illahe 2024
Wishing everyone a Happy New Years from Illahe Rare Plants! I thought I would shoot out a little gallery of the year’s adventures, it was an amazing year filled with plant sales, travels, talks, meeting new friends and catching up with old ones, it was a memorable year to be sure. The weather year started with some of the lowest temperatures we have seen in decades at illahe with an arctic blast in February after a very mild winter, I had to heat the bulb house for the first time ever here. The plant sales season began with an early March trip to the excellent NARGS Western Winter Study Weekend in Berkley and Oakland. It continued with Portlands, epic Hortlandia and our own scavenger hunt at the illahe open gardens and plant sale. Summer brought us an amazing intern in Andy Hamelin who worked here all summer propagating a wonderful selection of plants for the 2025 plant catalog. The bulb sales season was a blast with many new customers and help packaging and shipping from Chemeketa students Lindsey and Paige. We traveled from the nursery to San Francisco and Arcata, California, Vancouver, British Columbia, Bellevue, Washington, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Goshen, Connecticut, Berkshire, Massachusetts and New York. We botanized from the Siskiyou Mountains to the Wallowa’s where we climbed Oregon’s 9th highest mountain. We built an outcrop and bog garden addition to the rock garden here and our huge Phyllostachy’s bamboo that was planted here 18 years ago bloomed and died this year. We flowered some amazing Andean rosulate violets and thanks to some super talented plant friends we now have a collection of Dionysia that we are excited to propagate. On the personal side of things, my little girl turned 21 and started her Senior year at University, she is already applying to Grad school and I couldn’t be prouder. I stuck by my last years resolution to learn the classical guitar, I made it almost every day of 2024 playing at least 18 minutes a day and while progress on that medium seems painfully slow I’m starting see the perseverance paying off.
Thanks to all of you, we shipped thousands of plants and bulbs and we made it another year! Please enjoy a little gallery of the year 2024.
There are too many people to thank, so I will just say that if you reading this, we appreciate your help, support, plants, seeds, cuttings, hospitality, knowledge and friendship. When the dust settles on this project I want it to be said that dude was the hardest working guy in the industry and I’m giving it my best to that end. We look forward to another year of sending flowers around the world in 2025.
P.S.
My daughter pointed out to me that we are as close to 2050 as we are to Y2K……something about that makes me feel old and kinda scared at the same time. I turned 48 years old this year and while not without it’s challenges, the backside of 40 has been good to me in that I’ve been able to be an independent small business owner, living my dream of owning an alpine, rock garden and rare bulb nursery. I do remember Y2K like it was yesterday, I was about the age my daughter is now, finishing up the college years. Something about being young and filled with the wonder of learning without the burden of mortgages, payments, inflation and debts, during that time I don’t really remember being super scared of what was going to happen at midnight on that last day of 1999. I will say I’m a bit more worried about what 2050 will look like, I will be turning 73 when that mid point of the century hits. I wonder if I’ll be retired and getting social security, or will the robots have taken over by then? I asked Artificial Intelligence to paint a picture of the world in the year 2050 and in a nutshell here is what it said:
A Vision of 2050
“The world of 2050 will likely be a mix of extraordinary advancements and complex challenges. Humanity will have greater tools to solve problems but will need collective willpower to ensure sustainability, equity, and peace in an increasingly interconnected world.”
So as we go into another year, let’s gather together that collective willpower and work toward sustainability, equity and peace, best to start now and not let the robots get too far ahead of us.
Cheers,
Mark