Are we there yet?

Hi and a glorious wonderful morning to all!! and what a delightful day it is! My goodness - the time just FLIES.

This is the first time I have written on here, so bear with me. Our frantic lives these days are totally consumed with the shipping of orders. We are WAY behind where we thought we would be. We had seriously miscalculated the time it takes to pick and package orders individually the way we want.

And we are doing it ourselves pretty much - we have local university students helping with digging the orders, but Marv and I are packing and wrapping and shipping each one. And we supervise every step of the process.

We had a few comments initially of orders not being 110% and we corrected what we were doing - the heucheras were in plastic baggies to protect the fragile roots, and that seemed to encourage rot - so - we have packaged them in newspaper instead and so far that has worked well.

Over the winter we had several real challenges. First was a very weird winter where the crowns of both the hostas and daylilies were just soaked from days of rain and then a sudden drop to -20. Well, a few of those and we lost a LOT of plants. Mostly expensive ones of course....

Then with that same weather phenomenon, many of our stakes in the fields - we have heavy clay - were literally spewed from the ground. amazing how far down they were and still were squished out by the soil. and so while we had maps of the fields, there are a number of which we are unsure - so - we are considering those "sold out" unless we are sure who they are. When they bloom, since we will have them down to a few cultivars, it should be pretty straightforward to sort them out.
We hope.
But rather count them as sold out than send the cultivars we "guess" them to be.
Consequently, we are having to make a number of substitutions, and that too is time-consuming, to try to sort out from the order, what the customer likes and get similar plants and still stay in the value range - at least for a total. And hope the subs are not something they already have.

Some of our cultivars also had a real tough winter. One in particular in August had 17 double fans ready to sell. This spring - only 4 fans were present. AAARRGGHH.. and how do I plan for that!

But I am prattling on. Must go out to package more orders.

Our wish to ship only Monday and Tuesday has just gone by the boards, as we will never get the orders all out in that way. It was that policy that got us way behind, along with the wish for us to do each order ourselves. so - we will still do each order - either Marv or Me - but will ship Monday to Friday.

The feedback we have received is that our packaging is excellent and the plants are arriving in excellent shape, a wee bit thirsty but in the main, healthy. One heuchera cultivar (Peach Flambe) seems to be taking a beating and we will pull it from the shipping list and leave it just for the people who come to the garden.

Now - are we there yet- ??? I am sure my parents were not the only ones who heard that from the back seat when we were kids, and even as adults we use the phrase a lot - in some form or another.

We can pack and send a max of 20 packages per day. Depending on circumstances, that can be lower, so I will plan/calculate for 15 per day. Five days per week. Some orders are garden pickup, and those numbers are sequentially in the list, and so I have a net number of orders to still be shipped as of this moment, of 224.

At 15 per day, that is 15 more shipping days. that is three weeks at 5 days per week. It has been said, if you want to make God laugh, just tell Him your plans. So - at the risk of hearing roaring laughter from on high, much as we would love to be done before then, we will probably realistically be done shipping June 23rd.

OK - now - we know now what we want to and plan to change for next year, and we plan to be MUCH more efficient then. And your impatience is not unfamiliar to me.

Hey - we garden in Canada too - and my gardens desperately want my attention too. I still walk them every day, a bit more briskly than i would like, and only once a day, but I need to do that. Sanity and all you know. But I digress. If you want to, based on the shipping speed we are planning to maintain, cancel your order, please let us know, and just write an email "Cancel my order" in the description line - and we will do that.

Please forgive our lack of preparedness for the incredible initial success. We will be back better than ever next year (God willing) and look forward to seeing you again then. so - hang in there - or let me know that you just cannot and we understand...

so - are we there yet? Nope -but we are sure plugging along at it!!

Warmest wishes for the day...

Betty and Marv.

(BTW - yesterday our server at the office crashed and so Marv was there doing that all day and all night getting the office in Listowel all sorted out - and he is there today again, and so hopefully it will be ok by Monday. He figures this whole spring we are being tested. I think he is right on. And we are going to ace this test...