It’s an Upgrade.

Three words I dread.

This time they spilled from the lips of thirteen year old Will. Our early era fax stopped working a few weeks ago and the consensus was that this had happened because our fax was too old to be fixed and that a new fax was necessary.

This all proved to be not true.

The old fax , the one I understood, was fine. It was a problem with the phone lines. The UPS computer shares the phone line with the fax and to use technospeak, the UPS computer hogs the line.

But this fun fact was discovered AFTER Will and Jim had treated “me” to a four function fax gizmo more complicated than the control panels on the first five cars I owned.

And after untold hours trying UNSUCCESSFULLY to get this new fax to work, while listening to fax calls from you get cut off, I went for a 1957 solution. I unplugged the UPS computer phone line. Now it gets plugged in once a day when we send our day’s end data to UPS.

Now we get crabby messages from UPS about our communication problems, but we also get faxes from you again. Whew!

Out in the fall gardens, I understand my tasks better.

Enjoy the seed pods.

Mulch.

No technospeak necessary.

Many have asked for the Angels’ suggestions for Flower Essences that would support us to navigate this current collective paradigm shift about finances and the source of our security.

The Field of the Stars collection was the heart of the Angels’ suggestions today. Whenever a new collection arrives here, it is always a timely arrival. Never was this truer than with the arrival of these Flower Essences from the pilgrim trail in Spain.
I thought I would share the Angels suggestions from this collection. My two cent comments probably belabor the point, but that’s my job!

Santiago was one of the Angels’ Flower Essence suggestions. This mix is “for the moments when we experience false endings, created by our culture or society, when the internal journey is ongoing”. That sums up the global monetary situation in a nutshell. This financial crisis will pass. We will endure. Here is an Essence offering to help us know this and know that the grace of this financial crisis is that it pulls us towards a closer relationship with the one unchanging source of support in the cosmos, the God within each and every one of us.

Another Angelic suggestion, the mix Manzarin offers its keynote of discernment. Manzarin supports us to find “the ability to look below the surface of a situation and feel into its energetic core, to breakdown the external worldview and be energetically discerning about what are true gifts and what are red herrings”. What an excellent tool for the present when the red herrings pile up faster than I can spell bailout. Real calm comes from experiencing that all is well, not just hoping this is so.

The Angels also suggested the mix Belorado “for faith in the emptiness before the dawning of authentic community”. Belorado supports Manzarin in its dismantling of our old fears and building of faith in what is being born underneath the surface chaos. Belorado also reminds us that the stock market is not authentic community nor stocks authentic sustenance, even though we have been encouraged to believe these things. Closeness with other people, closeness with the God within, and closeness with nature are true community. As we collectively turn away from the ersatz, what goodness and joy we will find in these experiences of true community.

Arzua and Hontanas were two other Angelic Flower Essence suggestions. Hontanas encourages us to treat ourselves with tenderness and Arzua helps us open to receive loving support when we feel vulnerable, even when this support comes from unexpected places. The kind of paradigm shift that we are being asked to collectively make is an intense one. We are going to have moments of intense vulnerability as we are called to change our culture’s values and also change the way we live. These two mixes encourage us to be gentle with ourselves and each other, while also promising us the serendipity of gifts from unexpected places, and I don’t mean Walmart.

Mazarife, another Angelic suggestion offers a keynote of joy, explaining that it is “for realizing the potential to create oases of color and joy in the bleak stretches of our lives”. Yesterday, I sat with my dear neighbor Teddy enjoying a late afternoon cup of tea. At eighty seven, she has had her fair share of physical aches, pains, and difficulties, yet unexpectedly we got laughing ourselves silly at this crazy thing called life in a body. May Mazarife help us all to find more and more oases of love and unexpected silliness.

Lavacolla was another Angelic suggestion. This mix is for helping “the body clear its emotional field of any clutter that remains from past and finished energetic work”. How marvelous to know humanity is finishing up with this collective illusion that our safety lies in the consumption and possession of things. How wonderful that we are ready to move on from this mindset. Yes, it may be a rocky transition, but it remains a wonderful thing that we are collectively ready to make this paradigm shift.

Trabadelo was another Flower Essence mix that cropped up. It’s for “finding the courage to acknowledge and let our old patterns go, even as we are unsure of what our lives will look like without them”. We can’t know for certain what this world will look like after this weaning off from our collective fifty year shopping spree, but I think even a void might be better than more shopping.

Sahagun has the keynote surrender and helps us break down the behaviors triggered by fear that cause us to push our physical and emotional selves beyond balance”. This one could also be called, JUST TURN OFF THE NEWS.

Fisterra with its keynote of birth was the Angels’ final suggestion, offering “to support all the physical and energetic systems of the body through a transition where the soul is at the end of a long process of laying down a major paradigm of this or many lives”. Yes! Bring it on!

The trail to Santiago is one that millions of pilgrims have traversed. Once it offered support for the paradigm shifts of individual pilgrims, but its message of late is that it is ready and able to support all of us on our collective spiritual journey. It wants us to know that while we are collectively called to make radical changes right now, we are never asked to do so alone. The trail and the divinity holding the trail in form are always there to support us.

The death of the old and the birth of the new is messy, but these Essences help us feel the promise and goodness of this transition we are in. The Essences also remind us we have choices. We can freak out in the face of all this confusing news or we can keep the faith and take care of each other as we wait to see what wonderful new paradigm of community is being born. Isn’t this the very thing a lot of us have been waiting for, for a long time?

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……