Flowers call out to us when they can help us.

Flowers call to us so we can learn from their healing electrical vibration (as well as savor their beauty). We can work with any Flower calling to us in a variety of ways. We can spend time with the Flower out in Nature. We can gather a bouquet of blossoms and keep it nearby to soak up the vibes or we can get a bottle of the Flower’s Flower Essence for long term work with the vibrational energies of the Flower.

If you find yourself noticing a specific Flower again and again, check out its energetic description here on our website and see if it might support you in whatever is going on in your life.

One way I notice how precisely Flowers and Flower Essences call to people is with my grandchildren. Most of them are too little to read, yet they always pick out Flower Essences for themselves that feel relevant to what they are going through.

Most visits conclude with them coming into the office to pick out a couple of Flower Essences for themselves. I love their affection for Flower Essences, and I love setting them loose to pick what they need. In a room of hundreds and hundreds of different Flower Essences they quickly zero in on a few bottles. Usually they get to pick three. Their choices are always spot on. I enjoy this so much. They do too. Their parents fuss that the kids usually drink their bottles, but I remind them they did too when they were four.

To bring forward a group of Flower Essences than might serve ALL OF US right now, we “randomly” picked from a bowl that holds the name of all our Flower Essences. Here are the three we pulled and a brief description of their gifts. They felt pretty darn helpful for right now. What do you think?

The Sunflower Spiral– This Flower Essence was created in the high vibration Venus Garden. I usually think of it as helping us feel connected and valued in our communities, but today I was struck by how it describes itself and its support, “Don’t lose faith. Help is here. Things are going better than they look. You are doing better than you think. Keep shining your light. You can do it. You are doing it. Feel the energy underneath the chaos. Yes, healing is happening.”

Beau Narcisse Rose– I recently heard a pundit calling our time the “Age of Comparison” because of the relentless comparisons forced upon us by social media. This Rose addresses this dynamic as it helps us to see the core truth of our circumstances and move beyond surface preoccupations and cultural obsessions to penetrate the Essence of things. Beau Narcisse Rose describes itself as helping us find purpose beyond any material preoccupations that have held sway and helping us live in a way true to what we really believe matters. I say, “Yes to that!”

I AM my deepest truths seen, owned and realized. I AM one with the eternal verities of life.

California Poppy– This is an eventful and chaotic time on every level. During this spiritual roller coaster ride, we can use a great deal of help with discernment. California Poppy helps us anchor in our heart as the ultimate authority. Grounded in our hearts, we can sort out what matters and what does not. California Poppy is particularly helpful when the side effects of one’s spiritual awakening involve weird symptoms and unusual psychic events. California Poppy helps us keep our eye on the prize of our spiritual growth and not get caught up in phenomenon that doesn’t matter.

I AM a chalice of God.

PS The Grandchildren are ALSO enjoying garden produce protected by our new fencing! This makes a refreshing change from Chuckie Hogbottom and his crew of bandits eating all the vegetables as in recent year’s past.

Summer is a season of soooooo much. One way to process this season is to look at the whole enchilada through a spiritual filter.

Yes, we need Flower Essences for pragmatic things like keeping the bugs off ( Flee Free & Golden Armor), or managing the bites when the bugs get us anyways ( Outburst & Beautiful Skin). We need Essences for the sunburns ( Healthy Coat and Outburst), the tourista ( Digestive Woes), the heat (Summer Snowflake) and the daily logistical complications of living a different schedule than the rest of the year (Flow Free for flexibility and Omey Island to help us align with the natural rhythms of the season that can help us manage the “too much” of the season).

We can also consider a couple of the deeper issues that surface.

NOSTALGIA- Summer can bring up great nostalgia as we recall that expansive feeling of freedom we may have had when we were children. Our adult lives generally don’t get less complicated in summer, so this can be a difficult thing to recall let alone reclaim.

Honeysuckle helps us not get lost in the memories. Gratitude returns us to the now and helps us recognize the gifts sometimes hidden in the present. Boundless and Wild Rose can help us have that inner experience of expansion even as we can’t return to our childhood version of summer.

DESIRES Versus REALITY- Social media everywhere would have us believe that the way to recapture that summer feeling is to drain our bank accounts. Social media would have us believe EVERYONE is having the best vacation ever in the perfect AirBNB because they moved from the bad AirBNB and now have one that has four infinity pools and caviar provided by the host.

Most of us work during the summer. For parents with children, this is a great complexity as they must continue to work and also take care of their children. For most everyone, summer is not perfect.

Let’s drop kick media induced FOMO and turn our attention to the unexpected and simple pleasures of summer and the sweetness of everyday life. The fragrance of cut grass always gives us an opportunity to savor summer. So many small things do.

Loving What Is and Amor Fati are big picture Essences helping us accept the challenges and disappointments of our lives with grace. They help us in summer too when the big adventure is in our neighborhood and not at Machu Picchu.

REMEMBERING WHY WE ARE HERE- Social Media would have us think the reasons we are here have to do with being the best, having the most, going the most places, eating every meal out and never aging. If we sit quietly for even a few minutes, I doubt any of us would say we really believe this. Love is the reason we are here. The Venus Garden Flower Essences and the Roses in particular support us to know Love is the only real thing.

The message the Iranian soccer team left in the locker room after their world cup soccer game this past weekend reflected them living this truth: “From the ancient Persia of thousands of years ago to the civilized Iran of today, the spirit of Iran remains alive and steadfast. We came to Los Angeles with pride, competed with honor, and leave with dignity. Thank you Los Angeles for your hospitality. And thank you to every Iranian who gave their heart, voice, and soul for Iran throughout these 180 minutes. May peace, respect, and friendship prevail among all nations. “

We have Ginkgo biloba Flower Essence made from our lovely Ginkgo tree planted 45 years ago here at the farm. If you go to Additional Essences on the left on the Find a Flower Essences, you can scroll down and order it there.

I mention this because requests for Ginkgo biloba have been rolling in, and it’s a bit hard to find on the website.

We wondered why this wave of interest in Ginkgo. A GHF friend suggested that this wave might be because asteroid #85197 known as Ginkgo was conjunct the full blue moon last Sunday and will be closely conjunct around 9 degrees Aries until July 27th.

This GHF friend noted ” Ginkgo is definitely an essence of Longevity as it is a sole survivor of a group of trees that date back before dinosaurs roamed the Earth. It is so ancient the species is known as a living fossil. Fossils of this plant have been discovered that date back more than 200 million years.”

We have tried to research what is known about this asteroid but did not find out anything else. No worries! No doubt one of you will share! THANK YOU!

As a Flower Essence, Ginkgo holds the energy of the eternal now. Ginkgo paints us a picture, “Imagine dropping a bucket into a deep and ancient well. Your bucket slowly sinks to the bottom moving through cool jade green waters. As you pull the bucket up into your arms, an energy spills over you that is beyond words in its restorative, life giving totality. This is the eternal now.”

When I started gardening 45 years ago, I read a lot of garden books. In the The Country Garden by Josephine Nuese, Josephine exhorts her readers to NEVER ask anyone at a plant nursery ANY questions during the month of May. Her advice is to get in and get out and leave the nursery staff be. Why? Because they are crazed beings and should not have to answer a question about flea beetles when they are in a (well deserved) panic about the impossiblility of doing all their May gardening tasks.

I get this completely! I’m hardly able to form sentences during the month of May. There is so much to do and with every step I am thinking (completely boring) things like, “If I take this load of weeds down to the compost pile, I can bring back some finished compost to the hoop house, but I should put flats of sweet potato slips on the top of the weeds to drop them off at the vegetable garden on the way by so as to save myself a trip and don’t forget to bring the staple gun back up from the vegetable garden with the compost because some animal (GROUNDHOGS) are assaulting the hoop house netting there, and I need to reinforce with five thousand more staples.”

With this kind of stream of consciousness stuff going, if someone asks me a question, I initially don’t hear them. Then when they say the same thing eight or nine more times, I shake my head and try to focus. “What IS for supper? Is it supper time? Do I have to stop before I water in those sweet potato slips (and maybe the rest of the vegetable garden)? Is supper really necessary?”

If pressed for a verbal response, I mumble something and keep trotting (I stop only to pull up bindweed). The idea of having to answer questions all day long at a plant nursery while doing everything that needs to be done in May? This is the stuff of nightmares.

Much to my surprise, I actually thought about something other than logistics while digging rows for the Red Shiso today. The digging went on long enough for my mind to simmer down from its usual logisitc frenzy. Instead, I found myself considering five decades of gardening screw ups, and all they have taught me. Had anyone come out and asked me a question this morning, they would have found me alone with my shovel, laughing my head off (which perhaps might have been scarier than my May mumblings).

So here are a few of the screw ups I thought of this morning (Yes, I get a lot of excellent guidance from the Angels and Elementals which theoretically should eliminate screw ups, but maybe for their own amusement, they leave me free to pursue many of my OWN bad ideas).

MY MOST RECENT BIG SCREW UP- This spring I started seeds with this method I saw on YouTube in which people made snail like rolls of seed starter mix layered with cardboard. I went a little crazy with snail roll ups and started EVERYTHING with them. EVERYTHING.

WHAT WAS I THINKING? Blame it on the groundhogs who sapped my confidence these last few years. I turned my back on the way I have SUCCESSFULLY started seeds for the last four plus decades and went for the snails. THEY WERE A HORROR! They dried out extremely fast , nothing germinated well ( sometimes not at all), nothing that did germinate grew until I moved the seedlings out of the snails. The snails fell apart on unrolling. In the YouTube videos, people unrolled their snails like a red carpet and lush seedlings sported long healthy roots ready for life in the garden. Hmmmm.

Here are two conclusions I draw from this. #1. Don’t let groundhogs of ANY SORT wear you down. #2. Don’t believe everything you see on You Tube.

Here are some more rules and the reason for the rules.

#3. When someone comes with their tractor to turn the compost heap, make sure they know you want them to remove the blue plastic tarp from the top of the pile before turning.

Because I did not make this clear, my friend on his tractor mixed the compost with shreds of the blue plastic tarp so that now I must go through every load of compost and pull our thousannds of strands of blue plastic.

#3a. Remove ALL tape from cardboard boxes used to mulch gardens ( not just 80% of the tape because you are feeling bored with the job). Remember that tape will NEVER break down and will eventually find its way to the compost heap where you will have to remove it from the compost along with the blue strands. (This rule doesn’t get its own number, because it is is adjacent to the blue plastic tarp rule.)

#4. When your neighbor builds an enormous fence around her vegetable garden DON’T LAUGH and think it’s ridiculous You will be building an equally ginormous fence yourself a few years later.

#5. When explaining the fence project to the fence builder, do not assume that because he has his own vegetable garden that he cares about soil. Explain MANY TIMES that when he fills in around the fence with the soil he has dug up, he should put subsoil in the ditches first then put the TOPSOIL on TOP.

#6. Be glad you know how to build up soil. Consider it a wonderful challenge that the perimeter of your new fenced in garden is the worst soil you have ever worked with, and it will now take you years to make it hold any life. You like a project right?

#7. Put all tools back where they belong after you use them. Yes, I know there are people clamoring for supper and the thought of making one more trip to the tool shed chills your blood. Do it anyways.

#8. Don’t get sentimental about Chuckie Hogbottom. Yes, you enjoyed his repartee over the years. Yes, you enjoyed the way he and his whole coterie of Groundhogs made you laugh after you cried. BUT remember the tears, and remember that you are going to enjoy harvesting vegetables from your very own garden for the first time in many, many years.

Okay that is all my whirling brain can remember. I am off to check on the plant babies that will get planted in the Venus Garden after the Red Shiso gets sown tomorrow!

Green Hope Farm is a collaborative creation. This collaboration is part of each and every day and makes ALL the difference to our mission sharing Flower Essences.

Take this morning for example. A dear GHF friend wrote to tell us that on receiving her last order, she felt the energy of Moldavian Dragonhead was distinctly unhappy. She had attentively worked to uplift the Flower Essence and wrote to tell us that she had lifted it up a bit but not all the way.

This was such an unusual thing to hear. Of course I was concerned. My experience with this Flower has always been one of dramatically lightening the heart and bringing joy. Her I AM affirmation is, “I AM a songline of happiness.” She describes herself as “Tender support for a discouraged heart. For moments when these unravelling times feel like too much and you need respite and relief.”

Since this helpful feedback from a GHF friend was so at odds with Moldavian Dragonhead‘s usual energy, I wondered what was up.

I tuned in for a chat with Moldavian Dragonhead right away, but I had no idea what this precious Flower friend would share. Moldavian Dragonhead was quick to own that she is suffering and beleaguered. She used the word overwhelmed several times. She explained that as part of her planetary work, she is holding the collective grief of Ukraine. She said other Flowers were part of this work, but even with this shared burden, she is overwhelmed.

When she spoke of her work with Ukraine, I had only a fuzzy sense of Moldavia’s proximity to Ukraine. When I looked at a map I got full body shivers. Moldavia borders Ukraine in the south and east. Moldavian Dragonhead explained that she is native to both Moldavia and Ukraine with deep roots in both countries.

When I asked her how we could support her, she said that anyone working with her right now could help her in her work. She suggested taking the bottle to happy places or simply sending the bottle love. She said any loving thoughts directed to her in ANY WAY will help her. She is determined to keep on with her mission and appreciates our love and support.

I have put a note on the description of Moldavian Dragonhead that if you want to help this Flower and help her continue her work with Ukraine, please put a note in your order and we will send you a free bottle of this Essence. We hope this will help this dear Flower with her planetary mission to help Ukraine. If you want to grow this Flower, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds has seeds for Moldavian Dragonhead. It is in the mint family so it grows fast. It is not too late to start her right now or in the next few weeks.

In closing I thank you all for all the ways you illuminate the Essences for the benefit of one and all! Much Love and Blessings!