The good news is that the vibration of the new Venus Garden combination remedy, Equanimity, matches the spectacular beauty and vibration of the garden itself.  The not so good news is that my photos of the garden don’t do it justice. All I can say is give this one a chance regardless of my photos, because it is an incredible support to keep calm, cool, collected and cheerful no matter the circumstances we find ourselves in.

I wish I had done better with the camera because this was an extraordinarily lovely and uplifting garden.  I comfort myself that at least the Angels and Elementals did better translating the garden into an Essence for you all than I did translating the experience of being in this garden into a photograph.  And the Essence is MUCH more important than a photograph of the garden so that is good.

Here is the write up for this garden I have added to the Venus Garden collection section of the website.  This Essence is good to go!  And how glad we have been about that!  It is one we have been leaning on ourselves through this tumultuous time. It amazes me how often I need to reach for this one to help me simmer down and find my center.

Equanimity

This year’s Venus Garden was a glorious mandala of Zinnias in the shape of a Star of David. At the heart of the garden were rings of Heliotrope and Mehera White Marigolds while Each of the six triangles in the Star of David was planted in a different color Zinnia: lime green, pink, coral pink, magenta, orange and one triangle in white and gold. White Snapdragons and Sweet Alyssum punctuated the tip of each triangle. A vibrant and beautiful garden, it flourished through the extremes of a hot and very dry summer. No matter how many Flowers we picked, it never looked as if we had cut a blossom.

After we planted the garden, a GHF beloved asked if we were working on an Essence that would help her remain poised, happy and able to appreciate the joys of life during a time of challenge and suffering. The Angels said yes, this year’s Venus Garden would be about that. We could feel how true this was for the garden kept us all buoyed up during a summer of challenges. This garden had an uplifting vibration of joy but also a steadiness. It was expansive and elegant but also sturdy. We savored its energy and awaited the call to make it into an Essence. We knew it was going to be a very good one!

When the Angels told us it was time to make an Essence from the garden, they said the name of this Venus Garden Flower Essence combination mix was Equanimity.

Equanimity is defined as the state of being calm, composed, even tempered especially in difficult situations. Equanimity is the ability to remain poised and in balance even when pressed by painful experiences of failure and loss. It is not so much not caring, as being able to care in a calm and emotionally balanced way.

Were we ready for this Essence? All we could say was, yes, thanks! And here she is!

Here are some of my attempts to photograph this garden.

Sarah and I begin to plant the garden in the end of May.

An early photo when the plants were quite small but beginning to blossom, and the Star of David shape is still easy to see.

Pippa settles into the garden for the season.

An apologetic postscript- I was certain that the Taiwan Flower Essence collection labels, ordered a month ago, would be here by now, but they are not.  I apologize for my confident promise that we would launch the Taiwan collection this week.  If this delay continues ( and we are trying to get some information from the label company), we may well post the descriptions before the labels arrive and just use Green Hope Farm farm labels until they arrive.

When I first made Flower Essences in the late ’80’s I had no sense of mission beyond the deep pull I felt to Flower Essences and to cooperative partnership with the Angels and Elementals.

As events unfolded, I looked to the Angels and Elementals to guide me in all things Green Hope Farm. I knew next to nothing about running a business or a farm, and their advice made all the difference.

I also asked my partners to help me fulfill the mission of Green Hope Farm whatever that was. Eventually it was hard to miss that a significant part of this mission involved us creating Flower Essences from many places all over Earth.

To this end, the Angels and Elementals sent us beloved staffers who joined family members in the project of setting off around the world to make Flower Essences for Green Hope Farm.

Now our bottling room is a library of Flower Essences collected from all over the Earth, a library that requires a MAP for new staffers to find their way around!

Green Hope Farm now offers Flower Essences from Patagonia, Japan, Costa Rica, St John US Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Mediterranean islands of Sicily and Santorini, the Camino de Santiago in Spain, Ireland, Scotland, the American Southwest, Northern California, the American Rockies and a very extensive collection of Flower Essences from Flowers that grow wild and cultivated in the hills of northern New England.

To add to this diversity, in a matter of days we will officially launch our new collection of Flower Essences from TAIWAN!!! As soon as their labels arrive (hopefully next week) this collection will be ready to share with one and all!

To have this library of global Flower Essences at our disposal feels precious and timely. Light pouring into the planet requires us to hold more light. Holding more light requires we work through any glitches in our electrical system impeding the flow of this light. Specific Flowers from specific places can help with these specific glitches.

Our expanding light is inseparable from our experience as part of our planet. Even if we stay mostly in the same geographical place (as I now do), part of humanity’s collective journey is to be more global in our experience of ourselves. Flower Essences from all over the globe help us in this work. With Flower Essences from other places, we can receive the balancing wisdom of worlds far from our geographical home.

We are not separate from our beloved Earth. We are of her and one with her. Flower Essences help us awake to this.

The introduction of the Taiwan Essences feels particularly significant. As you read their descriptions next week, I think you too will feel as I did that these Flower Essences express a different point of view from Flower Essences made from Flowers in the west. It feels incredibly auspicious and wonderful that the Green Hope Farm Flower Essence library will now contain these gems from Taiwan.

Before presenting the Taiwan Essences and others new this fall, I want to share one of the new Flower Essences we made here this summer. It holds the intention of helping us bridge any gap we may feel between east and west. It offers its help so we can make the most of the Taiwan Flower Essences and receive their great gifts more fully. It also brings its own unique gifts complete in themselves.

This Flower Essence is Himalayan Balsam. Here is the description of this Flower Essence, now available from the Wildflower collection

Himalayan Balsam Impatiens glandulifera

an East-West door opener offering an energy of universal love

Himalayan Balsam is a wild impatiens introduced from the Himalayan mountains to gardens in the west in 1839. Easily grown from seed, this Flower blossoms in exuberant shades from pale pink to deep purple. With its explosive seed dispersal, excellent germination and high nectar production, Himalayan Balsam soon leaped from cultivated gardens into the wild. I found it growing abundantly in a marshy area next to a patch of Jewelweed, a native North American Flower from the same Impatiens family as Himalayan Balsam.

The history of Himalayan Balsam in the west is dramatic. It was marketed in Great Britain as “a poor man’s orchid”, because it could be inexpensively grown by anyone even as its beauty rivaled Flowers in the greenhouses of the upper class. Some viewed this as making Himalayan Balsam “splendid in its invasiveness.”

Others saw the plant as a menace to eco-systems everywhere, and this is the attitude that has prevailed. “Balsam bashings” in which people go along riverbanks and other wetlands to destroy this Flower are very popular. Meanwhile, current research describes these bashings as a highly destructive practice that does considerable damage to local eco-systems and makes way for more unfortunate plant introductions.

It’s hard not to feel that there is something more going on here with these plant bashings than getting rid of an invasive specimen. When a plant evokes this sort of extreme response, there is almost always something energetic going on!

This plant holds a very strong energy of inclusiveness and global connectivity. It encourages us to embrace anything we have viewed as “other” be it an unknown within ourselves or a stranger from a world away. Its inclusive connectivity of east and west seems to have made it a target as not all people want to connect these worlds or view them as equal.

Here at the farm, we feel that Himalayan Balsam is a great gift from the east. In fact, we ushered this Essence onto the property with a sacred ceremony of welcome. This Flower is a beloved that we have waited for. Its arrival just as we launch our new collection from Taiwan felt significant. We feel this Essence will help all of us more fully experience the Flower Essences from Taiwan as it acts to open the door more fully to the gifts of this entire collection.

We also feel that along with opening the doors to this new collection, Himalayan Balsam floods us with its own particular love and profound energy of universality and equality in diversity.

Here this lovely new friend speaks, “Arriving from the Himalayas, I bring forward my eastern wisdom about universal love. My western cousin, Jewelweed helps you to handle irritation and explosive emotion especially when the irritation springs from rubbing up against energies that do not match your own. I come to the fore to demonstrate an energy of peaceful coexistence and loving kindness amidst great diversity. I am a vibration of love that brings worlds together. I come to work with brother Jewelweed to help transform community vibrations from anger management to an experience of embracing each other with complete love and appreciation for differences.”

I AM Love unbound.