jill's-hydro-roses

previously carnations-by-jill

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Black Roses for Halloween?

I now realize that the last time I posted on this blog was the end of August. We just started using the wonderful Advanced Nutrients product, Nirvana, at that time.

Pedro has been using it religiously in all three of our Glasshouses. Our Roses are thriving and our customers are happy. I have no complaints, except maybe concerning the Halloween order that came in.

A private girls academy contacted us and asked if we could supply 1,000 black roses for a huge Halloween party that they are planning.

Now before you choke on your Martini, what we call Black Roses are usually deep burgundy or very dark red (the Hybrid Tea Rose Black Magic is an example.) But that’s not what the girl’s academy wanted.

They wanted us to dye our ivory-colored Julia’s Rose hybrid teas black, by pouring a rich black dye into our hydroponic reservoir and having our Roses suck it up until their petals turned black.

I remember doing something similar in science class in grade school. We had to split the stem of a daisy and put half of it into a glass filled with red dye, the other half into one filled with blue dye.

Done right, the experiment resulted in half the daisy turning red, while the other half was colored blue. Done wrong, the daisy wilted and fell on the floor.

To get back to the Halloween order, I always had fun at Halloween when I was young, so I was seriously considering doing it, but Pedro—having been raised in a staunchly Catholic Spain—was dead set against it.

“It’s terrible luck, that we would be courting,” said he, almost shouting. “Witches and dark powers and the devil himself! It’s bad luck, I tell you!”

(I realized that it would be totally useless to talk about how much fun kids have at Halloween and how it's part of their socialization in North America.)

Besides, Pedro loves our Roses so much, he couldn’t bear to paint any of them black. Since it would take several weeks for the transformation to take place, we missed out on the deadline and the academy went looking for their order elsewhere.

This period before Christmas is slow where the marketing of Roses is concerned, so I sighed as I opened yet another bill during my late night bookkeeping sessions. That Halloween order would have gone a long way toward paying off the money we owe.

Ah, well, I’d rather have Pedro happy, than to have money and be miserable. The Advanced Nutrients company is continuing to supply us with the world’s best plant nutrients, and I will take some more weeks off from my blogging, since the pressures of our business and personal life take precedence. See you next time!

posted by Jill @ 8:29 PM   1 comments