Dishfunctional Designs: Visiting Local Farms & Roadside Stands for Flowers in Pennsylvania

I spent an entire afternoon last week cleaning out my koi pond, draining it and refilling it and getting it - and my yard - ready for summer. We had a mild winter and I was happy to see that all of my fish and even my frog had survived the winter.

We had just gotten over more than a week of damp, wet weather and I couldn't wait to get outside. I love having my coffee in my backyard every morning. I usually land up taking my laptop outside with me and working outside for a while. It's so peaceful next to the pond. I could just read or work there for hours. I could go barefoot all summer long. Summer is by far my favorite season, and there's nothing I love more than feeling the earth and grass beneath my bare feet.

I'm excited to get flowers planted around my patio, pond, and in my flower beds. Each spring I go with my sister to a couple of the local Mennonite farms where they have huge greenhouses and sell all types of flowers. We go together and split flats so that we both have a nice variety to plant.

This was the first farm that we went to, they have four or five huge greenhouses. This is their roadside stand.

My sister wanted to take this cat home. He was so friendly!

On our stroll up to the greenhouses we first came to this huge row of rhubarb. I love strawberry rhubarb pie! My last rhubarb plant was a transplant from one at my mom's house but it didn't make it, so I'll have to try to plant another one asap.

Stepping into the first greenhouse this was what I saw. What an awesome groovy chair! I couldn't resist snapping a picture of it.

There were loads of petunias and geraniums and some snapdragons but the sky was getting dark and it was going to pour any minute, so we decided to just look today and come back in a couple days to buy after we saw what they had.

I had never seen black pansies before - kind of creepy! And they weren't dark purple, they really were black.

We left that farm and drove on to an organic farm's roadside stand that my sister frequents. There's no one there to man the stand, it works on the honor system; you leave the money in a jar. That's how many of the roadside fruit and vegetable stands operate in Pennsylvania. This one had fresh eggs, rhubarb, and asparagus. My sister said their asparagus was to die for, so she bought a bunch. One left!