I’m back from my unplanned hiatus from posting with a fun little adventure the Hubs and I took over the holiday weekend.  I learned of a local peony farm on Facebook and discovered they were hosting a “U-Pick” event with amazing prices for two days only.  Although I hadn’t planned to leave the house during the long weekend it was an opportunity too unique to pass up and I wanted to see if it might be a possible photo shoot location.  By the time I heard about the event, the first day had already concluded so we made plans to go check things out the next afternoon.

Although it had rained on and off all day, we hit the road to make the 20 minute trek to Willow where the farm was located.  There was a light drizzle when we arrived, but we only had another half hour to enjoy the event before it ended so we checked in with the owners to get the basics on how to cut and what was off limits, then headed out into the field.  There were several varieties to choose from with colors ranging from white to dark pink.  We made a good team – I had the clippers and the Hubs carried the bucket for cut stems.

The bushes were full of blooms, causing many of them to topple over from the weight.  We wandered the different rows selecting a variety of colors to create a pretty bouquet.  The rain became heavier after a few minutes and the raindrops that landed on my lens created artistic blurs to some of my images.

As you can see, he had neglected to wear a jacket and was getting pretty wet, so he wasn’t very pleased with my tendency to get distracted every few steps.  So he pulled out the spare set of clippers and started picking a few stems on his own.  This guy must love me like crazy to be out in the rain, cutting flowers on his holiday weekend. 🙂

While he picked the second half of the stems for our bouquet I took the opportunity to snap a few more shots of the blooms.  I love how the rain sat on the petals and made all of the colors so vibrant.

I also snuck in a few shots with a unique perspective while I was at it.  Wouldn’t this just be a fantastic backdrop for portraits of a little girl, high school senior gal or a maternity shoot?!  My mind is already turning with pose ideas!  Luckily I chatted with the owners a bit about doing a trade of photos for their website to use the location for a session next summer, so that just might happen.

As we were leaving the farm we came across two ladies in need of a bit of help with their vehicle.  The air guard under the front bumper had come unclipped on one side and was dragging so they were trying to get the other side undone but didn’t have the proper tools on hand so the Hubs pulled out some manly gear, got down on the muddy road and made it happen while I chatted with the ladies.  It was a sweet way to end the adventure, even though we were all quite wet by the time it was over.

I’ll share a picture of our finished bouquet over on the Facebook page so be sure to stop by and see it!