It was dog heaven this weekend, one long walk after another.

These were the days that become the whole memory of the season. The sparkling air revealed the leaves at their autumn best.

There was an Indian summer warmth that left some of us happily barefoot.

On Sunday, when we hit the woodland paths for another leisurely loop, we heard guns on both sides of us.

We had thought we had a bit more time before full tilt hunting season, but the muzzleloaders folks were out in full force.

As quickly as we could we returned to the nearest road, singing very loudly.

No more trail walking until after hunting season.

This is not such a deprivation as all that. The view on the roads is not such a shabby sight.

This past weekend brought victory with the cider press. With all the replacement pieces finally in place, the behemoth grinder crushed whole apples and made apple pulp or pomace about five times as fast as the old grinder. We had four gallons pressed in about an hour. This left time for lots of long delayed victory toasts and…….other projects.

I am not sure I will ever have a cosy relationship with this wheelbarrow, but I am back hauling composted manure and bark mulch with it.

I move around it gingerly though. This was, after all, the very beast I took my bone breaking flip over.

Yesterday after hauling a lot of manure to build a new flower bed, I filled the bed with crocus bulbs. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. I ever so carefully planted clusters of different color crocus bulbs so that, next spring, they would look artfully scattered in a pleasing arrangement of different shades of yellow, white and purple Flowers.

I awoke this morning to find a skunk had ripped up the whole bed during the night. He had left his lingering scent and very few bulbs. I poked these forlorn stragglers into the earth again. As I did so, I felt a lot less smug than yesterday afternoon when I lay on the ground looking at the ziliions of crocus bulbs all so precisely placed for planting and crowed a little bit. That had been a short but misguided moment when I thought myself so on top of the bulb thing.

Perhaps Sophie and Lizzy’s daffodil bulb planting today will go better. If not, its going to be time for a war with a skunk.

Like anyone ever won a war with a skunk……

People ask me why I don’t write much anything about worldly events.

If I did, it would probably be variations on the good news, bad news, who knows? genre. One reason for this is that I have noticed that whenever I weigh in with some sour judgment about anything, I find myself walking in the shoes of the opposite point of view in the next nano second. Instant karma! Just add judgment! Elizabeth also seems to experience this syndrome with great regularity. No sooner does she say she is not interested in traveling and thinks she is done with Europe than she finds herself on a plane to Spain.

There is another reason for my growing conviction that I have no idea if anything is ever bad news.

I spend much of my time either out in the garden up to my elbows in Flowers or talking to Flowers as I write about them. In either case, I do whatever I am doing while also sipping the vibration of Flowers from a mason jar of water and Flower Essences. This makes me a honeybee an advertisement for how poorly all these new eco detergents work a Flower Child.

As a Flower Child, I find myself immersed in the Flowers’ constant joy and optimism to the point where it becomes my own vibration as well. This makes for odd cocktail party chat as most people think a Pollyanna like me is deranged. Therefore, it is probably a good thing I am no longer invited to any cocktail parties ( though this comment will no doubt bring in a few invites- Whatever will I wear? Something with grass stains.)

Okay, I really DID have a sensible reason for writing today.

This morning I worked on the Desert Flower Essence section in the next Guide. We plan to reprint the Guide in early 2009. This gives me the next few months to rewrite the whole book, section by section. Part of our work is to create new logos for each collection. I give you a sneak peak of the logos for the Desert Flower Essences.

This is a photograph of a computer print out of the art so it doesn’t do the logos justice at all, but it does give a hint of the exciting artistic adventure we are on with the help of our new graphics person, Jessica Miller.

As I worked on the Desert Flower Essence section, it was hard to miss how helpful these Flower Essences are for these times. I thought I would share with you the photos of just a couple of these Desert Flower Essence gems and also mention their timely strengths once again.

Desert Gold helps us know the abundant flow of the generous universe even in what appear to be times of scarcity or lack.

Purplemat helps us know less can be more and experience contentment with what is.

Desert Chicory helps us to trust the healing flow of our lives, collectively and individually.

Arizona Lupine helps us make the most of available resources in circumstances of apparent lack and also tap more deeply into our own inner strengths.

Desert Forget-Me-Not helps us remember our selves before difficulties left their mark, and helps us reclaim our joy and delight in the world and our sense of the world as a gift unfolding before us, not a punishment to be endured.

And then there are the Woolly Woolly twins, Woolly Easter Bonnets and Woolly Margiold. These two are certain support for these Woolly Times.

Woolly Easter Bonnets, shown here, helps us find the divine gift of cheerfulness when daily life is difficult while Woolly Marigold helps us not only acclimate but flourish and thrive with grace and generosity in seemingly barren or desolate circumstances.

Really, is it any wonder I keep my nose buried in Flowers and hydrate with Flower Essences? Tough times call for more Flowers. That’s my story and I am sticking with it.

The greenhouse plants that sit in these peat moss filled frames in the summer have all been moved into the greenhouse. The front porch is piled with boxes of bulbs to be planted and the kitchen is filled with bushels of potatoes that need to be sorted and stored in the cellar.

The Red Shiso is safely hung in the drying shed. After the harvest, Lizzy and I weeded and limed the bed where the Red Shiso grew this season. Then yesterday, Jim covered this garden in hay.

Jim wins the Green Hope Farm hero of the week award for this work. One reason this job made Jim the hands down winner is because he had to haul all the hay in a wheelbarrow. This is because we no longer have a truck. Our farm truck was part of the big recall and buy back by Toyota. Apparently the frames on 800,000 Toyota Tacomas were made from defective steel. We are missing our rusty truck a lot anyways. A truck holds a lot more hay than a wheelbarrow and plus, wheelbarrows are dangerous.

A second reason Jim deserves the award is because he hauled all this hay and spread it on the garden in the pouring rain.

Jim’s interface with our cider press also made him the clear winner of this week’s award.

A bumper apple crop motivated us me to order a new grinder for our cider press. Up until now, we used a homemade grinder that required us to cut up the apples before grinding and then grind these quartered apples over and over and over again. We I finally decided to spring for a big heavy deluxe grinder, one I had had my eye on for more years than I can count. It looked to me like it would be easy to install.

Ordered in early August, the new grinder arrived with only one of two needed support brackets. It was late August when the other bracket arrived and Jim got to work on the easy assembly that basically required him to rebuild the press. After a happy Saturday afternoon attaching the new grinder, Jim’s moment of installation victory was short lived.

Within moments of the first turn of the grinder, the roller jammed and split. Now on a first name basis with the folks that made the grinder, Jim called and a new roller was shipped. Meanwhile, the apples on most of our trees had ripened and were beginning to drop from the trees. The heaving buckets of apple drops that we had collected were now moldering next to the press. Call it good times for yellow jackets.

Late September and the new roller finally arrived. Conveniently, Jim had to dismantle the press he rebuilt in order to install the replacement roller.

And the installation has not been a piece of cake, though I made Jim apple cake to take his mind of his installation woes.

Yes, just a day or two from October and not a drop of cider has been pressed. Instead the grinder is in a multitude of pieces all over the kitchen table.

In fact, I think JIm went out to spread hay in the rain to take his mind off the problems with the grinder.

It’s sort of the theme of these times, isn’t it? Things that sound easy to install but aren’t.

Which leads us to the technology front where Jim further secured himself the hero of the week by installing new memory in our UPS computer. Not that any of us thought we needed more memory in this computer, but it was a requirement for a new software upgrade from UPS. Anyways, this memory installation required Jim to go to Staples twice between a session jamming what turned out to be a defective memory chip into the bottom of the computer.

Who am I kidding? This guy is not the hero of the week. He is a hero of the ages. I would toast him with a nice hearty glass of cider………if I had any.

An old friend visited this weekend, Jim’s college roommate, Jake. Roommates for their sophomore, junior, and senior years, these two share a lot of funny stories and a lot of very unusual expressions created during their years together. This language, JakeJim speak, is still the basis for most of their present day conversations, leaving the rest of us in the dark as to exactly what is meant by such phrases as, “de guy goes by so goes the guy.”

Jake’s career path has been a bit different than Jim’s. Jake works for the state department as the consul general and chief of mission in Jerusalem. Jim teaches sixth grade.

Here is how this all breaks down.

Jake has drivers, bodyguards, maids, and a cook. Jim is the maid. He is married to the cook.

Jake speaks Arab, Hebrew, Dutch, Greek, English and JakeJim speak. Jim speaks sixth grade, a very arcane dialect and one he can understand only because of his deep understanding of JakeJim speak.

At the consulate, Jake has two gardeners. At the farm, Jim is married to the gardener.

Jake knows pretty much everyone in government and has pictures of himself meeting these people. Jim has these pictures of Jake.

Jake attends too many meetings. So does Jim.

Jake takes part in many meetings between factions that disagree with each other. So does Jim.

Jake had a meeting this morning at the UN. Jim had a meeting too.

Jake has top secret clearance and reads top secret documents on a routine basis. Jim intercepts notes passed in class.

Jake has flown in Marine One, the president’s helicopter with various presidents. Jim sees an occasional helicopter fly over the farm.

After thirty years in the diplomatic service, Jake has one degree of separation between just about everyone on Earth. Because of Jake, Jim has two degrees of separation from everyone.

I knew both Jake and Jim when they were in college. Their career trajectories are of little interest to me because I am more amazed that they have gray hair. After all, to me, they are still those twenty year old guys who spoke a strange language, invented a new holiday called Dada Day and did serious research to see if they could survive on a diet of pop tarts and kraft macaroni and cheese.

Jake and Jim, during their senior year in college, take a pause in their argument about what the big building in the valley below is.

Another historic moment, the handshake signals the beginning of the JakeJim accord wherein Jake and Jim agree to disagree on what that building was in that valley, an argument that has been a constant in their relationship, thus giving Molly the first breather she has had from this inane argument in thirty years.