It was a kind hearted thoughtful ill conceived addle brained bad idea.

Jim and I were out mulching one of the garden with hay two weekends ago. We loaded bales into the pick up truck and brought them around to the top of the garden. As Jim picked up a bale to fling off the truck, it broke apart revealing a clutch of baby mice tucked into the folds of summer grass. They were tiny. They were cute. They were three blind mice.

What to do? Their home was gone. Their mother too. Emily had said she wanted a hamster. Caring for mice was vaguely like caring for a hamster. This might buy us some time in the small animal negotiations department. We even had a hermit crab’s plastic home to give to the effort.

I scooped up the mice. They lay inert in my mitten. They looked on death’s door. Would this be another one of those noble rescue attempts that ended with lots of small children crying at an animal funeral? Ignoring this thought, I took the tiny mice into the house and handed them over to the youngest children available. They set to work making a home for these orphans and of course, they gave them Flower Essences.

I hate animal stories where any animal dies. I don’t think I am over the endings of “The Yearling” and “Where the Red Fern Grows” yet. And to be honest, Lizzy warned me about “Where the Red Fern Grows” so I only heard about the ending.

So let me tell you now, in case you are like me, that this tale involves no funerals or sad moments. None.

Back to our story, by the time we had read up on what to feed baby mice, the warmth of the house had revived them. The trio was racing around their new home with great abandon. During the next few days they only got zippier. They demolished five times their weight in milk, toast, nuts, and dried fruit. They showed no interest in an offered potato. I think they thought it needed butter.

Soon they were twice their size and looking at us with shiny black eyes. They were adorable, though it was hard to believe how often their cage needed cleaning or how scarce the children were when this needed to be done.

No self respecting tale is complete without an adversary or two for its protagonists. Our young orphans had three. The cats.

Each cat took a shift to guard their prey. The cage was never left unmonitored. Here we observe Mishka, six hours into her shift. I am not even sure she blinked while on duty let alone took her eyes off her targets. With the mice getting this kind of loving attention, we decided that the rock on top of the cage might be a lovely souvenir if you are a die hard Red Sox fan, but it was not heavy enough to protect our mice babies. We piled on many books. Just for good measure, we wedged the mouse home under a bookcase on Jim’s desk. Yes, St. Jim’s desk was appropriated by us for the orphans. As far as we were concerned, he could keep up with Green Hope Farm finances somewhere else! “Mice First” was our slogan.

Things went smoothly for almost two weeks. We were delighted with how well the babies were doing. It was clear they could survive without our care. Will, Emily, and I knew it was time to release them back into the wild. We decided last Saturday morning we would make a fabulous mouse nest down near the compost heap and let them go free. It sounded like a good plan.

On Friday night we went out to see Emily and her soccer team play a night game under the lights at her school’s new turf field. It was a very exciting game. We returned home cold but happy. As we walked into the house, there was an enormous crash. Running into mouse headquarters, we found that Mishka’s brother Gus had managed to push the cage and the many books on top of the cage off the desk to the floor below. Everything in the cage was on the floor. We had arrived just in time! Well almost. No mice were crushed by a book, but also no mice were waiting for us to grab them. Two of them took off at top speed under the couch and one headed that way.

One slow mouse got caught and redeposited into his cage. Three cats got banished from that part of the house. Two tired adults started to take apart the playroom. It’s just what you dream about at 9 pm on a Friday night; moving every piece of furniture in a room to search for two baby mice. Jim, who deserved to throttle me, couldn’t have been nicer. “This room needs a good housecleaning.” he said. I was full of remorse. I welcomed the blame and apologized profusely, however Jim never said “I told you so.” That’s probably why we are still married. He could reasonably have said this to me at least forty five thousand times in the last twenty six years, but he never has.

A couple hours later, the room was spotless. My knitting center had never looked as organized. Every surface had been cleaned and/or vacuumed. And there were no mice to be found. The conclusion was obvious. Our house is only twenty years old but twenty years is a long time for mice to find a way in. Even as we searched the last corner of the room for orphan two and three, I suspect they were being welcomed into their new adoptive family of house mice .

And mouse number three? He was moved out to his new home at dawn the next day. I left a pile so high of mouse gorp at his side that I think he too was welcomed into a clan of mice within minutes of the drop off. I hope so anyways. An outdoor mouse should have the same lifestyle as his indoor relatives, don’t you think?

Baby Glew is one month old today! Earlier in the week, August was ready for the two mile road trip from his home in Meriden village to Green Hope Farm so Vicki brought him up to do lunch with his fairy godmothers.

It was Halloween, so August was dressed in orange. Here Deb proves an old hand at burping a baby while Patricia makes silly faces. Though William would disagree, for those of in the office, a visit from Vicki and August was the best treat of our Halloween day!

Here’s William and cousin Taylor assessing what they considered the best treats of their day!

Ben is twenty five years old today! And look how the world of Green Hope Farm is celebrating!

We love you Ben! Happy Birthday!

As those of you who have been reading the blog from the beginning might recall, when one of my siblings made repeated specific threats to kill me and my children in order to extort money from my parents, my husband and I made the decision to drop out of my family of origin so we could no longer be used as leverage for this situation. We were aware at the time that this would have financial repercussions for us, as dropping out on the family meant being disinherited. My family of origin has enough money that any eventual inheritance would have helped with college tuitions and mortgages, stuff like that.

First of all, after thousands of hours rehashing our decision making process during the last six years, we still haven’t figured out any other way through our situation than the one we chose. When you are afraid for your children’s lives, nothing but their safety matters. No other considerations seem in any way important. And when you can’t get the other people involved in the situation galvanized to deal with the death threats and work with you towards a common solution, you can’t get them galvanized. You have to take action to protect your children, even if other people won’t.

So any real regrets? No. Sadness? Yes. A lot of sadness, but no regrets.

Throughout this unfolding saga, I spent much time seeking moral support and guidance from God and the Angels. I needed moral support at least every five minutes. Thankfully, God and the Angels are nothing if not there for us.

Sometimes our conversations were just me silently yelling help. Sometimes our conversations took me to a place of calm where I knew everything was okay and nothing was real but God. Sometimes I would receive guidance for the specifics of my situation and sometimes I would receive information that had a more generic feel to is. Today I thought I would share some of the more generic information I received about money.

But first, an odd little thing that happened to me on the way to this drama. About fifteen or twenty years ago, out of the blue, the Angels told me that I would not get anything from my family of origin or from the family home. I couldn’t make head or tails of this snippet of information. I was so unaware of the coming drama that I decided this was the Angels way to tell me that the family home in Connecticut was going to flood.

Much as my analysis of this message was completely flawed, I am grateful for this data being dropped into my consciousness so long ago, because it helped me in a weird way to accept what was unfolding as inevitable and not my fault. I can make practically anything my fault and so I can sometimes get myself into a frenzy, dwelling on how my choices have had financial repercussions for my children. Funny how I have to remind myself that my choices could very well have saved their lives, but my personality can so easily shame spiral into giving me a hard time about the financial repercussions of putting their safety first.

Enter more insight from the Angels. In this whole unfolding drama, it’s often been the Angels who have given me practical inservices about the energetics of what has happened. As we came to terms with being disinherited, the Angels offered very helpful information about this family money in particular and money in general.

The Angels explained that it was a great gift to Jim and me and our children NOT to inherit this money. The Angels noted that money carries unfinished business even karma with it, that some money has so much garbage with it that its best not to have to move it through your own life. When some people inherit money, the money is relatively clean. While they must take on the energetics carried by the money and transmute this, the money is worth the work. Other money, depending on how it was made, how it has been used, and so many other factors, is not a gift and is not worth the work.

For some reason, this family money I no longer will inherit was not a good value. The Angels said “To inherit this money is to have to rework all the lessons you have already cleared from your energy system and the family you and Jim have created together. Receiving this money would be like cleaning the chaos of a flood out of your home and then inviting the same floodwaters back in to wreck your home again. Think of the family river trio of Flower Essences Black Currant, Bloodroot, and Borage, think of your work to disentangle yourself from the emotional and spiritual confusions of your tribe of origin, and think of your conscious work to set your children free to find their own way without this baggage. Think of the literal decades you have spent to clear the family illusions from your electrical system so that you have finished with those illusions once and for all. Receiving this money would necessitate you doing this entire cleanse process all over again and would dump on your children the burden of doing this for themselves. Be glad that this money is not coming your way. Be glad.”

Now, in sharing this message with you I do not mean to suggest inheriting money is always bad news. I am sure there is money that is benign or significantly less loaded in its energetics than this money. It’s more that I hope that this information helps anyone who is facing what appears to be a financial loss. We really never do know when something is good news or bad. It seemed to be bad news to be cut out of money that would pay off college loans, when in point of fact, it was good news.

It’s surprised me how many tales of bizarre disinheritance I have heard from Green Hope Farm friends since this drama unfolded in my life. Of course, I am probably paying attention to this story line more than before, but still, there are some apparently extremely egregious disinheritances going on out there. If you are one of the people who are getting cut out of something that is rightfully yours, I hope the Angels inservice is a comfort. Not getting this money may be the greatest gift you have ever been given!

And please, take comfort as well in what the Elementals shared with me about money and flow in general. They note that when one avenue of flow is cut off, there are a zillion other ways for the flow to continue. When I looked to an earthly parent for financial flow, the flow could and did get turned off. In looking to an eternal parent versus an earth parent for financial flow, I opened the door for divinity to send money in other ways. It’s really the same as looking for love. How much better my life became when I stopped looking for love from people who could not give it and opened to receive God’s love however God wanted to send it.

Still, loss is loss. Sometimes I feel great sadness about what I lost. The family place in the Adirondacks has been the hardest loss for me. A friend recently told me that when her brother had died and her marriage had fallen apart she was berating herself for wanting to sleep all the time. Her therapist had said to her, “So sleep, what you are going through is exhausting.” Both this story and my friend ending the story by saying to me “So be sad.” helped me know it was okay to be as sad as I am about this loss.

As I inhabit the empty place of this sadness, I don’t know if there will be ever be a place in my life that is like that lost place. But I do think about how Green Hope Farm was born and that gives me hope.

Twenty odd years ago, the Angels told me that my love for Flowers would earn me a living. I can still remember that combination of happiness and doubt when I heard that message. When some family of origin members treated this notion with extreme skepticism and suggested I should keep my eggs in the basket of family, family values, careers acceptable to the family values, etc etc etc, I took a baby step towards trusting that the flow of love and purpose and money could come from somewhere else but my family. I picked up a shovel and started to dig Flower beds.

With every shovel I turned in the good earth of this place and with every seed or plant I put into the ground, I gave myself more fully to a life of Flowers, a beautiful life that flowed towards me from unexpected directions. I built my trust in the infinite flow of love and abundance one shovelful of manure at a time. Not a bad way to do it! And I am glad I still feel this way because I have some digging to do this afternoon. Garlic sets will wait just so long to be planted and this morning’s snow suggests maybe that moment has come.

So I will put on my heaviest wool socks and mud boots and go out to the snowy garden and turn over the snowy earth to plant the garlic. And I will remember with every turn of the shovel, that I never really know what new adventures, new places, and new people to love are flowing towards me with every shovelful of life I dig into.

Rhino’s dream came true last weekend. He played host to a house party extraordinaire. Green Hope Farm was Hotel New Hampshire! Rhino lived his dream of a full sink. At one point, the census chez Green Hope rose to eleven. There were three Emily’s in residence. There was not a single lonely moment at the sink! Rhino was in heaven.

As fate would have it, Friday brought a timely used book arrival from alibris. A circa 1970’s cookbook by famed texan chef Helen Corbitt called “Helen Corbitt Cooks for Company”. When Rhino was not hoofing it in the kitchen, he was pouring through Helen’s tome.

While the house guests hooted that poor Helen’s dress matched her wallpaper, Rhino read on, aware of the need to get inspired to cook the next meal. Rhino knew all too well that the next meal is always moments away when you have almost a dozen human vacuum cleaners twenty somethings in residence, all expecting breakfast, second breakfast, elevens, lunch, tea, supper, and dinner.

Helen weighed in on mid morning entertaining (and I paraphrase here and everywhere else Helen’s guiding wisdom is shared) noting that successful morning coffees require getting up at a devastatingly early hour but are still a great time to entertain small or large groups of women as men wouldn’t be caught dead at a coffee hour. Rhino looked at all the coffee mugs on his counter used by men as well as women for mid morning coffee and could only wonder.

About brunches Helen commented that for women, for debutantes, for introducing an author or a favorite politician, for women’s club affairs even for men, brunches are enjoyable. Rhino felt good. The brunch after second breakfast had clearly been a good idea. The empty refrigerator and Helen told him so.

After a mid morning restock at the season’s last farmer’s market and the grocery store, Rhino was ready to face lunch, tea, supper, and dinner. Helen suggested he make friends with foreign kitchens. He hoped the chicken stir fry and shrimp curry were enough of an effort, but by dinner time he needed to bring in truly foreign reserves. Chinese take out. Rhino consoled himself that as Helen had flown naranja juice in from Argentina for a gig at Neiman-Marcus, Chinese take out from Lebanon NH couldn’t be that wrong.

After card games, evening snacks, more evening snacks, and then bedtime snacks, the crowd dispersed to their various beds. Rhino read on. First breakfast was only hours away. Helen described a foreign theme dinner for men to celebrate British cuisine. It went off without a hitch because what man would not like her hashed brown potatoes with sour cream. So true Helen. For man, woman or rhino, hash browns with sour cream are hard to beat, though sadly not the first thing Rhino thought of when he thought about British cuisine.

Rhino moved on to Helen’s discussion of cocktail buffets and holiday fetes. Helen suggested a cocktail buffet should look heavily laden even when it is not. It was good news to know that faking it was okay with Helen because any buffet Rhino got together on Sunday morning was going to involve slim pickings. Every piece of fruit in the house had vanished between midnight and one am and the refrigerator had that hollow look again. Helen suggested that holiday entertaining (and wasn’t this weekend really a sort of pre Halloween holiday weekend?) could be a seated dinner or an informal pick up supper to kick the gong around.

Rhino wondered what was indicated when one kicked a gong around. Clearly, he would have to ask texan friend Jan Barker about that, but it was later than Rhino had been up in months, maybe years, and therefore a bit too late to call even Jan who has much more party in her than the average rhino.

Rhino finished off his reading with an inspiring chapter on buffets in which Helen said that she always found it easier to do a dinner two nights in a row with a luncheon or supper on the third day. This was heartening as Rhino was about to do just that. He fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

At breakfast Rhino winged it with waffles, bagels, some left over Chinese take out, scrambled and fried eggs and of course, six or eight boxes of breakfast cereals. Green Hope Farm maple syrup added a little panache to the outlay and the carbo load gave Rhino a few hours to dodge out and restock again.

By Sunday dusk the house guests had rolled out. There had been dancing, there had been kicking the gong around (sorry Jan, we figured it out without you), and there certainly had been eating. All non resident hobbits were gone and so too were two quarts of beef stew, two quarts of chicken stew, ten ham and cheese pasties, 10 mini quiches, fourteen boxes of chinese take out, all left over chicken stir fry, all left over shrimp stir fry, two quarts of maple syrup, a double batch of waffles, an 18X24 inch pan of pecan shortbread bars, four dozen eggs, several gallons of mango tango, a cornucopia of fruit, every dairy product in a three mile radius including several pounds of various cheese with accompanying crackers and a tower of bagels .

It was the best of times. It was bliss. But Rhino was a bit tired. I took a candid of him when the last dish had been washed.