roses and more roses. can there ever be too many roses? never!

staff goddess of weeding at work. also known as princess of mulch.

the lambs ear (Essence offers help for the sensitive to feel what they while also staying strong) with its soft gray stalks sets off the yellow of the rue (this “herb of grace” offers support for our spiritual journey into unknown territory).

the red of alex mackenzie rose ( the courage to do what we need to do and stay with the divine plan) is paired with the incomparable angelica (support to knit things together, ever reminds us of our oneness).

i went to take this picture of the lovely konigin von danemark rose (support to release us from patterns of judgment and shame spirals) because i love how the white crambe cordifolia (support to free our minds from all constraint and limitation) and the maroon smokebush set it off like a florist’s bouquet.

but the gift of this photograph is the nature spirit seen up against the smokebush.

how fortunate is humanity to have their ever present love and support!

when i fell down, i fell not just on the earth of green hope farm. i fell into lots of caring hands. the hands of so many people lifted me up from the ground these past six weeks. people with casseroles, people with heartfelt cards and letters, people with chocolate, people with comforting books, people with jokes, people with tenderness, people with mending, healing hands supporting my hands.

the day i broke my arm, the doctor reading the x-rays in the emergency room asked me if i knew i had broken my arm before and had not had it set properly. i looked at the x-ray and at the shadowy image of that misshapen arm bone that mended itself as best it could, and i sent love and prayers back to little Molly who navigated such an ordeal all alone. sadly, i knew this the arm was one of many bones i mended in this broken, alone way.

one of the many gifts of this experience has been receiving so much more love and appropriate care than happened in my childhood. i know i keep going on and on about this, as much as it could be said to go on and on when only writing an entry a week, but this outpouring of love will always remain a profound healing experience for me.

as a child, i had no frame of reference to know i deserved better than to mend a broken arm, broken rib, broken foot, broken heart by myself. this led to a good many adult years trying to live by what i imagined to be a necessary creed of independence. coming into this experience, i was bone weary. my mistaken ideas that we can and must do most things alone had been worn down to a nubbin, but still, i often resisted asking for necessary help out of my old wounded ideas about the need to “do it all by myself” i don’t think i could have survived my childhood any other way, but i am most grateful to have been given a chance to let go of this sad and lonely way of being once and for all. getting to let go of this creed is an enormous part of the grace of this experience.

i have heard that habits can begin to change in as little as four days though this sounds rather simplistic to me who has held on to so many counter productive habits for more than fifty years. i have been fortunate enough to have my patterns of living interrupted for a much more extended period of time than four days. as a consequence, i am deeply hopeful that some of my habits of a lifetime have been broken down. and if not yet, maybe soon, since it is going to be awhile before i am living with two working hands again.

by necessity, my habits of self reliance have been abandoned. i have come to accept that if i want ice for my arm, i need to ask for it and the sweet souls taking care of me will get ice for me cheerfully. i have discovered that the universe won’t collapse if they take care of me instead of me always taking care of them. it is all quite a relief to discover that i am not just alive because of my chambermaid skills.

i have started to work with a hand therapist to begin to get my hand moving again. my wrist is presently unable to bend, but i have about eighty exercises to do each day to begin this part of my healing journey. it is so interesting to talk to a person called to serve the magic of hands. it is so eye opening to understand everything that my hands did without me thinking about them and to share this with a hand therapist that understands my new passionate love of my hands.

as i go forward towards hands restored and more deeply loved, i will continue to relish the skills my hands so freely gave before this break to shovel, to type FAST, to knead bread, to hug, to knit and in every way to give, but now i will also be more wide awake to their gifts to receive, to be held gently, to cradle love freely given. wrists are said to be all about the flow of energy into and out of the body. how lovely to be given this opportunity to let more love be received in my wide open hands.

the last of the bearded iris have their golden moment

john cabot and henry kelsey, two of the roses in our sacred masculine mix put on a show

this is a new rose for us and now a new flower essence. it is named Alchymist and we have fallen in love with it. its sweet, still beauty reflects its vibrational gifts. with its skills at alchemy, this rose moves us through the illusory notions of feminine energy gripping the planet, to take us to the still pure reality of the sacred feminine, the centered, infinitely wise energy that we need to navigate the chaotic external world.

here is another view of this incredible rose, covered with early morning dew

here’s another new rose and new flower essence, belle de crecy.

our much loved mary rose has its moment in amongst the honeybee covered catmint. what a lovely energetic combination these two make with the mary rose’s support to cleanse our hearts and catmint’s support to find new physical vitality

here john davis rose greets the staff goddesses as they arrive in the morning

and here the exquisite reine des violettes, a new flower essence from last season. i love how its two toned blossoms reflect it energetic gifts of helping us find the balance of action and restraint.

emily is chief weeder as well as chief bottler- i offer one armed morale support from a garden bench

here emily gets further moral support from may may, riley, and mishka before tackling the bind weed in the foreground

later in the day progress has been made. almost ready for an inspection from vintner ben

i am finally feeling a lot better. my first pin comes out later today and i again offer my thanks to our animal wellness collection essences, most especially run & play, our orthopedic mix. little did i imagine my years making flower essences that served bone, muscle, and tendon health would become such a gift to myself!

ben, sophie, emily, and of course may may continue to plant the various annual gardens. here they get in the last of the tomatoes.

in my wanderings through the flower gardens , i stop and smell the roses.

today i noticed this la belle sultane rose had moved itself across the beds by runner and stealth to poke its head up through a spray of quatre saisons rose. this moment and so many more in the rose garden make me doubt i will ever weed out the volunteer roses again.

more rose pictures as soon as jim brings the camera home from school. he and will finish school tommorrow. yahooo!

anyone who has known me more than about seven minutes knows that i am rather gung ho about things. when called to gardening, i dug up a few acres of dirt. when called to flower essences, i made seven hundred or so. when i get interested in something, i wade in with activities, books, feasts, questions, embraces.

this makes it easy for me to imagine the meeting with my soul and my angels to plan this accident. i can just hear myself say sure!!! let’s break my arm in thirty pieces and see what i learn. it was so like me to leap off this cliff with complete abandon.

yet, this leap has taken me in new and uncomfortable directions, to the land of the no leap where i can’t do much but be still.

i always thought of myself as a hands on sort of person. yet, with this injury, my soul has asked me to let go of this defining idea of myself. with this leap, i have to let go of long cherished ideas of self and all the activities that bolstered these ideas. every day when i think i have finished this work of letting go, i find more layers to let go of.

at this point, i don’t have a sense of what i will understand of myself on the other side of this letting go process. at this point, i am just grateful that i recognize i am still essentially myself, even as most everything i did as a matter of course each day has been surrendered.

on the practical level, i had no idea how many jobs required two hands. its deja vu all over again to sit at the table like a two year old watching a grown up cut up my food for me. or have someone help me get dressed. or to have my news of the day be that i tried to unbend my fingers.

as i take a back seat to most things at the farm, it is a lovely and delightful to see who and what flourishes in the spaces left by my absence. emily has taken up the bulk of my work in the office with such grace. all the ladies have risen up to the challenges with equal grace and good cheer. it leaves me in awe. lizzy has now left for her own journey to walk the pilgrim trail from france to santiago de compostela in spain. until her departure she cooked up a storm for us. one epic night there was a choice of three desserts. jim, ben, and will join emily in learning a lot they never knew about flowers. a lot!

and in the gardens, there are more surprises as everything that can’t be done yields its own gifts.

a bed of iris i was going to move this spring from its holding spot in the vegetable garden looks sensational just where it is

so much soars with unchecked beauty and some plants i have assiduously weeded out in years past come to the fore as lovely additions to the beds

here, bright yellow celandine, a marvelous flower essence for improving cell to cell communication and helping us be our most vital, informed and connected self, an essence in my drinking water as i type, gets its way, at long last, and moves from the hedgerows of the farm smack dab into the center of the perennial beds where it is helping everything to shine.