Welcome to the new blog of La Vie Flowers and me Frank Blanchard. For those of you that don't know me, my background is rather vast a varied. Everything from a life in classical ballet, almost 20 years teaching classical ballet, and at the same time close to 30 years working as a floral designer, and I'm not done yet. The majority of this blog will be dedicated mostly to flowers, everything you might want to use flowers for, and gardening. In addition to all of that I'll be tossing in a few other things in the mix just to keep things interesting. I hope you will find this blog helpful, entertaining, enlightening, thoughtful and most of all fun.

Now down to the business of the flowers. You might not think there was that much to talk about when it comes to flowers, but in reality the commercial floral industry is a multi billion dollar business world wide. Here on my blog we're going to talk about all of it, the good, the bad, the fabulous and everything in between. We are going to talk about what flowers are grown where, what can effect their prices, how to care for flowers and plants, their uses, design, and more.

There is more to the story?? Oh yes there most certainly is.

We are also going to talk about all of the uses of flowers, plants, their propagation, gardening, etc.
I am also going to try my best, bringing my years of knowledge as a designer, to share how best to support your real local retail florists and designers.  I will also be sharing pictures, we're going to go on field trips, I plan to go over all the ins and outs of Weddings and Events, and the list goes on.

So all that said, I hope you will check back often and enjoy what all we are talking about. Most of all though I am really looking forward to sharing the world of flowers that I love with you.

Cheers!

Crazy Winter Weather Will Effect Our Spring Flowers

Everyone can agree I think that our fall and winter weather 2011/2012 has been completely crazy world wide. Temperatures for the most part have been quite mild for a good portion of the world. We have had massive devistating rain in many parts of Asia, especially in Thailand ( a major Orchid Producer)... And now late winter much of Europe has been hit with historic amounts of late season snow and extremely cold temperatures.

All of this crazy winter weather I'm sure is going to effect the flowers that we love for the entire rest of the year. It might not necessarily all be bad, but it will be interesting to watch it all unfold.

Here in the NW part of the USA we are seeing many kinds of plants that are normally in bud this time of year swelling, and some have already started to break. If we get a late season cold snap this could be a bad thing especially for our major fruit Producers. Walking through the city of Portland Oregon we are seeing many kinds of spring bulds already up and doing their thing, and wondering how this is going to effect our Tulip and Daffodil commercial crops this year. Even most all of the roses in the historic rose gardens of Washington Park have already sprouted and are well on their way to show us their seasonal splendor.

For those of us on the commercial side of using and dealing with flowers. Our crazy weather this year could potentially cause us some problems, especially those of us here in the northwest. Here in our part of the world we have some of the better and larger producers of all kinds of bulb flowers as well as Peony and Dahlia, and my favorite producer of all kinds of cut herbs is here in the Willamette Valley. If we get a spring and summer season with warmer drier temps earlier this year. It might mean a lot of our crops will be done and over with right when we are expecting them to be available, thats something for all of our spring, summer, and early fall Brides to be concidering. It might be a good idea to have some plan B's ready for substitution.

So now thinking of all of these seasonal flowers we are all so looking forward to. We would love to hear from other people elsewhere  as to how the seasons "unseasonalities" are effecting your part of the Planet.

Thanks for checking out our new blog, and check back again soon to see what flowers we might be playing with.