In June the Roses are so abundant that it’s hard for staff goddesses to get in the door of the office or for me to leave the gardens willingly. Even the enthusiastic deer, partial to fresh Rose foliage, can’t inhibit the display the Roses put on.

People have strong feelings about Roses, surprisingly often of dislike or boredom. Roses have been trivialized and sentimentalized in our culture until we experience them as trite with nothing to offer us. The pendulum of disinterest has swung so far that the Roses in the Rose Garden at the White House have been dug up and replaced with pavement and white limestone chips. Did anyone else grieve this? I certainly did.

Why has this happened? Long stemmed red Roses from fields in South America have become our idea of Roses. Roses are associated with men who didn’t remember Valentine’s Day or lavish billionaires in rom-coms who send sixty dozen long stemmed red Roses to their latest love interest while she is at work. It’s tiresome to have Roses pigeonholed like this because this is a family of plants to be reckoned with.

Roses have been in existence for 35 million years. If you have an old Rose cultivar in your garden you may well have a plant that has been alive for thousands of years. Roses are cultivated from cuttings so the original plant becomes a new plant yet is still also the original plant. I find this astounding to go out and visit my Roses and think these very plants were in Shakespeare’s garden, literally. Rosa Mundi, for example, is more than 600 years old and grew in England during Shakespeare’s life.

The Angels tell me that Roses are pure Divinity. In a plant of duality where we suffer the potato beetles as well as savor the Roses, this family of plants can be counted on to hold the light. They are the highest vibration family of plants with only Lotus vying for an equal position. Their Flower Essences are profound gifts to us all.

Here are some of the Roses blooming in the garden today.

Ancient and wise La Belle Sultane was the Rose which we used as our logo for many years. Velvety La Belle feels like it was here 35 million years ago, yet it is still fresh as a Daisy.

I like the photo of Goldfinch better in its description tab, but this is what it looks like today. It is a wonderful one for those of us on computers a lot.

Charles de Mills graces our home page. This Rose is stunning beyond belief. All the Roses are. They look so unassuming when not in Flower then Shazam! Their abundant beauty, fragrance and vibrational energy is miraculous.

Here is a little bit more Rose history before I show two more Roses.

The War of the Roses in 15th century England involved two branches of the Platagenet family, the House of York and the House of Lancaster. The Lancasters represented themselves with Rosa Gallica or what they called the Red Rose of Lancaster and the Yorks represented themselves with the White Rose of York which is Rosa Alba Semi-Plena.

The Angels want to bring the White Rose of York forward this season so I will be working with them to get a description. Rosa Gallica is already on the main line up.

After thirty years of the War of the Roses, Henry VII ended the war by marrying into the rival family and beginning the Tudor dynasty which would include Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

There are dozens of Roses blooming here right now. I could post a very, very long post of photos. I will spare you and stop with just two more.

Perhaps in counterpoint to the destruction of the Rose Garden at the White House, the Angels are focusing attention on Roses, including new Rose Essences and Rose Essences that have stayed out of the spotlight on our Additional Essence list until now. Agathe Incarnata Rose is one of those Roses that has long been quietly offering her vibrational gifts from the Additional Flower Essence list,

The Angels feel so strongly about directing our attention to Roses that they had me put Agathe Incarnata Rose, an old friend from the Additional Flower Essence list, onto the main line up TODAY versus waiting until the fall equinox when new additions are usually offered up.

Another one that came forward today per the Angels is Sissinghurst Castle Rose.

I have found it hard to capture the quality of this Rose in a photo. Here is one of my attempts. I love how she describes herself:

“I am a much older Rose than the famous gardens at Sissinghurst. My name is surprisingly appropriate for I am about fortification . I support you to feel strong from within and without, resilient and fortified in the face of significant changes in the world. I do this by helping you KNOW your own strength and also helping you feel more aware of the spiritual beings that buttress you so that you can experience yourself as the eternal and imperishable spiritual being that you are.”

We are all being given so much encouragement to relax into our true, loving selves to live our purpose as Roses do i.e. as Divine beings having a physical experience not visa versa.

Sending you all much Rose Love from ALL of us here.

Dear friends, There are many wondrous things about being here at Green Hope Farm and part of a vibrant and magical community of you all, the Flowers, our shared spiritual guides and of course our beloved animal companions.

One thing that has shivers running up and down our spine today is the way you as a collective have called our attention to The Gate Beautiful, a Venus Garden Flower Essence combination which has had a fairly quiet presence on our shelves since it was created in 2020.

These waves of requests for certain Flower Essences always delight and intrigue us, but your many requests for The Gate Beautiful has us feeling that an important threshold is being crossed right now.

As we talked about this resurgence of interest in The Gate Beautiful, the staff goddesses, all serious students of astrology, noted that ALL the outer planets ( Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) as well as the dwarf planets (Ceres, Haumea, Makemake and Eris) are changing astrological signs right now. These outer planets are significant for the collective. When they change signs they usher in generational and cosmic change.

I have included the entire description of The Gate Beautiful below. Perhaps the focus on the right time is why when I reread this description this morning I had nonstop goosebumps. I was also struck by how threshold guardians are acknowledged here, but at the same time dismissed. This has been a challenging time in which threshold guardians seem to outnumber everything. However, The Gate Beautiful carries the truth that light will prevail and that this time of “necessary mess” will not derail the light in us but will make way for more light to enter.

THE GATE BEAUTIFUL

Helps us cross the threshold once and for all from dense three dimensional living to the vibrant fifth. The word for beautiful in Greek means, “in the right time.” It is the right time

The Venus Garden sits tucked inside a horseshoe of office building, farmhouse and barn- both protected yet somehow also rising above the fray of daily life to express its wisdom and truth.

This year we’ve renovated the barn to make a living space for Elizabeth and her two children. The “we” is almost 100% Jim who spent his “summer vacation” from the classroom rebuilding the barn into a home. One thing we knew going into the construction was that at any time during the garden season, we could expect a crew to come dig a trench from the barn to farmhouse for electrical, water and septic lines. Because this trench would likely dig up part if not all of the Venus Garden, the Angels had us grow all the plants for this season’s garden in a multitude of clay pots.

Petunias in shades of pink, purple and white mixed with Daturas, scented Geraniums, Sweet Alyssum, Mehera Marigolds and Thyme. They were joined by “volunteer” Verbena Bonariensis, Cosmos, Bells of Ireland, Blue Vervain, and Nicotiana in a saucy and playful movable feast. At the center, 13 pots of Mehera Marigolds encircled an immense planter of Thyme representing an unusual variation of numbers on a clock face. The Angels had me turn the pots in a unique rhythm and also had me place a statue of St. Francis in the garden for many weeks. Then one day the bulldozer, excavator and skid steer with jackhammer arrived for the digging. I offered to move the pots, but the men said they would try and work around the garden.

All around the property was the uproar of trenches being dug and blasted, dirt and shards of bedrock being pile high and other gardens experiencing necessary destruction. A new septic system was required by the town planning board and this necessitated a road being created on the property down through the hayfield where an even bigger excavator tore up the earth to remove our old system and lay down another. Dump trucks, bulldozers and excavators in all directions left our toddler grandson Henry giddy with joy.

It was hard to miss that our little microcosm reflected the macrocosm. 2020 = upheaval and change. In order to move the place forward and expand the farm to house another family, we had to dig the whole place up. So too in the macrocosm.

When the construction threatened forty years of energy work in the Venus Garden, people and spirit conspired to leave it intact and unscathed, yet dug deep all around the garden. This is the first garden where we grounded the fifth dimension, and it remains sacred ground. The workmen felt this and heroically maneuvered their lumbering equipment around the garden in surgically precise moves. Always there was an energy of orchestrated mess preserving the essential, not purposeless destruction.

Another occurrence that uplifted me with confidence that in both the microcosm and the macrocosm the light in all of us will prevail is what I saw one afternoon as Henry and I sat down in the hayfield observing the excavator dig as fast as Mike Mulligan and Mary Ann. Rising up above the site towered an enormous Angel radiating a pink light. In this mess as with all our messes, the wisest most loving part of ourselves is there overseeing it all and ever ushering us towards healing and conscious unity.

One day, as the staff leaped across ditches and climbed piles of dirt to find an unscathed place to eat lunch, Jen coined the phrase “necessary mess” to describe the scene. We have found it apt for the macrocosm too. Here and elsewhere, things are a mess but a necessary mess, one that will move us forward and one that we are not navigating alone. Yes, when we signed on to be down on Earth during this time, the discussion in heavenly classrooms before incarnation probably sounds too weird to be believed. Perhaps some of us tuned out the caveat about 2020. Who can blame us? We were psyched to get back down and help be part of this incredible shift of ages and probably didn’t pause overmuch to consider how challenging some of this would actually be. But it’s okay. We are doing it. We will prevail. And so many light beings are working together as a part of us to take us all forward on this beeline to unity consciousness and a New Earth.

And so, I finish with just a bit more about the Essence created before, during and after upheaval skirted the edge of this year’s Venus Garden. The Gate Beautiful. In Greek, the word for beautiful also means “at the right time.” An earlier version of the Gate Beautiful was part of the Temple of Jerusalem destroyed in AD 70 by the Romans. With the clock face and the centerpiece of Thyme, this garden is layered with vibrational data about time and the different way time is experienced in the fifth dimension. While I do not know all the ways the Gate Beautiful introduces us to fifth dimensional time and helps us make sense of it, I know it does this and that this is the right time for this introduction.

Even more importantly, this Flower Essence combination helps us dismantle any threshold guardians within us as well as those forces outside ourselves who would delay us on our way to fifth dimensional life. It speaks to our souls, knowing that it is the right time to walk through the Gate Beautiful to a new life here on Earth. There are many who have stood at the threshold trying to scare us off with false notions that we don’t deserve to evolve or that humankind can’t evolve or that we will have to to drop our bodies in order to evolve. Not true. The Gate is here. Now! Nothing can stop us. The Gate Beautiful celebrates the moment and supports us to feel strong enough in self love and courage to walk on through.

After drenching rains consumed most of May, we’ve finally had a few days of glorious sun. The gardens are very lush after all the rain. The humans relieved to be outside and dry.

Here is what the gardens looked like this morning as we greet a third day of sun.

Here is the center of the Rose garden. You can tell I am experimenting with Alliums this year, seeing if the deer really don’t find them tasty. So far, so good. The deer have eaten my clematis, phlox and asiatic lilies instead. I have been spraying Deer Off liberally around the gardens since the snow melted, but the amount of rain washed it off, and of course, the deer have taken advantage of that.

This is the same garden looking up towards the house. I’ve temporarily put the tomato cages around some new Roses to keep them from being trompled. None of the Roses are blooming yet, but this garden is awash in Tree Peonies.

This is the oldest Tree Peony in the garden. She is a good thirty years old. I find it impossible to photograph Tree Peonies in a way that even begins to suggest their beauty. In some countries, they put parasols over Tree Peonies while they bloom. This shades them so their blossoms will last longer. They tend to go by fast in bright sun. We have six more days of overcast days and rain coming after today, so the Tree Peonies should hang on well. Maybe better than the humans who are over this endless rain.

This Lavender Tree Peony has the most outrageous yellow stamens. The honeybees were already hard at work harvesting pollen.

This is one of many Rose beds, as yet not doing its thing. The yellow is Woad. What an astounding friend this plant is. Until the introduction of Indigo at the end of the Middle Ages, Woad was the source of blue dye. As a Flower Essence it helps cheer us up if we have the blues. It certainly is very cheering as a Flower too.

This shot is looking down one of the perennial beds where Purple Sensation Allium rules the day. Another plant beloved of the Honeybees ( but not the deer).

Here we are in our very strange vegetable garden where nearly everything is covered in frost cloth to protect the vegetables from Reginald Montgomery “Chuckie” Hogbottom (Order of the Woodchuck, Recipient of the medal of honor “Marmota Monax” September 2019, Knighted as Groundhog of the Realm, May 2022, Recipient of the Order of the Garter July 2023) and all his clan.

We have a friend, stonemason, Stephen Overman coming to build a very very very complicated deer and groundhog fence around this garden in July. Our flimsy eight foot fence is not cutting it. Stephen does the most wonderful stonework all over our region, but also built himself a fence for his own garden that I have talked him into replicating at our place. The fence will go down to bedrock so that Chuckie and crew can’t dig under it. Until Stephen arrives, things will have to remain under cloth.

Speaking of stonewalls, this is the wall Ben Sheehan built us that runs along the southern face of the house. The flat space created by his wall is covered in all sorts of Thyme with a patch of Lamb’s Ear too.

Yesterday I planted seedlings in the Venus Garden. The design was modified many times this spring, and unexpected plants were included even as I planted the garden. I look forward to experiencing its energy and beauty this season and sharing this with you in the form of a combination Essence come fall.

Here was me and Sheba early this morning. She is working hard as you can see ( Sheba is the little black bundle sunbathing in the dirt). I edged this garden so that I can plant Zinnias here but also not drive St Jim, the man with the lawnmower, crazy with a difficult to mow edge.

In the grass you see my two favorite tools- my sunhat and my cobra head weeder. I only learned about the cobra head weeder a few years ago from gardener and herbalist Kimberly @RootVineHealing. I can’t imagine my life in the garden without this tool as I can weed, dig, cultivate and plant baby plants using it. I have added a link to Johnny’s Selected Seeds where they sell this wonder tool.

Okay! I’m off to plant the Zinnias! Sending love and blessings from all of us at the farm!

PS Went back out to Lavender Tree Peony after planting the Zinnias.

Isn’t she a stunner? Turning around I saw that the Grande Dame had really opened up and was also showing herself to advantage so here is another shot of her.

Also noticed that the visiting grandpuppy had been busy!

The question is…..if this is mostly ripped up lawn does the lawn care expert (Jim) have to fill in the hole or does the gardener in charge of the gardens (me)?

Spring is can be a hot mess around here. Snow flurries one day and the next hour day it is 80 degrees and EVERYTHING is going nuts in the garden sometimes including the humans. This GO GO GO energy is not a green light for us humans to DO everything at once a truth I can too often forget. Flowing in spring is a more complicated dance of listening, doing, restraint and surrender.

Noah Kahan wrote Stick Season about the upper Connecticut River valley where I live. He grew up just across the river from here. Stick season is real. It’s not our prettiest season, but it is a sort of calm time for introspection and rest. What comes next is a season in which every living thing wakes up at the same moment and THERE IS too much A LOT TO DO.

Spring requires mind discipline. I can only do one job at a time though I often try to do three jobs at once. I need to only think about the job at hand. If I am watering the hoop house baby plants, I have to ignore the dead plum tree that needs to be cut down and a garden bed inundated with crab grass, knowing that these are not the priorities right now. Grounding Flower Essence helps me to stay in the now.

Spring requires me to FOLLOW my guidance and trust the priorities of the Elementals. Spring is the Elemental’s season. The Spring Equinox marks the transition from a time of planning with the Angels to a time of manifesting the plan which is the Elementals’ work. This means the Elementals know best what needs to be done as they patiently remind me six zillion times a year, specifically what needs to be done immediately and what can wait. More can wait than I think.

The Elementals are strategic and have an overview about what lies ahead. Also they have a great sense of humor about me which is totally necessary. Growing things is a confusing mysterious business with factors beyond my comprehension. These unknown factors drive what grows well one season but not another. While Earth moves into unknown times for all of us, the Elementals still know much better than us humans how to manage these times and specifically manage growing things in this time. Available to all of us if we but listen, their guidance is essential.

On a personal level, following the guidance I receive has become ever more essential to me. I am no longer the spring chicken I was in 1987. Back then I built 20 raised beds because I read in some book raised beds were the way to go. Then I filled them all with composted manure and tried to grow Flowers and vegetables in these beds. No matter how much I watered or how much it rained, the winds on this hilltop dried out the soil and left these charmless beds like dioramas of the Gobi desert. This motivated me to learn how to get guidance from the Elementals as Eileen Cady and Dorothy MacLean did at Findhorn, an inspiring cocreated garden I had read so much about.

In my early conversations with my new partners from the Elemental and Angelic realms, I knew I was not talking to myself when the Elementals told me to take apart the raised beds and cover the garden with a deep layer of mulch hay. This was a BIG reverse engineering project and not something my personality would have chosen to do. However I needed this kind of fiasco experience to bring home how important the Angels and Elementals were in farming and life. This kind of “learning lesson” when you are thirty is something different when you are sixty eight.

Since the raised bed era, I have tried to listen carefully, but now I try to do exactly what I am asked to do precisely when asked versus later when I feel like it. For example, in the past I might have been told to stop and rest. This guidance would translate into me doing seventeen other tasks on my way back to the house. You know, that Daylily clump that just has to be deadheaded that moment or that section of the asparagus patch that absolutely needs weeding that instant. Now the Elementals will yell at me if I even lean over to pluck a weed saying, “How is this defined as rest?” This is the kind of harassment cajoling I need appreciate and now try harder to follow.

I want to be gardening for another couple decades, so I have to conserve my energy. If the Elementals say STOP, I really am trying very, very, very hard to stop without pulling another weed. Do you get the feeling that I am trying to make excuses to the Elementals here for my slip ups?

This flow of REALLY LISTENING and then DOING AS I AM GUIDED TO DO requires Flower Essence support. And a lot of it. Flow Free helps with surrender. I want to be the thirty year old with the stamina of a mountain goat. But I have to surrender to what is actually the situation. I am a mature mountain goat now, one that has to take breaks from hauling compost. Sometimes going with the flow is not doing anything.

Elizabeth’s wonderful Camino Flower Essence Sahagun helps when I push my body too far. She made this Essence after a day when she walked over 30 miles and came to terms with the realization even a twenty something can push it too far. Sahagun helps me both find a better flow but also forgive myself for the pushing. Sahagun is described by the Angels as THE Essence for surrender.

Solandra is good for breaking up the habit of doing too much. Maple also helps to find the middle ground with a sweetness that doesn’t involve puritanical and patriarchal judgment. Don’t Worry-Bee Happy helps with this too. It’s okay if we goof up. We can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, laugh and be happy anyways.

Spiderwort, Daffodil and To Hear the Angels Sing help with listening skills. I need this in Spring in particular because I can get going so fast that I forget I have to stop and listen first. I think these Essences help my guides break through to me better when I get in one of my spring tizzys.

Rain also helps with flow. Today it is cold and rainy. It is much easier to follow directions to do less when its cold and rainy. Rainy days in Spring are such a reminder that sometimes often our job is just to enjoy the glory of the greening world sitting by the window with a nice hot cup of chai.

Column from April 24th edition of the Marmota Times reprinted with permission from Reginald Montgomery “Chuckie” Hogbottom, Order of the Woodchuck, Recipient of the medal of honor “Marmota Monax” September 2019, Knighted as Groundhog of the Realm, May 2022, Recipient of the Order of the Garter July 2023.

My dear friends. Happy Spring! It’s been wonderful to see so many of you out and about in the Green Hope gardens after our tedious hibernation period broken only by forays to our three Michelin star restaurant Le Marmiton a.k.a. the Green Hope Farm compost heap.

I appreciate all those who made this dream of our own restaurant a reality. Compliments in particular to the several families donating to our kitchen. I love how small humans hate a bread crust. This winter, so many of our most delectable entrees used these as our core ingredient.

Yes, it is always good to catch up at Le Marmiton, even if a little tense what with the possums, raccoons, squirrels, and other interlopers who rudely expect to be seated and fed without making a reservation.

But on to the business of this article- our little Marmot against Molly skirmish and how it’s going.

It’s always worth a chuckle to see our silly human sporting her backpack sprayer of garlic spray. As you all know, this never really slows our roll. There is always some tasty morsel she’s missed….. like that tray of baby broccoli and cauliflower seedlings I found yesterday afternoon in the hoop house. Yum!

Many of you have expressed concerns that Molly has decided to get serious about our activities at the farm. I just want to calm you down and remind you how very ineffectual her efforts have been.

Let’s face it, an eight pound dog is not a concern.

And Molly’s threats to use a “Have a Heart” trap to take us across the Connecticut River to Vermont? We all know that is exactly how we get our year abroad program done. Thank goodness when it is time to return home there are many Vermonters happy to bring us back over the river to New Hampshire again.

You may ask, how did I hear of her heated discussion about trapping us? I had my cousin, a graduate of the Central Marmota Agency School of Espionage, Mauricio “Rico” Montgomery build a den/ listening station under her back deck. This was a real victory for our data collection as the den is five feet from her kitchen door. Rico likes to sunbath on the deck and will even frollick with Sheba, her dog companion, but most of the time Rico just listens for data.

Rico also reported a meeting this week in which a rebuilt vegetable garden fence was discussed with a man with a big red truck and back hoe. There was talk of using the backhoe to create a trench around the perimeter of the garden so as to pin the fence to bedrock. This kind of high tech solution which would prevent our easy tunneling under the fence is what she needs, but let’s face it, she has long been prone to more half baked deterrents that keep us in the garden and her gnashing her teeth. Let’s just hope she remains consistent in her “Never expect the Spanish Inquisition” approach, and the man in the red truck is never heard from again.

This season she has made her usual harmless moves with garlic spray everywhere and frost cloth on the spring crops. Not to worry! Peas and beans need pollinators so it’s just a waiting game for us. We’ll have our usual feast of delectable garden treats when the frost cloth has to come off for the pollinators. Thanks to the cloth, everything will be blemish free.

So my dear Marmota Monax beloveds. Carry on with your garden rampages, restaurant feasts, shameless sunbathing and tussles with the harmless humans and petite dog. We shall prevail.