I am grateful for your questions because they show me where I have failed to convey important information! Today I wanted to write about how long our Flower Essences will stay fully charged with all their electrical information. I hope to address your questions and concerns in this blog.

Q: I just read your FAQ sheet and was struck by the expense of replacing one’s Essences every year.

A: First of all, our Flower Essences can hold their electrical charge much longer than a year. There should NOT be a need to begin again each year.  HOWEVER our Flower Essences have to be cared for if they are going to stay vibrant and full of information. This is true of ALL Flower Essences. They need your love and care to stay fully charged.

Q: So why do you say they may begin to lose their electrical charge and vibrational information after a year?

A: I say this because I’m not sure what will happen to the Essences once they are out of our hands.  Here at the farm, we grow the Flowers, create Essences then bottle and ship these Essences out to you, always considering how to make sure you get the highest vibration Flower Essences possible.  We look to the Angels and Elementals to help us at every step and follow their advice as closely as we can.  After you receive the Essences from us, the Essences need care from you or they will begin to lose their vibrational information after about a year. Its not an arduous amount of care but just a little bit of care.

Q: In what conditions do they last well?

A: I am not trying to make life difficult for you when I ask you to store your Flower Essences in a high vibration spot in your home. It’s just that if you put a high vibration product in a low vibration spot, it is more work for the high vibration product to stay full of light than if you store this product in a happy spot in the first place. For example, most of us would have an easier time keeping our vibration high on a serene beach in Fiji than at a toxic waste dump.

Remember also that if your Flower Essences have been somewhere where the vibration is not high, you can ask the Angels and Elementals to clear and recharge them. The Angels and Elementals are there for all of us. All you need to do is ask for this help, and it will be done.

Q: In what conditions would Flower Essences not last as long?

A:  If you store your Flower Essences in a locker in Grand Central Station, they are going to get tapped off my passer-bys. This draining of electrical information is a problem anytime Flower Essences are stored in busy traffic areas.   We try very hard to address this by shipping Flower Essences directly to your door in a fully charged condition. Additionally we are grateful that the shops and practices where we send our Flower Essences have staff that love and protect the Essences.  Shops where no one loves the Flower Essences are places where the Essences will soon lose their information to whomever pulls on them in passing.

Q: Would using brandy instead of Red Shiso make a Flower Essence last longer?

A: No it would not. Whether a Flower Essence is stabilized in Red Shiso or in brandy, it is still subject to people or animals pulling on the Essence. It will still will lose its energy if it is not cared for.  Brandy sometimes masks a flat or vibrationless Essence better than Red Shiso, but this does not mean there is data in an old, uncared for brandy based Essence. That is why I am so glad that everyone is getting more adept at feeling into the vibration of Flower Essences to see if they have helpful information or if they are either drained of data or not relevant to one’s situation. The more we work with Flower Essences collectively, the more routine it will be to care for the Essences and the more easy it will be to find the best most helpful Essences for any dilemma we face.

Q: Why do you prefer Red Shiso as your stabilizer?

A: I could go on forever in response to this question.  This plant is generosity incarnate.  As a stabilizer and preservative, it enhances each Essence much as a microphone makes it easier for us to hear a beautiful note sung.  Red Shiso tenderly and thoroughly protects the vibration of each Essence, and it works in complete harmony with the energy of every Flower. Red Shiso is a plant that completely and selflessly has the back of every Flower it works with.

Last spring, staffer Sage Dewey had a dream in which she saw a field of Red Shiso plants grown in an immense spiral.  In the dream she heard the words, “Red Shiso shows us the way.”  In response to her dream, we grew this year’s crop of Red Shiso in a spiral. We also have thought long and hard about what this dream meant.

Red Shiso is an unforgettable plant.  It is beautiful and lush with its ruffled maroon leaves.  It is a tangy edible and makes a gorgeous deep cherry colored tincture for our Essences.  In so many ways it expresses its uniqueness yet never at the expense of any other sentient being.  It thrives with love then gives more love back.  It lives and dies in harmony and with grace and generosity.  It certainly does show us the way, and I am grateful it offered itself to be used as the common thread in all the Flower Essences here at Green Hope Farm.  I can think of no better friend.

I like the way gardens evolve both in response to what is planted and also what naturally thrives. In fact, I like the adventure of seeing what thrives best of all.   I plant specific plants because I love them or the Angels have suggested them. This effort is followed by results. And results are a different story than my plans. The results are more interesting and more beautiful than if I got what I wanted.

There is the surprise happiness when a plant takes to this place and spreads itself with abandon. Why has a lone Yellow Corydalis plant now self-seeded into hundreds of plants encircling the entire perimeter of every building at the farm? I do not know, but I am glad. There is also the letting go of my personality hopes when no matter how many times I replant something, it fails to thrive. The example that jumps to mind is Lupine. Please don’t let me ever plant another Lupine. They always disappear after a single season of bloom.

Over the last thirty years here in the gardens, this interplay of planning and letting the plants make their own way (or not) has led to much unexpected beauty. It’s the magic of the whole enterprise. As I let go of my plans, again and again I see how in this surrender the gardens are free to become much more than anything I could have imagined or controlled (even though I wish Lupine liked it here).

Surrender is involved with the Flower Essences too. When, so many years ago, an Angel in the garden asked me to make Flower Essences, I literally had no idea what the Angel was talking about.  It was another chance to listen to wise counsel, let go of MY ideas of why I was here and follows the bliss of working with Flowers that came into my life through no volition of my own.

No matter how many conversations I have with the Angels and Elementals, I never seem to guess where things are going. That first year of making Flower Essences, I thought the Flower Essences were just for my immediate family. How I could imagine that an entire pantry of Flower Essences was just for a few people is beyond me, but I did.

When the project expanded beyond the gardens of the farm, I was surprised again. Lynn Tidman and I were almost complete strangers when she invited me to go to her mother’s home in Bermuda. This seemed like a lovely but random junket, yet so many Flowers were waiting for us. And from the get-go, Lynn and I were game for the adventure of listening to the Flowers and bringing their Essences home to the farm. The first trip blossomed into many trips of Flower adventures. Climbing trees in hurricanes, borrowing step ladders during dinner parties, dragging cases and cases of “Flower potions” through customs. That sort of thing!

Later it made sense to me that Flowers grown in the very different world of Bermuda would have very different strengths and wisdom than Flowers grown here. It made sense to me that Flower Essences from two different worlds would mean more helpful tools for the blossoming community of people and animals who wanted to work with our Flower Essences. I never seem to get the bigger picture in advance, but events like this have helped me to let go when unexpected things happen, knowing that there is a bigger picture, just one that I do not know yet.

Yes, yes, I know. It’s easy enough to believe all this when it’s a trip to Bermuda. But these early experiences helped me when I had the choice to surrender and trust in a bigger picture when it was both my arms broken into dozens of pieces, death threats from a sibling, disinheritance. I may be Mollyanna, but it’s not because I never left the greenhouse.

This year it’s the Taiwan Flower Essences that fill me with awe about the bigger picture I do not understand.

When Sarah embarked on her trip to Taiwan, it was not organized around making Flower Essences. Yes, we discussed Sarah making Flower Essences in Taiwan IF SHE GOT THE CHANCE and left it up to the Angels from there. It looked like most of her time would be taken up in tutoring at the Taipei International School.

When Sarah came home, it was abundantly clear that this was one of those moments when the Angels and Elementals had a much bigger plan than we had imagined during our casual pre trip conversation about making Flower Essences.   Sarah had been led all over northern Taiwan by the Angels and Elementals. Like the treasure hunt that it was, she was sent from one place to the next with Flowers calling out to her on each of her adventures.

When she came home, we agreed that tapping into the wisdom of each of these Flower Essence gems was a project best saved for summer when she could spend long days hearing the Flowers share their truths. When summer arrived, Sarah went out under the Larch tree and sat there for days, listening and learning. Together we read the amazing history of Flowers in this Flower loving country as we wrestled Latin names to earth. But mostly, Sarah went deep. Deep into conversation and connection with these old Flower friends.

Each time I read Sarah’s descriptions, it strikes me that I couldn’t have heard these Flowers speak in the same way as Sarah did. Her long loving connection to all things Chinese opened doorways of understanding that I don’t have. I can only feel gratitude to the Angels and Elementals for the perfection of their complex planning and to Sarah for her listening and following with such steadfast determination.

The fact that the Taiwan Essences felt outside my understanding showed me all the more strongly why I needed these Essences and why they may be a blessing to others. These gentle friends from afar help us understand ourselves to be part of a seamless unity of one precious planet. They help us know this unity with every cell of our being.

More specifically, this collection bridges east and west. I love how these Flower Essences take us into another frame of reference while also helping to dismantle anything in this world-view that doesn’t serve us all. That’s Flower Essences for you. I have never met one that doesn’t help us find greater harmony with each other.

There is a longer document describing the Taiwan Essences than the short descriptions online and in our brief handout of New for 2016 Essences. The long definition is available on request. I hope to post it here once I get some technical help during Thanksgiving to get the blog site to stop deleting the Chinese characters. In the meantime, I share Sarah’s introduction from this longer document:

“Collected from the island of Taiwan in January 2016, the Flowers from this collection have an important message to share with us. This message is largely about dismantling our outdated patterns of kowtowing.

For example, various Flower Essences in this collection push us to stop kowtowing to hierarchy, elders, and past ideas of self. The word kowtow comes from the Chinese ?? which is the process of bowing and touching your forehead to the ground. This was a custom that was used to show respect, most notably to the Emperor but also to others (such as elders or religious figures) who were deserving of such respect. When I say that the Taiwan collection is about moving beyond kowtowing, I do not mean to suggest that respect or custom is inherently bad, but I do think the Flowers are trying to teach us that this way of looking at the world is limited, that hierarchy is not a structure to be worshiped. The Flowers seem to live in a realm that is beyond these human constructs, sending tendrils of sweet wisdom down to greet us in our worldly sphere.”

To add to what Sarah says here, I am particularly struck by the geography of Taiwan and its history of breaking away and refusing to kowtow to mainland China. It does not surprise me that its Flowers would be all about peacefully but unapologetically holding one’s personal power and autonomy, sense of mission and purpose.

Humanity seeks a new balance of personal power within the context of interconnection. We are one big family, sometimes squabbling, but still one big family. We look for ways to hold out light and be our authentic self within the whole, respectful of others but also not subservient to any viewpoint that would repress anyone’s wholeness or holiness. The love of the Flowers with their incredible inclusiveness and individuality brings so much support. And here in the Taiwan Essences we find elemental voices of truth-speaking, strength, vision, respectful bridge building without kowtowing.   I am most grateful.

 

 

 

I have been feeling that my description of the new Venus Garden Flower Essence combination remedy, Equanimity, was sorely lacking in Oomph.  Today, a dear Green Hope Farm friend from Myrtle Beach, SC named Bobbi sent me a quote from Meher Baba that I have added to the description.  Whew!  I now feel the description has the oomph it needed!

” If you meet life squarely, accepting its opposites with equanimity while carrying on your duties in a spirit of selfless love and service, you will not only come in tune with the Infinite, but you yourself will become the infinity which you seek.”  Mehera Baba