Thanks to Ben, here we go!

Last time I tried to post of photo of Yessenia’s baby shower, the photo on the web site was the size of a mini marshmallow. In my second try, here is Yessenia holding up the sweater I knit for baby Klaudia, due in about a month.

Seed sowing. These are the tomato seeds going in.

This tree gets its annual pruning.

Charming shot of abandoned dish. I promised you that one.

Look, its Spring here! Okay, this is a fake shot of an Amaryllis from the greenhouse, but we do have crocuses blooming!

And such a good photo of them too! Maybe this one should have stayed the size of a mini marshmallow!

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Last of all, how long was yesterday’s town meeting? Look at the sock in the tulip foliage and see it was a half sock meeting. Not to bad, as this meeting season goes.

Is there ever a more thrilling moment in the life of a mother than when a beloved child takes up this dread topic and tells you, “Once was enough.” When it happened for me this week, I felt a millstone the size of a small country ease off my back. I took my estimated cost for this child’s therapy and removed a zero. I was off the hook. I felt like dancing.

Yes, it had happened. During her spring break, Emily was invited to go to Disney World with a friend. She went, she met Mickey, she rode the Tower of Terror and she didn’t want to go back. Once was enough.

Emily is our third child. This means she was weaned on Ben and Lizzy’s stories of their trip to Disney World when they were four and two respectively. According to Emily, the playing field was never level between her and these siblings because they had been to Disney World and she had not. She had a Disney size chip on her shoulder because we had never launched a second foray to Disney World after our first and only Disney expedition in 1986. This meant the D word was a loaded one for all of us.

As the truth came out last night, much was uncovered on many fronts.

My memory of our trip to Disney World with the two older children was of a very hot day during which I was either in a bathroom changing Lizzy’s diapers, mopping up the latest spilled drink, or waiting in line at the merry go round because the lines everywhere else were even longer than the lines at the NH Department of Motor Vehicle. And that is saying something about lines.

I really don’t know what Ben and Lizzy told Emily about their day at Disney World, but maybe they didn’t have to tell her anything. If you watch TV in America you think your life is not complete without a trip to Orlando. She certainly did.

As Emily confessed to a rather flat couple of days at the Magic Kingdom, Ben and Lizzy also confessed that their much cherished memories were the stuff of fantasy. Ben said the only thing he actually remembered about Disney World was trying to hang onto Dumbo’s ears. And Lizzy, she didn’t remember anything, not even that twelfth trip to another super sanitary bathroom.

Somethings simply are priceless. The moment when Emily said “Once was enough.” was one of them.

For the men in my family, March is all about March Madness and the NCAA basketball tournament. Tonight, for example, the Sheehan men will stay up late to watch the UConn Huskies play the Washington Huskies. Tip off is ten pm. I will not be attending. This is not to be confused with being out of the loop. During the UConn-Duke final game for the championship in 1999, there was so much screaming downstairs that I knew the score, moment to moment, from upstairs in my bedroom. Also knew the moment when UConn won, Ben tackled Jim, and both of them fell over the back of the couch. Tonight may have a bit of that same flavor.

For me, March is all about Maple sugaring and mud. I mention mud because our dirt road has been mud all month. Frankly, it has been mud all winter, what with all our freak thaws. As the town manager noted at town meeting, we are on our fifth mud season this year.

Yes, town meeting. For the town I live in, March is all about town meeting. Each town in New Hampshire still holds annual town meetings. In our town of Plainfield, a couple hundred of the registered voters come to town meeting each year to hash out their differences, some years with more civility than other years. It’s a good time to visit with a lot of people I don’t otherwise see and do some serious knitting. Due to a bit of contentiousness at the first part of the town meeting in which the school budget was discussed, that part of the meeting was adjourned without resolving some budget disagreements, so an extra third day of town meeting was called for tomorrow. I think it is technically all the same meeting. It sure feels like more than one meeting though.

At last week’s second part of the town meeting, this one about town expense budget items such as tires for the road grader, the meeting broke for lunch so that the eighth grade could sell us all some food to pay for their eighth grade graduation trip to Montreal. This was an opportunity for Jim to buy girl scout cookies and other snacks. It’s a noble sacrifice on his part, all done in the name of supporting his sixth grade students past, present, and future.

Our town meeting happens in the Plainfield School gym. During the lunch break, people who aren’t eating, stand around and unkink from hours in metal folding chairs. I found a cluster of sugarers stretching their legs right outside the seventh and eighth grade locker rooms. Of course, they were talking about their sugaring seasons. As far as I know, I am the only woman sugaring in town. I am not quite sure why it is traditional to have men sugar, not women. I slid silently into the group and listened as people weighed in with their news.

One sugarer with 800 taps in had made 4 gallons of dark syrup. One person with 70 gallons had made 5 quarts. The bigger operation with its 6,000 taps had made 250 gallons, a ration of 2.5 gallons for every 60 taps. Everyone was worried it was going to be another year like last year, when we didn’t really have much of a season. Everyone had started out with the same darker grade syrup that I had.

I wish I knew how to tell them to hug their trees. I really cannot explain my almost 4 gallons with 40 taps any other way, but I have never quite found the nerve to serve that tip up.

One elderly sugarer, who is not syruping this season, told me how the initial Q on his bucket lids had been painted by his grandfather. I have one of these bucket lids with the big Q for Quimby on them. Don’t know how it ended up with my equipment. I offered it back to him, but he seemed quite tickled to think it was in action. I like seeing this Q each time I check my buckets too, because I sugared with the Quimbys several years and learned a lot from them.

Since last Saturday, the sap has run only a tiny bit. We are a month into the season and its only run a couple of times. Yesterday it ran some and two weeks ago it ran off and on for two or three days. Yesterday was not a big run. William and I collected a modest 40 gallons. I am boiling that down today. Temperatures went below freezing last night and went above freezing today. This should bring on a run. Boiling today means I won’t get backlogged with more sap than my holding tank can handle if it runs well today. Probably wishful thinking this season.

Most of the seeds I started last Friday have germinated. I moved these seed flats into the greenhouse from where I germinated the seeds in the kitchen. Its warmer in the kitchen and everything germinates faster when its warmer. Crocuses have joined the snowdrops out in the garden. A skunk has taken to visiting under the bird feeder each day for a sunset snack. I really should stock up on tomato juice since Riley is bound to have a moment with this fearless visitor one of these evenings. He is only just stopped smelling of skunk from last summer’s moments.

Well, just reporting in on Friday. At least this weeks the dogs are pleased that we are outside boiling. They are getting their quote of freedom and fresh air today. Me too for that matter.

No sooner had I pushed the publish button on yesterday’s blog than I received an e-mail from a Green Hope friend named Gina who wanted to know if the Flower Essences she had received from us could have made her feel nauseous.

She had taken her Flower Essences in the evening, had felt a great calm, and then woke up feeling nauseous. She e-mailed me wondering if this was a physical reaction or if some part of herself felt nauseated by the energy of the Essences.

I woke up this morning feeling Gina’s question needed to be addressed more deeply than I addressed it yesterday in the blog.

In yesterday’s blog, I explained how Flower Essences cannot cause a chemical shift in our bodies because they are not chemical agents. In this instance, no matter what Flower Essence Gina took, the Essence could not cause her nausea.

But Gina’s question goes deeper than that.

Can we react with nausea to a Flower Essence? Gina suggested perhaps the nausea she felt was part of her resisting the information in the Flowers.

Before answering this and at the risk of overkill, I really want to be sure that everyone understands that Flower Essences cannot cause nausea.

Flowers evolve only towards greater health and well being. Their vibrational patterns only hold positive information because a Flower that makes counter productive evolutionary choices does not survive.

The electrical patterns of Flowers and their Flower Essences are going to be healing, positive, life giving, and supportive of integrating greater light, love, and goodness. That is the bottom line. They are not going to promote nausea.

When you work with Flower Essences, your electrical system has the same innate desire to make choices that will heal, offer life giving support, or move you in positive directions. In this way you are just like the Flowers Your electrical system will not copy any vibration that moves you in a counter productive direction. Your electrical system wants to evolve only in a harmonious, life affirming direction. This is true for everybody’s electrical system.

But it is not just your electrical system that avails itself to the healing information of the Flower Essences. Everyone has a divine and essential self. Your essential self is in alignment with your electrical system’s desire to heal, problem solve, and move only towards an expanding sense of self. Your essential self wants the best for you. Your essential self joins your electrical system in welcoming the input of Flower Essences. Your essential self is ready, willing, and able to make sense of their divine wisdom in a seamless and happy manner.

I am not talking about outcomes here. I am talking more about a willingness to accommodate information that helps us feel better. Flowers do this. Our electrical systems do this. Our essential selves do this.

A monkey wrench in this flow can be any unhealed part within each of us that does not want helpful information about health, well being, inner peace, or more light and love. This is often a wounded part that may not think we deserve positive change. It might also be a part of us that wants to believe in some sort of illusion that it can control our destinies by trying to stop the healing flow of our lives. When this aspect engages in the process, it may slow down the healing integration of Flower Essences’ wisdom or other healing processes in general. Fortunately, it can never stop it!

As mentioned yesterday, children and animals usually integrate Flower Essences more swiftly than most adults. One reason for this is that any unhealed aspect is usually, but not always, less developed in children and animals than in adults. Our wounds come from exposure to those who carry the same wounds and consciously or unconsciously pass them on to us.

But child, animal, or adult, in all cases, the wounds are built on illusions that will pass away. Only the divinity of our essential selves is real. It is just a question of time before we all know this.

I don’t really know what happened for Gina, but this is my guess. Her electrical system and essential self welcomed the Flower Essences with a palpable sense of peace and calm. They recognized the Flowers gifts as helpful and healing. Some other part of her was nauseated by the idea of the healing information the Flower Essences offered. This was probably the very part of herself that she was trying to heal, but it was a scared part that could only experience this healing energy as threatening. Consequently, it drummed up some nausea to scare Gina into stopping her healing process. Fortunately, Gina was not deterred.

I have certainly had this kind of response too many times to count. My unhealed inner voice can sometimes put up a cacophony of dissonance when I head into a healing experience. Consider, for example, my experience with meditation. For years, I battled with my mind’s voice yammering all through my meditation. Fears, doubts, worries, shopping lists. I tried to shut my mind up by engaging with it directly. I tried to wrestle control of my meditation from my mind. WE WILL NOT THINK ABOUT THE LAUNDRY! This, of course, worked well for my mind, because this focus kept my mind in the spotlight, controlling the whole experience.

Finally, I gave up. I decided to just let my mind talk, but pay it no attention. I imagined that my mind was on a stage with me during meditation. I suggested that it go over to the other side of the stage and talk all it wanted to whatever audience it could conjure up, but I personally would no longer listen. Nowadays, during my meditations, my mind may or may not be yammering away. I really do not know. I am not engaged with it, so I am not noticing it either. I meditate. My mind does whatever. The power to define my meditation is no longer in my mind’s control.

So if I were in Gina’s shoes, I would try to see my unhealed aspect’s response with gentleness and humor. I would let it throw around its reaction of nausea to stir up my fear and then I would mix up more Essences or do whatever else my essential self wanted to do to keep on with my life work of unconditionally loving myself and everything else. I would also take some of our combination remedy “All Ego Contracts Null and Void”. It was created to help with this very situation and is a wonderful friend.

Thanks Gina! Your question was so important! I thank your essential self for writing. I have no doubt that your essential self will prevail! It is the only thing that is real. Someday we will all know this, no matter what is being said by my mind back there on that stage.

During this era when so many of us are bombarded by chemicals that affect our environment and our body chemistry, Flower Essences stand apart.

They are not chemical.

They do not react with our systems in a chemical manner.

You can’t take too many, because they are not things. They are information.

Their model for supporting our health and well being is not chemical but electrical.

When I began my Flower Essence inservice with the Angels many years ago, I didn’t even know what questions to ask. I had no idea what Flower Essences were. As my learning continued, I experienced the gifts of Flower Essences, but I did not know how to explain anything about Flower Essences in a way that made sense to me or anyone else.

My love for Flowers and my trust in my Angel friends helped me happily go with the Angels’ curriculum. I didn’t worry about diving into Flower Essences, because I had been out in the garden nibbling the Flowers since I learned to crawl. At first, making Flower Essences seemed part of the same journey as the rest of my life with Flowers. But it wasn’t.

Flower Essences were a departure in a new direction. One that I am still learning how to explain.

Over the years, my descriptions of Flower Essences have gotten clearer. I hope, in years to come, these descriptions will improve further.

Right now, I like to described Flower Essences as problem solving information.

As Flowers evolve, they solve certain problems.

If a Flowering plant’s micro climate is a desert, this plant will learn to grow without much precipitation or it will die away.

If a Flowering plant’s micro climate is the edge of the sea, at the receiving end of constant wind, salt water, salt spray, and extremely changeable conditions, this plant will learn resilience, a certain kind of cheerful toughness, and adaptability or it will not survive.

Flowering plants that have solved their environmental problems will flourish by their own adaptive ideas for living. These adaptive ideas exist as an electrical pattern in each plant, one that can be read by other species as well as other plants.

Reading a plant. That sounds sort of odd. But really, it is a variation on what we do all day, every day. We read each other, feeling good from some encounters and burdened by others. We do this with plants, animals, and eco systems as well.

I bet if I asked a million people if they had to pick between a sunny day at the Grand Canyon or a trip through a smelting plant, there would be nary a one to pick the smelter. We all know what we want to soak up. We all know what electrical vibes we want to take in and those we would rather do without. We all know what we need.

Sometimes, it’s neither practical nor possible for us to visit a Flower or its eco system to read its problem solving information. Flower Essences make it possible for us to read the problem solving information of Flowering plants that we might not be able to visit in person.

For all the folks who have been rebuilding their lives post Katrina with the support of Flower Essences, they are getting the Irish Flower Essences information on resilience, adaptability, hope, faith, and good cheer amidst flood times without visiting the Flowers in Ireland. They are getting the consoling information of Green Hope Farm Flower Essence mixes like Grief & Loss or Anxiety without having to shop around and visit a lot of Flowers that might or might not hold helpful information for supporting them through this traumatic situation of loss.

The Flower Essences travel to them with healing supportive information. The red shiso stabilizer is nothing but a vehicle to transport the information. The information is everything. And this information offers invaluable inservices from the wise and generous Flower companions of our shared planet.

Each of us gets to decide what to do with the information of the Flower Essences. Everyone’s free will is respected. Nobody’s body chemistry is messed with against his or her will. Each of our electrical systems reads the Flower Essence and then, from the wisest place within us all, each of us decides what to do with the information. Is this the right information for me and my healing? Each of us decides. There is no imposition, just a gift offered that we can learn from if it is right for us.

I have mentioned before how swiftly animals and children soak up the vibration of Flower Essences and make healing changes in their lives as a consequence of what they have learned. They recognize the spirit of friendship with which Flowers offer their wisdom. They know it is their choice to learn from this wisdom or not. They know they deserve this support and embrace it wholeheartedly.

How I hope that this blog today has helped each of you join the animals and children in feeling a little bit more certain that Flower Essences are safe and that Flower Essences don’t do anything but offer healing information for you to read or not, with you ever in a place of choice. Most of all, I hope that no matter how you go about your healing journey, you will sink down even more deeply into the truth that you are loved and deserve every bouquet of Flowers this beautiful Earth wants to give you.