When it comes to birthdays, some of our gift giving has become as ritualized as a court dance at Versailles.

For example, when Ben’s birthday rolls around in November, I elaborately wrap up two movies for him; “Torn Curtain”, an Alfred Hitchcock thriller with Julie Andrews and Paul Newman and “My House in Umbria” starring Maggie Smith. Then, when my birthday occurs in January, he returns the favor and gives these movies back to me.

Usually at some point during our birthday galas, we pop “Torn Curtain” in the machine and watch the infamous bus chase scene. It is perhaps the most ridiculous chase scene ever filmed. Not even old Alfred could make one bus racing after another across 1950’s East Germany seem anything but absurd.

With “My House in Umbria”, we don’t even watch the movie. It’s not a bad movie, but that has never been the point of this gift. The point of the gift is that it gives us a few moments of complete silliness as we all talk about…….. what else but……. My House in UMMMMMBRIAAAAAAAA.

Ben in particular can roll this phrase off his lips with particularly pomposity and can keep us all laughing about said house for a good twenty minutes.

Which brings us to the topic of today’s post. Today I broke with tradition and defaced the “My House in Umbria” video cover then anonymously popped it in the mail addressed to Ben.

You may or may not care to ask why, but I plan to tell you anyways.

Before I explain my grievous break with tradition, I want to back up for a moment to talk about last year’s gardens and in particular, the Eight Garden.

The first time we planted an Eight mandala was 1993. Three friends joined me in creating about a dozen gardens of vegetables, herbs, flowers all planted in unique mandalas. Each garden had a different name and a different energetic purpose. Each brought its own gifts, but the garden that had the most radiant energy and caused the biggest stir when we opened the gardens to visitors was the one we called the Eight Garden.

From the beginning the Angels told us this garden was about moving things in and out of manifestation ie moving energies that no longer served out of manifestation and bringing in new healing energies and experiences. As the summer unfolded, there seemed no end to the wonderful healing experiences people had in this garden. As far as Green Hope Farm was concerned, the garden appeared to jump start our mail order business in a big way.

We began the garden season with no mail order business and no thoughts of a mail order business yet ended the season a few short months later with daily UPS pick up for orders we were shipping all over the world. I know there are so many factors involved in the manifestation of anything, and I have certainly seen things I hoped to have manifest not happen, but somehow the Eight Garden came to represent to me the magic of when we step into something we are well and truly meant to do, and everything flows.

As the years unfolded, I have loved how generously the magic of this garden has continued to share itself. The vibration of the Eight Garden lived on in many of our Flower Essence combinations that contained some of the original Eight Garden Flower Essence in them. Via the Flower Essences the garden continued to support radical transformative and healing change in so many lives.

As 2010 began, it was with considerable regret that I saw our stock of this remedy dwindle down to a cherished few bottles, and I wondered what our remedies would be like without the Eight Garden vibration informing them.

I didn’t have to wonder for long as the Angels told me then that it was time for another Eight Garden. This was thrilling news. Not only would the Flower Essence combinations get to keep their Eight Garden wisdom, but a new version of the garden after a seventeen year learning curve might hold even more evolved information about transformative change. Plus, I suspected this new Eight Garden would mean magical changes were coming to the farm, the same kind that had happened in 1993.

Would these changes come out of the blue as so much of the change here had or would these changes have a meant to be feeling? I wasn’t sure what form the Eight Garden magic would take.

A year later and one piece of manifestation has revealed itself to us. Green Hope Farm just got a whole lot bigger in a farm sort of way. It’s been a bit of an out of the blue thing but also a meant to be one.

Hence the reason for defacing of the “My House in Umbria” DVD cover…..because Ben’s riff is about to change from My House in Umbria to My House in MERRRRRRRIDENNNNNN as Ben has just bought the farm next door.

Okay, so maybe the house is the size of the tool shed at Maggie Smith’s place, but it is a house and it sits on some beautiful land!

And its a joyful full circle moment for all of us as 25 years ago I would sit in this tiny little cottage with my dear friend Teddy and look out across the field where our farm now sits and dream of living next door to Teddy and her husband Malcolm.

Now Teddy is in her 90’s and is living in Kauai with her son Kalani while her husband, our dear friend Malcolm is in a nursing home. This fall we have watched their house sit empty and wondered what was coming next. It was quite a surprise to all of us when in a big whoosh of activity, it was suddenly possible for us to help Ben buy this house and the beautiful 37 acres that come with the place.

When we planted last summer’s Eight Garden, we knew it was going to bring change as it had the first time we planted the garden in 1993, but we didn’t see this coming. As things fell in place, we were all so happy that it was Ben that was meant to live in this house. We knew it would feel right to Malcolm and Teddy, and we knew it felt incredibly right to all of us.

So now Ben has a house in Meriden right next door. He takes over the helm of the place in March but is already enjoying homeowner activities like shoveling three feet of snow off the septic tank top for a septic inspection and now I hope it will be practicing his riff on his house in MERRRRRRRRIDENNNNNNNN.

It’s Super Bowl Sunday- Earlier today, Jim heard John Tesh on the radio suggesting that people look over the buffet spread at their Super Bowl parties then chose just one snack and THEN have only one bite of that snack. Apparently John chose as a likely snack choice, pigs in a blanket but then had a difficult time describing exactly what this was.

We have all enjoyed a belly laugh about his radio commentary. We also got a kick out of his midweek suggestion about improving our diet by eating in occasionally.

It’s not hard to imagine that John has a more lively social life than mine. For example, he probably would not describe eating a granola bar outside while shoveling snow as eating out. He also probably doesn’t need to shovel out his car for forty five minutes then drive on snow clogged roads for another forty five minutes to eat out. A man who can rent a whole restaurant and also an orchestra to play in the restaurant when he proposes to his wife probably doesn’t have the same constraints on his eating out options that most of us do whether it’s been snowing or not.

Which is why I need to comment a little more on his Super Bowl suggestions. I have to wonder if John has ever actually BEEN to a Super Bowl party. Clearly he has never prepared snacks for one because he has missed the point of the whole event. It’s volume. Plain and simple. The men folk are setting off now with their contribution to the Super Bowl party they are going to. They have so much to carry, it looks like they are moving out. Jim’s parting words? ” I would rather eat no snacks at all than eat just one, therefore I am planning on eating everything.”

Frankly, this is one Super Bowl where Jim probably NEEDS to eat everything in sight. He spent the entire day shoveling snow. First he shoveled snow off the roof of the house and office. Then he hacked off the ice build up under the snow on these roofs with a hammer. Then he shoveled the myriad paths around the place and then he cleared off vehicles so that tomorrow all things Green Hope Farm can whirl back into action. Like pretty much everyone in America except John Tesh, Jim’s pre-Super Bowl week involved a lot of snow, a lot.

Quite simply, it was the kind of week in which one pig in a blanket just isn’t enough.

Each week as we ship orders off to you in places as diverse as Bangladesh and Boston, we get to notice all sorts of patterns.

More often than not, any week here at the farm will offer up a lot of mysterious patterns. As we notice the patterns, we often have no explanation for them. And when we ask ourselves things like, “Why so many Lilac Flower Essences out the door this week?” it’s really our way of saying we don’t know a lot about oneness but we do have proof of it.

Even as we don’t understand what the patterns mean, we don’t doubt that these patterns reflect a oneness beneath the surface illusion of separation. No one could pack orders here for very long before noticing that when there is a sudden interest in a particular Flower Essence in one place on earth, our oneness will mean that people from all over our dear earth are going to be ordering it as well.

The fact is that when a Flower Essence that sits quietly on our shelves one week needs to be bottled in many, many batches the next, these patterns become impossible to miss. Take this week. The Alignment Garden has had a steady following since its creation several years ago. It goes off to lots of people each week. But this month, it is going out in a flood. The shippers hardly need to speak to me when they come out to the bottling room to request more of it. That’s our little bit of wordless oneness. A look says it all. And this week the look meant, “Molly, we need more Alignment Garden.

What do I guess about this mysterious pattern, this surge of interest in the Alignment Garden mix? Well one thing I feel is that it’s good news. Just as Coralita offers her loving service to untangling profound gordian knots in our energy system, the Alignment Garden helps people get physically aligned with the accelerating vibration of the earth and their purpose here, and that’s a good thing.

Helping us align both with our divine purpose as well as get all parts of our energetic system into alignment, this is a mix that helps us get down to business. Here’s the link to its definition the Alignment Garden
One Green Hope friend wrote us an email this week to tell us how the Alignment Garden and Belerephon of the Open Door, another powerhouse from the Venus Garden collection, had been the two Essences he felt helped him to leave a job he had hated for nine long years and leap into a new profession giving piano lessons. He sent us a photo of the gorgeous piano that had come into his life since he switched jobs and spoke with great affection of the many students he was now teaching.

I loved hearing from this Green Hope friend. Everyone here has been lucky enough to hear wonderful Alignment Garden stories like this since its creation a number of years ago. This feedback means that all of us sending the mix off into the world this week felt heartened by the volume of orders for this mix. So much wonderful change afoot, and if we are lucky, we will get to hear tell of it from you all.

Speaking of changes in alignment with divine purpose, after a lovely stretch with Olivia Fauver here in the office, her path is taking her on new adventures. A college student taking time off from her studies, Olivia was always someone I knew we we would have to let go of, sooner or later. Now a series of adventures in Arizona, New York City then Beijing have her taking flight. Some people’s alignment with their purpose involves a lot more airplanes than mine, and frankly I am glad mine seems to mostly involve trips to the bird feeder whereas for Olivia, I can see from the sparkle in her eye that alignment for her means journeys to all parts of the globe.

In any case, as Olivia departs, I think of the synchronicity of her time here. In 1993 as a three year old, she spent the summer in the gardens while a bunch of adults including her mom shared the gardens with visitors. This was the season when we planted out first garden in the space we call the Venus Garden. This space has given us mixes including the Sunflower Spiral, Phoenix Rising, Loving What Is, Don’t Worry-Bee Happy, Love Prevails and yes, the Alignment Garden.

In 1993 when Olivia was first here the garden and combination Flower Essence mix we made from the garden was called the Eight Garden. And yup, when she returned to us 17 years later to work here, the garden and combination Flower Essence mix we made from the garden was called…the Eight Garden once again as we took this transformative magical expansive mandela forward into a new variation. That was a pattern we all enjoyed, though I certainly hope we don’t need to wait 17 more years to have Olivia return to us.

Here Olivia is at age three, lunching with Emily during the wild summer of 1993 when we were aligning with a mysterious plan for all things Green Hope Farm. Emily is probably going to shoot me for posting this picture. Even as a blonde pixie of four, she was a woman with a spicy attitude. But I just can’t resist posting this! The moment seemed pretty mundane at the time. We were feeding the little children and gardeners some lunch as we prepared to welcome afternoon visitors to the gardens. I didn’t think about how this adventure would unfold or how these two might become an integral part of it again two decades later. Apparently they weren’t too concerned about this either!

Yes, the weather is always crazy, but everyone we talk to has particularly crazy weather stories right now. We are probably dealing with the most mundane of conditions with just a couple feet of snow on the ground and the usual January chill whereas so many of you have absolutely nutty conditions to report.

As I noted already, crazy weather had affected lots of things in St John. Here’s a bench that is usually overlooking a salt pond not part of the pond.

The unusual weather on St John meant that some Flower friends were more abundant while some were long gone. One abundant friend spoke with me numerous times to say she wanted to help humanity RIGHT NOW because her gifts were perfect for the confused energies of this time. The Flower was Coralita.

I can’t exaggerate how much this Flower loves to love or how focused this Flower is on serving humanity via its Flower Essence RIGHT NOW. After phoning Ben for inservice #174689, I can give you this link to our description of this beloved Flower Essence: Coralita

But the link is not enough!

St John’s strange off rhythm weather didn’t impede this Flower from speaking to me loud and clear about its mission- It told me numerous times during my short stay on the island that it was a particular blessing to humanity RIGHT NOW. And today Coralita asked me again if it could call attention to her gifts and her desire to serve, RIGHT NOW!

As a profound untangler of confused energies, Coralita has helped so many to unravel knotty problems and smooth out energy tangles in many places including the central nervous system. If you find yourself in a tangle physically, mentally, spiritually or emotionally, please consider Coralita.

Not surprisingly given its gorgeous pink color, it offers its support with a light touch but it is also a determined ally.

Dear dear Coralita. Such a love but also such a powerhouse!

I hope like the honeybees in the photos you will take her up on her offers of support!

Coming from a climate extreme in its seasonal temperature changes, I find tropical and subtropical places fascinating.

What would it be like to be able to grow fruits and vegetables all year round, not just in the brief growing season we have here in northern New England? The notion of citrus, avocados, mangos, bananas and other tropical fruits right in one’s own backyard amazes me.

Which is why I am always so puzzled that when I travel around St John, it appears that very few people bother to plant any of these trees for their own benefit, and when I pester people with questions about these plants, few seem to know or care about them. Things grow so very fast in a tropical environment like St John. One could have fruit bearing citrus trees in just a couple years and vegetables could be there for the harvesting year round, yet on St Thomas and St John I saw only one vegetable garden.

The one vegetable garden I found was at the Annaberg plantation ruins in the USVI National Park. During all my other trips to St. John, the demostration garden at Annaberg lay fallow, but this time a lovely man had brought back the fruit and vegetable patch and was growing soursop, passionfruit, bananas, sugar cane, papayas, and other traditional fruits and vegetables. He recognized me as a farmer, perhaps because I was embracing each plant like a long lost cousin, and happily took me on an extensive tour of his garden creation. Had luggage size and regulations allowed, I think the dear man would have loaded me up with cuttings from every plant in his creation.
During my trip, I heard tell of other gardens in the Caribbean, but not many. A magazine article I read on the plane noted that the Caribbean now imports $3 billion in food each year, and inter-island trade restrictions further complicate the situation, making it likely that the mango in my St John smoothie was not arriving fresh from nearby St Lucia but was a frozen import from the US.

The article highlighted two chefs, one in Jamaica and one in the British Virgin Islands, who were trying to use only local organic produce at their resorts. Their tactics included stopping at every mango tree they could find to ask the owners if they could buy all its fruit as well as offering to pay people to plant vegetable gardens, promising to buy whatever they grew, no matter what it was. While I found the article interesting, it did not exactly seem like a green revolution, though that was the phrase bandied about in the article. There were, after all, only two determined chef profiled, both of whom described it as near impossible to do what they were trying to do: serve local foods grown by local people.

I am sorry, but that feels wrong to me.

My concern about a region that can grow its own food but doesn’t isn’t just about disappointment that others are not interested in plants the way I am. A community that grows its own food has a measure of security and self sufficiency that is lost when the growing of its food is given over to people far, far away. When jobs shift from growing food for local people to taking care of tourists, the situation grows exponentially worse.

The last time I was in the Virgin Islands, three years ago, there were seven cruise ships in St. Thomas’s Charlotte Amalie harbor during Christmas week. This year there was one. The economy of the region is completely dependent on the travel patterns of people living thousands of miles away, and those people can’t afford to travel as they could several years ago. An island with no food production and dependent on shipments of imported food and steady infusions of tourists for its very survival doesn’t feel grounded or secure to me. It feels like a place hoodwinked into taking care of the wrong things like hot showers for visitors that may or may not show up.

One night during our stay, the power went off on St John and St Thomas. A backup generator made dinner possible in the campground dining pavilion, but civility was in short supply among the campers. In a campground, I had expected people to be able to go with the flow a little better. We all had flashlights and they were feeding us. What was the big deal? I could only imagine how things were going down the way at Caneel Bay, the high end resort on the island.

On our way across St Thomas to the airport for our return trip home, we passed FEMA headquarters. Short term help is in place both for the occasional power outage and for hurricanes. But what happens if travel patterns change for good? If I was a person living on St John, I would be up at Annaberg learning all I could from that lovely gardening gentleman, and I would take his cuttings too and get my garden started. And back here at the farm, I am thinking about how to extend our growing season and how to grow more of our own food. It’s not just about security to me, but about something deeper. Somehow, growing more of our own food makes me feel more grounded in my own life and more grateful for all its particulars, even the extremes of temperature.