it’s beautiful and peaceful here. the flowers look as lovely as ever- not yet minding the weeds that flourish because i am not on weed patrol-

so many people helping- the incredible crew in the office led by the indomitable deb have kept things sailing along magnificently- now that emily is home from college she officially has become this summer’s bottler- on other days she’ll be shipping with sophie, invoicing and doing email too- on wednesday she’ll be out in the gardens.

and so it was on this wednesday that she and lizzy and their friend lily did one of the jobs that absolutely had to get done- they dug and planted the cherokee trail of tears garden in red shiso-

here was the garden awaiting their ministrations-


here emmy, lizzy and lily begin to lay out the design

here the garden is planted

and here i sit in the arbor garden- so glad to be outside for a bit- there’s the wheelbarrow i fell over, the hand in question wrapped in a splint and some silver bandaging that is falling off because i need to ask someone to wrap it on me again, and st francis, representing the mysterious beloved directing all the dramas including this one.

in the last week, during the few lucid moments i have had- and there have been few-i have wondered what to call this blog-

i have considered……tilting with windmills wheelbarrows

this might be the right title because last saturday while shoveling soil out of a wheelbarrow, i pitched over the back of the barrel in a classic molly move onto my left arm and well… smashed the arm into many bits

which suggests another title idea…….

packing hardware

after a five day wait while the necessary nuts and bolts and screws and pins and wires and plates were procured, a lovely hand surgeon spent four hours putting my arm and wrist back together

while i waited, i did flower essence research and drank flower essence water out of quart jars. as i mend, i do the same

so perhaps the title is…… molly as test subject

and someday i may actually have the stamina to write what i learned beyond gratefulness for every animal wellness collection flower essence mix as well as gratefulness for everything else in creation, especially jim

but, it is time for me to go back to bed- the place where i am for now- learning about a different kind of spring and a whole new way of gardening

with love to you all, i am, mending well

Oh who was I fooling with my talk of sticking just to business of the microcosm?

I spent most of this week fighting what, in my eyes, was a significant a miscarriage of justice out there in the macrocosm. I have no idea if what I did has done any good, but I felt I had to weigh in anyways. AND I DID.

Even as I write this, I realize the bees talked to me about microcosm and macrocosm to help me let go of unnecessary guilt, not to encourage me to keep dividing my world into microcosm and macrocosm. Like I just did, for example.

I think they were trying to tell me that even though they work a geographical terrain, a “bee way” of only so many miles, humans work a terrain that is more fluid. More importantly, this shifting terrain only works when we come from our hearts. When we work from in our hearts, our terrain moves fluidly through a reality that is all one. If we are in our personality, ideas of microcosm versus macrocosm get us out of whack into false notions of me and mine.

In oneness, I just have to listen to my heart and do what I am called to do. I need make no fixed lines between micro or macro realms or cling to an assessment of their relative value. Tending a bed of cabbage is no more or no less than tending a continent, because it is all unity.

And if I remember it’s never a fixed line between what is and isn’t my realm, I won’t blockade myself apart from anything either. Even when I am mad at something “out there” and want to feel separate, it is not so.

But this oneness doesn’t mean I am responsible for the whole enchilada either. It’s that kind of confusion that sends me into retreat into the illusion of me and mine.

Like the bees, I need to work what my heart , in any given moment, defines as my ” bee way” as best I can and THEN LET IT GO.

This letting go is what the bees reminded me of this week. The letting go is another thing I need to remember. If I can remember outcomes don’t matter, I can stay fluid in following the hearts call all over the place. When I mistakenly get lost in outcomes, I get foot sore as well as heart sore and want to hole up and lick my wounds back in the fortress of me and mine.

I also need to remember that I really never get a clear sense of outcomes anyways. None of us can ever really know what happened because of what we did. I can’t begin to remember all the times when a note from one of you kept me going. Did you know that? I hope you do now, if you didn’t know before.

This week, during what appeared to be a futile tilt with the windmill of an institution of higher learning, I got a little too invested in outcome. Before I remembered that outcome didn’t define me, I wanted to go to a cave and eat worms, go to that separate establishment way away from the rest of the world. I wanted to growl there as well as eat worms. Can’t forget the growling.

But the Flowers lifted me up, the bees lifted me up, the dogs lifted me up, and letters from you lifted me up. And I thank you. Your bee way overlapped mine this week and even though you can’t always know outcome, let me tell you, in this case, the outcome was good.

People sometimes ask me why I don’t write more about events in the big wide world. Why do I stop most of my commentary when I reach the garden gate?

While the tiny world of this garden is a place of much hope and beauty, I often find the world beyond here a painful and confusing place. To be honest, I don’t know what to say about most of it, except to growl and that would get quite tiresome for you.

I try in each moment of my day to be as loving as I can be. Out in the world this sometimes leads people to think a village idiot is on the loose. Back here, I can see it makes a difference. And I am truly content with the small scale of my efforts. In keeping with my general mood of subdued ambition, I just want get on with uncomplicated loving these days. Nothing too big or splashy. I am no longer looking for that headline “Molly Sheehan Ends Nuclear Arms Race.”

This spring, when I lost more overwintered honeybees than I expected, I sat with the remaining hives in a puddle of despair. The Angels and the bees told me that the losses were a problem of the macrocosm, not the microcosm. They told me that there was nothing I could have done. They asked me to let it go. There was no request to continue my handwringing, just a request to keep on being happy. I found this startling. All over the country honeybees are dying, but they want me to be of good cheer and carry on. They exhorted me to, “Just go out and plant your garden with your same joy as usual.”

There was no hiding from the stark realities of the world in this request. These bees talked to me while I took apart the hives of dead bees. It wasn’t called Green HOPE Farm by a bunch of Angels for nothing. With this crew, hope isn’t some passing fancy, but an eternal verity.

As I bottled “Don’t Worry-Bee Happy” this week, I discovered a honeybee was sitting on my head, helping me bottle. She only dropped to the counter to get released outside when the last bottle was capped. As I returned her to her hive, once again I felt a bit muddled about the honeybees’ exhortation to bee happy amidst the problems of the macrocosm.

I decided to stroll down to the eastern side of the property to check out the newly blossoming Plums and look how the bee population seemed to be doing, this being a good litmus test for local bee populations. I found the trees to be wildly abuzz. The Plums were awash in bees of all sorts, plum bees, honeybees, and more bumblebees than I had ever seen, all of them frollicking in the heavily Flowering branches. Their ecstasy joined the perfume of the blossoms to sweep me into a state of simple happiness. I lay in the grass and looked up.

How simple. if not always easy is this way of the bees. Love the microcosm, joyfully get on with our small caretaking roles in our microcosms and the macrocosm will take care of itself. If each of us does this, how swiftly we could right this tilting planet.

While we watched it rain from inside our toasty warm office this week, Jim was off in the White Mountains for a camping trip with his sixth grade students. As downpour turned to snow flurries yesterday afternoon, we could only wonder what it was like at the base of Mt Washington…..

But they returned last night, cheery if wet, having survived stiff winds from the North, deep snow on the trails and three soggy days spent in the woods.

Today is May Day, so I have been out in the frosty garden picking bouquets to greet everyone when they come in this morning.

May Day greetings to you too!