end of June to find the words. My admin side of things has been lagging hard since seed starting kicked off back in late winter / early spring, and it hasn't let up since. Seed starting bled into garden prep, garden prep bled into planting, planting bled into our spring CSA kickoff, and then — without so much as a breath in between — we were neck-deep in wedding season. Two full-service weddings, two à la carte, and a handful of custom orders, all stacked into one month.

So if you've been wondering where I went — I'm here. I'm just behind, and I think it's time I stopped pretending otherwise and instead told you the truth of what this season actually looked like.

💼 The Job I Get to Love

Before I get into the flowers, I want to say something I don't say enough: I love my full-time job. Genuinely, to my core.

I work in the fitness industry, supporting some of the brands I've admired for decades. As someone who grew up an athlete, has always loved health and wellness, and is now walking through my own journey of rebuilding strength and health after having our son, it feels incredibly meaningful to spend my days contributing to a mission I genuinely believe in. Helping create products that encourage people to move, grow stronger, and care for themselves aligns so deeply with what I value.

The mission and vision of the company I work for line up so closely with how I want to live my life that it doesn't feel like two separate worlds I'm constantly trying to reconcile—it feels like one story, told in two beautiful genres.

Maybe that's always been who I am.

I've always been the girl who could spend all day outside with dirt under my fingernails, then shower, throw on a blazer or a dress, and feel just as at home. I love working with my hands, growing flowers, hauling compost, and embracing the physical work that comes with stewarding a small farm. But I also love leadership, business strategy, problem-solving, and the opportunity to contribute in a corporate environment.

For a long time, I think the world quietly tells us we have to choose. That we have to fit neatly into one identity. You're either the corporate woman or the farmer. The creative or the professional. The outdoorsy girl or the one with the fresh manicure.

But I've found that's simply not true.

I don't believe we're meant to become smaller versions of ourselves just because the world prefers simple labels.

God doesn't create us in boxes. He uniquely forms each of us with different gifts, passions, experiences, and callings that weave together into one life. Mine just happens to look like early mornings in the flower field and afternoons supporting a mission I believe in. One doesn't compete with the other—they make each one richer.

At first glance, fitness and flower farming probably couldn't seem more different. But to me, they're rooted in the same purpose: helping people flourish. One encourages people to care for the bodies they've been given. The other invites them to slow down, celebrate life's moments, and experience the beauty of God's creation. Somehow, they complement one another far more than people might expect.

That's why Bede's Blooms is not a "side hustle to escape the day job." It's the opposite.

My job gives our family stability. It challenges me to keep learning, growing, and becoming a better leader. It allows this flower farm to exist as the joyful, purposeful thing it's meant to be, instead of something I'm white-knuckling to survive on.

I'm deeply grateful for the people I work alongside, the leader I support, and the work itself. I want to keep showing up well in both places—which, if I'm honest, is a big part of why this season stretched me as thin as it did.

“I don’t believe we’re meant to become smaller versions of ourselves just because the world prefers simple labels.”

🧸 The Toddler, the Laundry Pile, and the Grief of "Tidy"

Here's the part nobody really talks about: when everything is in season at once — the farm, the weddings, the job — something has to give. And in our house this spring, what gave was order.

We have a two-year-old. If you've raised a toddler through "the scary two-to-three age range," you already know. Every basket of laundry my husband folds becomes, within the hour, a mosh pit on our bedroom floor. The neat stack by the dresser doesn't stand a chance. There are piles in corners of our house that exist purely because a toddler got into something and nobody has had the thirty consecutive seconds required to put it back.

I am a person who craves clear counters and put-away things. I grieve the version of our life where everything had a place and stayed there. And this spring, I had to make peace — again and again — with the fact that I cannot have both a spotless kitchen and a toddler's outstretched hand asking me to jump on the trampoline. Those two things are, sometimes, mutually exclusive. And the dishes losing is not a failure. It's a choice, made on purpose, by a tired mom who knows which one she'll remember in twenty years.

We don't have a village, not in the practical sense people mean when they say it. Our village, the ones that show up, are me, my husband, and my mom — three tired people doing the work of what used to take ten. Thankfully our older daughters are a huge help with their little brother when they're with us, and my husband has quietly carried more of our household — cooking, laundry, yard work, garden work, cleaning, all of it — through our biggest wedding month yet. I don't take that for granted for one second.

🌷 Why We're Done Growing Tulips (for now)

I have to talk about tulip season because it was, without exaggeration, the most stressful stretch of growing we've had.

Ironically, it was also our best tulip season yet.

This year we planted just over 3,200 tulips, and they were absolutely beautiful. Healthy stems, vibrant colors, incredible varieties—it was the kind of crop that makes all the months of planning, planting, and waiting feel worthwhile. I genuinely love growing tulips. Putting together our Mother's Day pre-orders and watching so many of you come pick up armfuls of spring was one of the greatest joys of the season.

One of my favorite moments was partnering with our local church for Mother's Day, where we were able to provide more than 250 bud vases to celebrate the incredible women in our church family. Watching hundreds of simple stems become small expressions of love and gratitude reminded me exactly why I started growing flowers in the first place.

Which makes this next part all the more bittersweet.

Mid-season, our floral cooler failed—and we are now without a cooler entirely. For a flower farm, that is not a small problem. We scrambled to carve out studio space in our old Michigan basement, a far cry from the she-shed with running water and a greenhouse I dream about, where I'm not lugging buckets and finished arrangements up a narrow staircase and through a too-tight door.

I'm choosing to stay grateful for the space we do have and to steward it well while we work toward something better. But I won't pretend the basement workaround was anything but a real strain this spring.

Because of the cooler, we ended up driving our tulips fifteen minutes each way, every single evening, to a flower-farmer friend's home who had cooler space to spare (thank you endlessly, again, Megan).

That meant harvesting before work in the early morning, working a full day, harvesting again at lunch (when I actually remembered to take one—something I'm working on), harvesting again after work, then sorting and arranging everything into crates for the drive. Most nights I wasn't home, showered, and in bed until after 11 p.m., only to be back up before sunrise to do it all again.

When we finally sat down and ran the numbers—bulb costs, shipping, the new tariffs, and labor and compost not even factored in yet—the reality became impossible to ignore.

Tulips aren't just breaking even for us.

They're losing money.

As much as I adore growing them, I also have a responsibility to steward this little business wisely. So we've made the difficult decision to step away from growing tulips at this scale.

That doesn't mean tulips are disappearing from Bede's Blooms.

We'll still plant a smaller collection of our favorite late-season varieties and continue offering a limited number of tulip bouquets and custom orders for our loyal local customers. I can't imagine spring here without a few rows of tulips.

But the days of planting over 3,000 bulbs are behind us—for now.

Sometimes growth doesn't look like adding more.

Sometimes it looks like having the wisdom to let go of something good so you have the capacity to pursue what's best.

That also means I'm taking Mother's Day off moving forward.

In the flower farming world, Mother's Day weekend is often called the Super Bowl of flower farming, and I understand why. But it's also draining, depleting, and, for us, simply not worth what it costs in sleep, margin, and time together.

I love providing flowers for our community and our church, and we'll continue finding meaningful ways to do that. But this mama would also like to spend a few of her own Mother's Days actually being present in them.

🏔️ Rest, Real Rest

After the weddings wrapped, we buried my grandpa, completed our spring CSA subscription program, and somehow still had custom orders sprinkled through it all. By the end of June, we were simply spent.

We escaped to Torch Lake for a few days, and it was exactly what our hearts needed. I still worked a little, even on PTO (old habits die hard), but we also found something we hadn't felt in months: margin. Long walks, slower mornings, actual chapters of books read during nap time, campfires, beach sunsets and the kind of deep breath that only comes when you finally stop running.

July has officially become our month to rest from weddings—a decision we made last year and one we don't regret for a second. I did make one exception for a sweet bride with mostly à la carte florals and a small ceremony installation, but otherwise we're intentionally slowing down. Soon, all five of us are heading to Colorado for a real family vacation filled with hiking, exploring, and, hopefully, plenty of sleep.

Here's the truth underneath all of it: we're not building this business to build an empire.

We're building it so we can take that trip.

So we can slowly renovate our fixer-upper, one project at a time.

So we have a second source of income that allows our family to breathe instead of constantly grind.

What a gift it is that the work of my hands also gets to be the work of my heart.

🌱 Looking Ahead: The Garden Never Stops

Now that the whirlwind of spring has settled, it's time to turn back toward the garden.

One thing I think surprises people most about flower farming is that there really isn't an "off" switch. The season simply changes. Spring's rush of seed starting, tulips, and planting gives way to succession sowing, endless weeding, pinching, deadheading, fertilizing, harvesting, and trying to stay one step ahead of Mother Nature.

The garden is beginning to settle into its summer rhythm. Bells of Ireland are standing tall and roses are blooming, while larkspur and delphinium continue putting on a beautiful show. Our second flush of orlaya—one of my personal favorites—is blooming just as beautifully as the first. Poppies, scabiosa, rudbeckia, gomphrena, and phlox are all adding their own texture and color to the field, and the snapdragons are just about ready to steal the show. The zinnias, cosmos, sunflowers, celosia, dahlias and many others are stretching taller every day, while the lisianthus I've been eagerly waiting on all season is finally putting on height. Before long, the garden will look completely different than it did just a few weeks ago.

There's something beautiful about that.

Every season asks something different of us.

Spring asks us to trust.

Summer asks us to tend.

Autumn asks us to gather.

And each one reminds me that growth almost always begins long before anyone else can see it.

🌼 What's Still Available

We still have a handful of Summer CSA Flower Subscription spots available if you'd love fresh, locally grown blooms throughout the season.

Looking for flowers for a special occasion? We also love creating custom arrangements for anniversaries, birthdays, new babies, get-well wishes, celebrations, or simply because flowers don't always need a reason. If you'd like to surprise someone special—or treat yourself—simply fill out our inquiry form or message us, and we'd be honored to create something beautiful just for you.

Planning a wedding this fall? We still have limited availability for August through November weddings, whether you're looking for full-service florals, à la carte options, or something in between. We'd love to hear your story.

If there's one thing this season has taught me, it's that growth isn't always about doing more.

Sometimes it's about creating enough margin to enjoy the life you're working so hard to build.

We're learning to steward this business a little differently. To choose sustainability over hustle. Presence over pressure. Quality over quantity.

I don't think we've figured it all out yet—but I do think we're moving in the right direction.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for buying flowers, reading these stories, cheering us on, and supporting this little dream of ours. It means more than you'll ever know.

Next time, I'll finally tell you about the three June weddings that completely stole my heart. Each one had a story far too beautiful to squeeze into this update, and I can't wait to share them with you!

With tired hands and a full heart,

Alex