Women are beleaguered right now with unrealistic cultural expectations and demands. And for most of us, these demands have been internalized into an unrelenting inner pressure to overfunction.

No terrain is closed off to women any longer, but now we are expected to spread ourselves way too thin across way too many terrains.

We are expected to perfectly juggle jobs, relationships, family, household chores, fitness, our spiritual lives, and in our spare time, save the planet. This is not a recipe for health and is not an approach echoed in nature.

A Flower knows what it is and what it isn’t. It doesn’t expect itself to be all things to all creation or to inhabit every kind of terrain on earth. This isn’t about limitation, but a reflection of self identity. Nature does not move from this principle of self definition. Nothing except the out of control geneticists have told a strawberry that it must be a fish.

Yet that is what women are being told. They are expected to be strawberry and a fish and a whole bag of other groceries. And now a generation that was told, “Isn’t this exciting you can be a fish as well as a strawberry?” is followed by a generation that is born thinking that is must be a fish, a strawberry, and the rest of the groceries all at the same time.

As I look at the Flower Essence mixes I have been drawn to make and the Flowers that I am attracted to, such as the new wonder Calabash, its hard to miss that I am working to support my own journey to a self definition where less is more and that I am also interested in supporting other women to drop the yoke of too many expectations.

All Ego Contracts Null & Void

Carry Less

She Changes

The Sacred Feminine

Flow Free

These are Flower Essence mixes supporting us to let go of bindings that hold us to exhausting lives of unreasonable demands.

Yesterday, as I reread my definition for Calabash, I thought it sounded maybe a tad judgmental, like I was blaming women for doing too much and not tossing the old placenta out fast enough. I don’t mean to sound that way. I love how much women care. I don’t blame us for being in over our heads, but I do think we are the only ones that can fix our own situations. We are the only ones that can choose to live with more discrimination about all the demands being made of us.

In the quiet of our hearts, we do know what we are being called to do and what is simply not our work on earth.

The work is different for each of us, yet the culture would like all of us to do everything. It is better for the economy if we don’t listen to our hearts and if we don’t discriminating between what we are genuinely called to do and what others want us to do.

We are much more kindred spirits of the Flowers that know who they are than one with this crazy culturally imposed definition of “all things to all people”.

Just as each Flower has a terrain that works for its self expression, so each of us has a habitat for our true Flowering. It is time for us to get serious about knowing our terrain and knowing who we really are. It is time to get serious about backing ourselves up as we try to live from this self knowledge.

Only we can decide what to listen to, our heart’s voice or the clamoring of a culture that wants to use us up and spit us out.

Flowers not only know who they are and what their terrain is, they know how to maintain themselves in their territory. They create good boundaries for themselves and don’t get confused about their right to be exactly what they are. If a Flower cannot maintain the sanctity of its growing space, it doesn’t survive. It doesn’t wobble from its I AM.

So too, we must own our heart’s calling and then stand behind what we know to be our truth. We must give ourselves true sanctuary. We must declare to ourselves, “this is why I am here and that is not. This is my purpose and the rest I let go of.” and then live by what we know, one choice at a time.

It is making none of us happy to do the endless bidding of a culture gone crazy. It is time for right relationship with ourselves. It is time to live our truth, not our culture’s.

May the incredible wisdom and clarity of all the Flowers in your life serve each of you to blossom as the uniquely beautiful being that you are.

My apologies for the slow posting of blogs of late. I seem to be a person who never expects the Spanish Inquisition. More than a week ago I pushed the publish button on the following descriptions of the new St John Essences, then walked away without noticing that the blog hadn’t posted.

Since this has happened about four times in the last month each time with some sort of delay, you would think my serene expectation that things were going smoothly in blog land might have wilted slightly- but that’s me. If the Spanish Inquisitors arrived at my door, I would probably think they wanted a garden tour and a bottle of Senior Citizen remedy for the inquisition headquarter’s aged cat.

I am going to try to remember to sit and wait until I can see for myself that the blog has gone up on the web. Will leave myself a post it, “Expect the Spanish Inquisition” to remind myself of this.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the following descriptions of these lovely new Flower Essences. I hope to spend this morning beginning the process of designing this year’s gardens. Bella is out in the kitchen waiting for me, guarding the seed catalog stash.

Come to think of it, the post it should probably say, “Expect a new seed catalog in the mail every hour on the hour.”

Sometimes I expect it sounds like an embellishment when I say that we have had to bring the packages down off our hill on sleds in order to meet the UPS truck or that we couldn’t get to the mail because of snow or ice or mud.

I can hear you all saying to yourselves, “How steep can this hill really be? Can there really be a place left in the continental US that doesn’t have Dominos delivery, a Starbucks on the corner, or cell phone reception? Could the weather really be that weird?”

Well, with climate change affecting the whole earth, everyone is having weird weather. So maybe you are no longer wondering when I say, “It was April yesterday and June the day before but today it is January.”

But when I mention mud, I am not sure it comes with a clear enough visual. Like last week’s mud, on a day when it was March here.

There is a reason why everyone living on this hill knows what you mean when you say, “Choose your rut wisely.” Once you get in a rut on the downhill run, you and your car go wherever that rut goes and often that’s not good. And if you find yourself on the bottom of the hill when it looks like this, the wisest course is to choose no rut at all but abandon your vehicle and walk. I can’t count the number of times dawn has broken to reveal an abandoned vehicle up to its axles in mud, smack dab in the middle of the road.

Yesterday, a snowy January day that behaved like a January day of old, brought an event that laid to rest even the whiff of a suggestion that we ever exaggerate about this wild and wooly hill where Green Hope Farm finds itself.

Yesterday, the town plow tipped over, literally TIPPED OVER while sanding our hill.

School was called off because of expected snow, but there was only a few inches on the roads. It didn’t seem like an especially bad weather day.

Yet somehow it was the perfect storm of packed snow and an undercoat of glare ice.

In the middle of the afternoon, several cars went off the road. The town plow sat at the top of the hill, right here at the farm, looking down to see if those cars were going to move. After a fifteen minutes wait, the plow driver started cautiously down the hill.

Almost immediately, Deb called out that she had just seen the plow tip over. There was a moment of disbelief for all of us.

A thirty foot multi ton truck had tipped over? Patricia raced out to look down the hill and called back into the office that we should call 911. The plow was indeed on its side. Blessedly, the driver was already climbing out of the sideways cab and all of us were most grateful he was safe.

This was the view from the top of our drive. The driver said he had started down the hill and immediately realized, even with chains, his truck was in a full tilt slide. Worried about running into the cars in the ditch farther down the hill, he turned the truck to the left, hoping his plow would catch on a big dead tree and stop his progress. Instead, the plow caught and the then the truck went right over on its side. One of the firemen who has lived in town more than forty years said he could only remember this happening one other time.

School teacher Jim was enjoying a snow day too. He began at once to help the driver to haul sand out of the back of the plow truck to stop the oil spill from the truck.

When the road agent arrived, he came up the hill in a small plow which immediately did a 180 and then slid backwards all the way to the bottom of the hill.

He returned on foot with one of the town policemen and the fire chief. All of them sailed through the air onto the ground a few times as they climbed the hill.

At the bottom of the hill vehicles were everywhere, spinning out and sliding into ditches. People helped to push these rescue vehicles out of the way so that the other town plow could try and sand the road.

Backing up while spreading sand, the other town plow could get no further than about half way up the hill before this truck also began to slide and spin.

The rescue people were calm and focused, but I did hear the fire chief call out, “Give her hell!” into his walkie talkie as he exhorted the second plow driver to try once more to get the sand a little bit farther up the hill to the scene of the tip.

It was clear that it was going to be hours before the plow got moved. None of the staff could get their own cars around the sprawled plow truck to go home. So Deb, Patricia, Masaki, and Jane walked off the hill to Jane’s house about a mile away, where Jane gave them tea before taking them home in her daughter’s Jeep.

May it never be said that the Green Hope Crew wouldn’t walk a mile to take care of you!

Note, behind Jim and neighbor Susan, some of the cars spun out at the bottom of the hill and to the right of Jim and Susan, one of the first cars that went off into a ditch at the beginning of the big slide.

Somehow, in language completely foreign to my ears, in sentences larded with catchy phrases like, “we got a six twenty with a four forty eight for a one seventy”, the town brain trust decided to use a front loader to right the plow.

While one of the firemen moved empty barrels up the hill to collect the oily sand, the loader dragged off its first detachable piece of the truck, the plow hitch.

Kids and dogs collected to watch. May May tried to get into the middle of the action twice, but was not as well behaved as the sheltie next door, Bailey, May May had to go inside to watch from afar. She remains miffed.

Former staff goddess Yessinia’s husband Eric is part of the volunteer fire department. He is in charge of the high school students from Kimball Union that are part of the fire squad. They are the only one actually in town during the work day and serve a vital role responding to fire calls during these daytime hours.

Eric modeled his outfit for me, remarking that he looked a bit too crisp and that I needed to take the shot after he had been there for a couple of hours digging up oily sand.

With the plow and the sander unit both detached from the truck, the front loader dragged the denuded truck down the road to a place where the loader could get at it from the side in this drive way.

It was growing dark by the time they got her back on four wheels. The use of the loader pulling the truck this way and that with chains showed an impressive knowledge of physics.

As the truck lifted off the ground, I was surprised by how long she hung at a forty five degree angle before finally setting down. Everyone watched and waited while she hung in the balance. She’d become a real personality to all of us by then. I am only sad that after she was righted, her frame looked twisted beyond repair.

In the pitch dark, the Kimball Union kids kept on cleaning up the oil spill. Eric was looking a bit less dapper, but we’ll give him the glamor shot with this blog. He deserves it!

Jim, Will and I retired home to be greeted by understandably sulky May May. I remain impressed that while it ALWAYS takes a village, when it comes to righting a plow truck on the steepest, slipperiest road in town, we have a great village.

Yes, OF COURSE that was Rhino in the beach shot at Salt Pond Bay. Rhino is a cheap date, requiring no airline seat of his own. Therefore he goes on all family trips.

He doesn’t need many snacks on the road, but he does insist on stopping at every scenic overlook.

He loves swimming almost as much as William.

AND he is a natural at snorkelling.

Our walks to the beach were a time for me to

dawdle behind the group visiting with Flower friends. I have no idea how others travel through the world but for me, everywhere I go I am so happy to see Flowers I love. When in St John I get to visit with Flowers I don’t see very often. The visits are so sweet because of their rarity.

Though were I to live in St John, these visits would be a daily occurence. So many Flowers are like Dandelions in New Hampshire. Momordica charantia, on our line up with its nickname Maiden Apple is one that grows on wastegrounds everywhere. This makes her no less special. As a traditional herbal, Momordica has a lot of nicknames including jumbie pumpkin. I was delighted to get a picture of this jumbie pumpkin for you as well as an overdue picture of its Flower, so reminiscent of northern squash blossoms.

I had been warned last trip about these vivid red seeds. Everyone had a different story about whether the squash was edible or not. I like how Flower Essences bypass the issues of toxicity by simply not being about the chemical components of the plant. I can look at these fruits and seeds not to consider whether it would be a deadly snack, but to consider what they tell me about the wisdom of Maiden Apple’s Flower Essence.

These startling red seeds contained within this elegant yellow squash suggest to me Maiden Apple’s wisdom about containing our life force wisely and expressing ourselves clearly. As Maiden Apple says, ” I AM a radical friend but also one that helps you move peacefully, confidently and clearly towards your destiny.”

Speaking of startling red, I was thrilled to find Wild Red Morning Glory blooming. This was an Essence I made on a trip to St John in 1997 and I had not seen this plant flowering since then. My St John Flora and Fauna remarked that this was a rare plant for St John, found only by the NY Botanical botanist who wrote the book right where I had seen this plant myself, in the upper Maho campground parking lot. This time I found it growing in a different spot, giving rise to a hope that it was expanding its territory. I love how Wild Red Morning Glory is a such an unabashed fiesta of morale support. We certainly still need its affirming gifts about the power and glory of womanhood.

Ginger Thomas also known as Yellow Elder, Yellow Cedar, Torchwood, and Christmas Hope. This small tree, native of the new world, feels like a wise elder that sits and listens to any sorting out of our troubles and then helps us translate these jumbled thoughts into a settled and wise course of action. Every time I lifted my head to see its blossoms in the branches above my head, I felt cheered on. Elder indeed!

Coralita! Coralita! How overdue a picture of this gem is. We have long been using this Essence in our mixes including “Watch Your Back” and offering it as an individual Flower Essence for its stunning ability to untangle electrical tangles in the main chakras and generally recharge and revitalize the electrical system of the body. What a sweetheart! What a powerhouse! This Flower reminds me that Love conquers all.

Bacopa monnieri comes in a variety of shades. Here she is a soft shade of pink.

Here she is in a deeper shade of magenta. Always Bacopa brings information about finding joy in daily life, unfettered happiness and delight no matter the circumstances.

Arriving at the beach, there is always gorgeous Seaside Mahoe, offering her gifts of vibrational support for anyone grieving the end of a romantic partnership. There is something so soothing about this Flower, so intensely beautiful as well.

And after my sweet moments with all these Flowers, it was such a tough gig to have to jump back into the water with amphibious William to cool off.