Mid week, just when we were all about to jump ship for warmer climes, the weather turned on a dime. The last four days of seventy degrees and sunshine broke our world open into glorious Flower!

Chionodoxa

Crocuses in the Arbor Garden


Siberian Squill (Scilla siberica)

Forsythia just beginning to strut its stuff

Within a few minutes of the weather shift, the spring peepers were chorusing with reckless abandon in the pond across the street. We celebrated with badminton and garden projects. I cleaned up the gardens and spread compost and other soil amendments in all the beds. As I worked, piles of brush accumulated where piles of snow had been just moments before.

There were lots of branches to rake up from the big storm. Here Jim loads the truck with one of many loads of small twigs blown down by the high winds.

Of course, mulch was involved in the weekend’s projects. If you read this blog before, you probably know how passionately I feel about MULCH.

Jim and I made an executive decision to mulch between the rows of blueberries. The grass between rows is hard to mow ( Jim’s input) and the thin rows of blueberries and mulch are hard to keep weeded because the grass grows into them so fast ( my input). So, we covered the ground with the cardboard boxes that our various bottles and boxes arrive in and then covered this layer of cardboard with native bark mulch.

We have found this system of mulching works so much better than commercial landscape cloth. We save all the boxes during the winter and then have a big stash for projects like this in the spring.

Is it any wonder that when one of us walks into the garden center where we get our mulch, whomever is at the service desk just picks up their walkie talkie without missing a beat to alert the person out back with the heavy machinery ” One load native bark for a gold pick up.”

One of our Plum trees blew over in the storm last week. The Elementals suggested we use a come along to pull it upright. Here it is anchored after its been straightened as far as it wanted to go. Since then, the Elementals have had me take a five gallon bucket of Essence water down to the tree once a day. I thought that they would want me just to water the tree with this mix, but instead they have had me scoop the water up into branches and air around the tree, bathing the aura of the tree in the energy of Recovery, Grounding, Golden Armor, Healthy Coat, Emergency Care, Anxiety and of course Green & Tonic. I am hopeful that the tree will recover from its traumatic experience. We hope the greening world and the Essences will set this tree free to flourish again. All this green is make us dizzy with JOY!

All in all, what a difference from last Monday!

Snow. April snow. One storm piling into another, day after day.

I try and think of these storms as a chance to keep on with winter crafts. I finished knitting the border for the third of the fifth grade afghans, modeled here by William.

We keep feeding the birds. There are so many unusual ones at the feeder, looking like the rest of us, a bit bewildered by this spring.

On Sunday, our fifth day in a row of falling snow, William stayed in bed reading books with a couple of cats to keep him company. This was a good model for the rest of us who had hopeless aspirations of fighting the high winds and pelting snow for some fresh air.

Late Sunday, the sky turned that awful strange black and green color I have seen before with microbursts and tornadoes. I did the land clearing process for the farm grid and hoped for the best as relentless winds with some serious gusts of sixty to seventy miles an hour pounded us all night. Today, it is still extremely windy, though fortunately the precipitation has become sleet and rain. None of us have ever heard such whistling and roaring noises in this building. Branches and sleet beating against the windows and roof add to the cacaphony.

At the bottom of our hill, about half a mile from here, the storm damage was extensive. The shots below are of a formerly dense forest.

We seem to be the only house on the road with power. I am going to post this while we still have power. And bring in another load of wood to keep the home fires burning.

Each day’s email brings a lot of interesting questions and stories about Flower Essences.

Here was feedback and a question from yesterday, “I have a four year old Doberman Pinscher female…who I have been competing in agility for two years. We have had great success using Showcats and Anxiety. I will not trial here without them! Although they have worked wonders for her ring stress ( 99%better than previously ) something is still “missing”. In trial, she doesn’t run as fast as she can and does in practice because she constantly has to take in her surroundings. She used to bark and get her hackles up about the judge and ring crew, which she doesn’t anymore, but she still will wander off course to make sure they meet her approval. She is overly suspicious of people, even for the breed, and bossy with other dogs, not in an aggressive way. I like to say she is full of attitude. Any little hint from me that she id something wrong stresses her immediately. She is extremely sensitive to me and my emotions. I guess what I am looking for is for her to be more carefree, able to enjoy playing with me and focus on me without worrying about her surroundings so much. I need her to know that she is safe with me and she doesn’t always have to be on guard. What are your recommendations? I have considered Run & Play or Fairy Rose for her.”

As I was reading the email I thought of both Run & Play and the Fairy Rose for this dog even before I got to the end of the email where this dog’s caretaker had thought of these herself. This is so typical of conversations about Flower Essences. You know what is calling to you and have excellent insights into what might help you or the animals in your life.

I also suggested Neediness and Golden Armor for this dog.

As I explained, Neediness helps animals find their right relationship with other humans and their right relationship with themselves. It helps them feel anchored in an experience of their own self worth so that they are neither too demanding or too anxious about what other people think of them. I mentioned that I thought an animal that felt special was really dealing with the same issue as an animal that didn’t feel special at all. Animals and for that matter people as well, have worth just because they are, and once they get into a situation of feeling better than or worse than others, they have begun to lose sight of this essential truth. The Flowers in Neediness help us or our animals to know that being ourselves is enough and no feedback from other humans or any other experience can alter our value.

I suggested Golden Armor to help this dog to buffer out this data of what others are thinking about her. It will also help her to buffer out all the extraneous stimulus in the ring, and of course it will help her buffer out the dissonant sound vibrations that exist in and out of the ring in this modern world of ours. To experience the pure joy of doing an agility course, it has to be an experience of just self and the course. For a sensitive, empathic dog like this Doberman, Golden Armor offers supportive information on just being the experience of doing the agility course, free of the burdens of all other intruding vibrations. I think this is when the purest joy occurs, when we have lost ourselves in the experience of what we are doing.

In a subsequent email back and forth we discussed whether Neediness would make a dog more indifferent to her humans. I tried to explain why I thought having this Doberman work with Neediness would only make the relationship more loving. Clinginess and aloofness are really the same response, one of insecurity about the relationship as well as insecurity about one’s own value. When one finds right relationship with self and knows one’s own self worth, then one is free to be one’s essential self. And let’s face it, we are such lucky humans to have the example of dogs whose essential self is so often such pure love and devotion. In most dogs, Neediness helps the pure strands of love to be better known and felt. It only dismantles patterns of behavior obscuring this love not the love itself.

So thank you for every email sharing your experiences and asking your questions. I learn something from every email!

As I type, it is snowing outside here at the farm North Pole. It reminds me of the holiday weekend we had. A fresh brisk bitter arctic wind rejuvenated chilled us to the bone as we took walks force marches with the dogs. Being an intrepid New Hampshire native a native wanna be ever the recovering flatlander that I am, I did not gather the clan for some festive April snowmobiling. I did not organize some hair raising telemark skiing through a maple sugar bush, doubling our skiing pleasure by dodging plastic piping as we merrily sped down a mountain slope. No, I got the group organized with some old fashioned indoor craft activities.

If the only green we were going to see all weekend was the fake grass in the Easter egg baskets, then I was going to make sure we had gorgeous eggs on top of that crappy plastic stuff. I got out our Ukranian egg kit and made up some new dyes and set everyone loose with a couple dozen white eggs.

On Saturday, as chill winds blew, we started our heaping pile of decorated eggs.

And since Sunday was as charming a spring day as Saturday, we gathered around the kitchen table for a second afternoon of crafts and then had a late day but glorious indoor Easter egg hunt with a serious pile of gorgeous eggs.

However, even with these eggs to enjoy, I don’t want to hear from all of you who were frollicking on green lawns for your hunts. Jim has just arrived home from school to report that the weathermen say were going to have another storm on Thursday bringing six to twelve inches of new snow.

Ukranian eggs anyone?

Ah yes, there is nothing like April in New Hampshire.