If you have been a part of the Green Hope Farm community for long you may remember former staff Goddess Sithembiso Mulhauri or Thembi as she is called. Thembi joined our staff after leaving her home in Harare, Zimbabwe. Her husband, a famous soccer coach, was put on Mugabe’s hit list, and the family had to flee the country.

Today I learned that a movie is going to be made about Thembi’s husband, Charles, and the Zimbabwe soccer team he founded, AmaZulu FC.

If this was my movie, I would turn the camera to Thembi.

Here some scenes that would be in my BioPic.

Scene at the US Embassy in Harare: When Charles departs Zimbabwe, it is in a big hurry. Thembi is left behind with their four young sons ages 4 to 14. She spends months gathering the paperwork to be able to join her husband in the US. Things like DNA tests are required. She has done this on her own as her beloved mother has recently died.

Thembi enters the Embassy with all the necessary documents. She shows them at the gate and fortunately this moment is filmed by the Embassy, because by the time she crosses the lobby of the Embassy to go into the right office, she has been robbed of all documents. Her plane leaves in a matter of hours. Will she be believed that she had the documents? Will she and her boys make the flight? They do, but it is a miracle.

Scene as Thembi and the boys get off the plane in Boston Thembi is wearing heels and a beautiful dress. The boys are looking sharp. Bundled into a car, city girl Thembi looks briefly at the skyline of Boston before she finds herself on a long drive north to the deeply wooded hills of New Hampshire. Harare and her city life are seriously in the rearview mirror. As she gets out of the car in front of her new home, her heels sink deep into the grass. It may be the last time she ever needs heels in her new life in northern New England. She is shocked by the trees. There are so many of them. This is an alien world and not just because no one is speaking her language.

Scene as Thembi cuts her dreads. Thembi’s beautiful long dreads hold all the memories of the life she has lost. Her family and friends are beyond her reach. She cannot go home. As she gets her boys settled into their new lives and begins to work at Green Hope Farm, she needs all her energy to move forward and not look back. She cuts off her dreads and lets go of all she can no longer hold onto. Her new haircut reveals her beauty even more so than the dreads. In the movie, she should play herself.

Scene at a Green Hope Farm party. Thembi has brought her favorite foods and brought the fun. All the too serious New Englanders find ourselves dancing all night with Thembi. She’s always made us laugh, now she gets us dancing.

Scene in Thembi’s kitchen Her older kids are playing soccer now at Kimball Union Academy, and her husband is coaching legions of elite soccer players. Thembi’s kitchen has become a hub for college and prep school soccer recruits from Africa who need a taste of home. The kitchen is packed and will remain so for many years.

Scene when Thembi’s house burns down Early one wintry morning, Thembi’s house burns to the ground. Everyone gets out safely but all their possessions are gone. Thembi collects her family and the soccer players staying with her, and they camp out at the Kimball Union guesthouse. While the town community kick in to help, it’s really Thembi who does the lion’s share of rebuilding their lives. In short order she finds them a new house and elegantly furnishes it on a shoestring budget.

Scene yesterday I text Thembi to tell her I think she should be the star of the movie. Lots of laughter emojis, then Thembi tells me she is starting another business. Since she arrived in America a dozen years ago, she has gotten her business and hospitality degree. Two of her children have graduated from college and are off in the world teaching and coaching soccer. Two more are going to college next year and Simba, her fifth child born in New Hampshire, is happily launched into kindergarten. Thembi runs this household of boys and men and also runs two Airbnbs, one in her home and one in the house across the street that she bought. She also owns and runs a daycare center. She tells me yesterday that she is going to buy a children’s gym.

With or without the movie, Thembi will remain one of my personal heroines. And yes, when the movie about her husband comes out, I will greatly enjoy it, but I will also be thinking of the movie that should have been.

A few wintry days ago we made up more Mother Flower Essence for one of our bespoke combination Flower Essences, Hesperides’ Gift.

Some combinations are created in the garden. The Arbor Garden, for example, is created in the Arbor Garden each growing season from all the Flowers in blossom there on the day the Angels choose to make the mix.

However, most combination Flower Essences are mixed by us from Flower Essences Mothers in our collections. We have about a thousand Mother Flower Essences in our Mother Essence room. Combination remedies like Hesperides’ Gift or Golden Armor are created from these Mothers. Building from the resource of this Mother Essence inventory means our mixes can have much relevant Flower wisdom. For example, they can include Flower Essences from many geographical locations as well as Flowers that don’t bloom at the same time.

We are guided by our Angelic partners about the Flower Essence ingredients in these mixes. It’s an ongoing process in which we check in when making new inventory to see if the combination remedy needs tweaks. The Angels recipe and subsequent tweaks result in combination remedies that have great depth and complexity as well as a vibrational strength revelant to this precise time.

When we work with a combination Flower Essence, we may just feel the overall vibrational effect of a combination. When I mix the mix I get to see why a combination works in such a deep way. As I add one Flower Essence after another, I get to consider why the Essence was chosen in the mix and how it supports the overall braid of Flower Essences.

So let’s consider Hesperides’ Gift. This Flower Essence was originally created two decades ago for a group project at a school for energy workers. A healer asked for a Green Hope Farm combination Flower Essence to be created to support the extensive healing community of her school for a specific healing project.

Our charge was to make a mix that would support healers who were feeling burnt out, overwhelmed by the gravity and volume of work they were doing, feeling in need of restorative love and new inspiration as well as support for the boundary work so necessary for all healing tasks.

After we created the mix, many hundreds of healers both current students at this school for healing as well as graduates took Hesperides’ Gift simultaneously to activate a group healing. It was a joy to send hundreds of bottles of this mix off across the globe each day, imagining the web of light Hesperides’ Gift helped to create and sustain in this wonderful community.

Twenty years ago, one thing I puzzled over as I created the mix with my Angelic partners was their choice of the name, Hesperides’ Gift. Even after looking up the mythological references, the name felt a bit obscure.

Twenty years later, I wondered about the name once again. Was there more that could be said about this name? Why this reference to the goddesses who protected the apples of immortality? And another question came up for me. We have continued to send this Flower Essence out for many years to so many. Was there anything the Angels wanted to say about who this mix might serve in this current era? I was asking the Angels for their thoughts on who are today’s healers.

After framing this question here, I got called away from the computer to do another task. This gave the Angels the opportunity to answer my questions in a different way.

While doing this other task, I was considering how I define healers in a much broader sense than when we first created the mix. I think of healers as anyone who brings love and light to any situation. As I was thinking this, someone across the room from me read out this Charles Dicken’s quote:

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”

How I love the way Angels support us in such unexpected ways. This quote felt like the Angels affirming the idea that we are all healers, each in our own way.

I wondered a bit if this was taking the idea to far to say, ALL of us, then I paused and found myself glancing at the December calendar on the office wall. I hadn’t really noticed the calendar’s Meher Baba quote but read it then:

“The unfoldment of the divine in life is a common enterprise and not an exclusive achievement.”

I felt this supported my conviction that we are all healers. As I returned to the computer, I asked the Angels to share more. Here is what they said,

“This mix, Hesperides’ Gift is protected by us and is our gift to you. You are both the gift giver in your work as healers and you are the receiver of our gifts as you do this work. All to say, GIFT in this name is not an accident.

Today we call a spade a spade. The Hesperides were a group of women goddesses who guarded Gaia’s gifts of life force energy. In mythology these gifts were described symbolically as golden apples, gifts of an energetic nature brought down into form.

Existing in the realm between the unseen world of Divinity and the seen world of earthly life, the Hesperides were guardians of these energy gifts. Our intention in invoking this mythological framework is to suggest the significance of this remedy and to honor you who do healing work.

Like the Hesperides, healers bring the unseen world into the seen world. We are talking about how you bring light energy through the veils to offer to those in need. Words cannot contain the multitude of ways you healers do your work. We see it all and help you all.

There are so many kinds of healers and places of healing. If you count yourself out because you are not working in a conventional healing milieu or doing what others would say was healing work, please don’t. A smile can save a life. We want you to know you matter. Yours is sacred work. Love is total significance. Your efforts are total significance. Healers deserve to understand themselves in these terms. Healers do sacred work. It is not like other work. When a healer opens to receive love and light to direct it to another soul, it is a great gift.

We felt in giving the Flower Essence this name that we indicate the sacred and invaluable work of healers. We honor you with this name. We also want you to understand there are no boundaries between you as healer and us as healers. You and we are not we but one. We work in oneness.

With this name we share that in this Flower Essence mix and in so many other ways, we bring you gifts of support. ALWAYS and CONTINUOUSLY. Together with you, we bring to earth a golden light of love that heals all. We kid you not.

Two days before Thanksgiving I began this blog with:

The Solandra bloomed this morning. I felt like it was a kiss sent out to all the overworked folks out there getting ready to pause in already very busy lives to put on a complicated Thanksgiving feast.

Solandra Flower Essence is all about reminding us we are lovable and loved because we exist not because of what we do. Solandra reminds us we exist as love in an ocean of love and have nothing to prove.

Now, a week later, I wonder if I took this photo of Solandra but didn’t actually take her Flower Essence…..

As I get back to this blog a long seven days later, I have a bit of a snarky attitude some thoughts. Perhaps I am need a radical attitude adjustment need the staff of Downton Abbey need a time out in Fiji need to go and visit with the Solandra blossoms out in the greenhouse again drink a quart of Solandra Flower Essence water every day until the next holiday, go on strike and pitch a tent at Solandra’s side refusing to come out of the greenhouse unless someone else cooks, so I have inner strength to tell next year’s gathered hoards guests expecting five thousand different side dishes as well as their own bespoke pie that…….

Solandra said to BACK OFF! chill out.

As I reminisce about last week’s over the top holiday feast dinner, I know a few things and feel a lot more, A pie or two would have been enough. Did we really need a pumpkin pie, 3 (THREE) pecan pies, a cherry pie, a chocolate cream pie, a banana cream pie and an apple pie? I think not. We were 22 gathered, not 220. Seven were children. Some ate nothing more than a squeeze pouch of applesauce. Some of us should have only eaten a squeeze pouch of applesauce.

Solandra! Help me learn how to give a hairy eyeball in the face of all special requests. This was a look that my mother mastered so well that I still shudder to think of it. Help me master her hairy eyeball so no one will ever again insist that every Thanksgiving needs a banana cream pie. If I master this look, everyone will be happy with one crappy store bought pumpkin pie as my siblings and I were during our childhood Thanksgivings because they will be afraid to say otherwise.

For goodness sake, my mother served peas, rice, crescent rolls from a tube and turkey at our Thanksgivings (complete menu), and we ENJOYED it. Yes, I was thrilled when I discovered Jim’s family’s Thanksgiving meal included mashed potatoes, stuffing, yams and GRAVY, but would I have complained to my mother about our modest table? No! I was too afraid of her hairy eyeball. My siblings and I could feel it across any crowded room. It was a laser beam that terrified.

After this Thanksgiving, I wish her hairy eyeball was in my bag of tricks, How relaxing it would be if everyone ACTED as if they were enjoying a spread of turkey, peas and one solitary pie. This would leave me rested giddy able to leave the kitchen and go read a book serene and grandmotherly in some 1950’s type way.

Oh Solandra, help me know I am a human being not a human doing and if you can, teach me all my mother knew about a well used hairy eyeball.

A bear walked across my soul last night

It’s like that on earth, you know.

We appear unconnected, but we’re not.

Unity

is.

So while we dream this dream of separation, let’s pretend we know

we’re one.

Just until we awake (and know this)

Let’s love each other as we love our fingers and toes.

Let’s imagine the dirt we walk on is our own skin.

That irritating person across the table (ocean) from us? The best gift we’ve ever given ourselves.

The bear cub in the forest? The sweet voice of our eternal self, lifting the curtain for a moment to remind us

joy and wonder is our destination.

That’s how we’ll wake up-

living as if we know the truth until we do.

Grace will do the rest.

November in northern New England has its own particular beauty. The clouds are saturated with a rich palette of color. In this shot you can see that the main perennial beds have been cleared for the winter. In the foreground the Thyme which encircles the house is still going strong.

After abundant blossoms this summer, the Japanese Anemones make extraordinary seed pods in the fall. They dance in the wind just as the Flowers did.

Every mild day means another opportunity to get mulch down on another garden. This was me ( and of course Sheba) cleaning up the Zinnias, Cosmos and other annuals and putting down mulch.

I use hay to mulch each garden. This builds up the soil and helps keep down weeds. The mulch also keeps in moisture ( maybe not so necessary this rainy summer but usually so important on this windy site). Mulch also eliminates the need to rototil the gardens which means soil structure isn’t disrupted as it is with rototilling. All in all, mulch is key to just about everything that happens here!

I love any encounter with a toad. I found this one while moving hay. I hope he finds a place to burrow in soon. He looked pretty cold to me.

Most of the leaves are down except for oak leaves and this golden glowing larch. None the less there are bold colors in the hills and fields.

In all seasons we spend a lot of time down on this flat rock (oddly tilted in my photo but actually very flat). It is a great lookout spot for little and big people and of course Sheba (and where was she when I was taking this photo? She was digging a big messy hole in the Arbor Garden for some unknown terrier mutt reason).

Sending you all much love and wishes for peace in your world.

PS New colors the next day. Winter no longer coming. Winter is here.