Outside, the Himalayan blue poppies are still sleeping, under beds of straw, beneath the snow. It will be several weeks before they start poking up through the mulch, and it will be time to remove the straw.

Myrl "Boone" Thompson waters lilies and other plants at the Bella Farm and Gardens in Meadow Lakes. The greenhouse specializes in lilies, Himalayan blue poppies and organic vegetable starters. Photo/Margaret Bauman/AJOC

"We put them to bed in the fall with straw and mulch them," she said. "After the last freeze they start poking their heads up from the straw. They bloom in June and they are just spectacular."

Meanwhile, Vehrs is busy in the greenhouses, aided by friend and part-time worker Myrl "Boone" Thompson, checking and watering each of the dozens of potted lilies.

"I made the mistake of hanging around too long and she hired me," said Thompson, who coaches youth sports teams and serves on the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School Board.

Overhead there are dozens of baskets planted with a variety of other flowers, all soaking up the greenhouse heat, the frequent watering, and increasing sunlight of springtime.

Vehrs has seen continuous growth in her greenhouse business over the past four years and she expects that growth to continue in her fifth year of operation, the uncertain economy notwithstanding.

It's a labor-intensive operation. Planting began in February. The greenhouse opens for business at the end of April, but from now until the greenhouse closes for the season at the end of July, the lilies, blue poppies and other plants and vegetables will occupy her time for 12 to 14 hours a day.

Not that she minds.

"Our business is built on customer service," said Vehrs, a petite, energetic businesswoman, who jokes that she is "a recovering politician," now retired from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly. "We like people. We are thrilled to see them, and plants are not going out of style. People still want flowers and vegetables, and they will come where they feel welcome."

The physical labor she deals with nonchalantly. The hard part is the paperwork. Despite engaging an accountant, it's hard to keep up with all the paperwork when she works 12 to 14 hours a day during the summer, she said.

By May she will have dozens of pots of huge, brilliantly colored lilies for sale, baskets of yellow and white begonias, 15 kinds of organic tomato plants, plus cucumbers and cauliflower starters, and yes, those Himalayan poppies.

"They are so blue they make your eyes hurt," said Vehrs.

Vehrs was wholesaling lilies a couple of years before she started the greenhouse business when she came upon some articles about the Himalayan poppies and was intrigued.

"I bought 30 blue poppies (from a wholesaler) to see if I could sell them, and I sold out in two hours," she said.

Nowadays she has a whole section of blue poppies, and tourists come from all over to see them, she said. She's also planted a whole orchard of Saskatoon (Service) berries; a variety Thompson introduced her to five years ago. "They taste like a sweet high bush blueberry," she said.

Thompson's help aside, Vehrs also counts on her husband, Dennis, and daughter Diana for help with the greenhouse business, as well as daughter Bonnie, for all the starter organic vegetable plants.

"If we had to hire everything out that my family does, we couldn't do it," said Vehrs, who began turning a profit in her third year of business. "People will pay only so much."

She is always looking for ways to make her greenhouse more economically viable. Her efforts include working with the Anchorage Soil and Water Conservation District on a project that would allow her to use compost to heat one of the greenhouses.

The district is working with O2 Compost, a firm whose mission is to turn waste problems into natural resource opportunities. O2Compost is the training program division of Price-Moon Enterprises Inc., of Snohomish, Wash., an environmental consulting firm that specializes in setting up compost facilities to process agricultural and municipal organic waste.

"We could be the prototype," said Vehrs, who estimates that the right composting system could defray her heating expenses by 30 percent.

Meanwhile, she's busy planting and watering, anticipating the summer visitors.

"We have changed from a drive-by to a destination business," she said.

Along with clientele from all over the Matanuska Valley, the greenhouse, located just off the Parks Highway, attracts visitors en route between Anchorage and Fairbanks.

The best part, she said, is "sharing what I've grown with my own hands," and lots of information about gardening.

"We try to do things on a quality basis, not quantity," she said. "We want to do more volume, but we don't want to ever lose quality control."

Margaret Bauman can be reached at margie.bauman@alaska

journal.com.