This morning in the gardens, the Cleome was sparkling.

I love the pine needle path of this year’s Venus Garden.

In the vegetable garden, a wonderful crop of peas is on the right side of the photo. We’ve been waiting for the pods to fatten up. Today they look ready to begin to harvest. Tonight’s supper no doubt!

This is one of my favorite Roses- Konigin von Danemark. The Purple Smokebush behind it makes for an interesting conversation between the two plants.

This photo was not from this morning but I couldn’t resist adding it to the post. It was taken on Midsummer Night’s Eve.

All Blessings to you!

Not much happens here at the farm without me considering the significance of the event in a larger way. This sounds rather grandiose, but paying attention to small moments on the farm is the way I connect to a greater world. I may very well get the symbolism of events wrong, but this doesn’t stop me from observing the gardens closely and pondering all that happens. Noticing these precious small moments of beauty and challenge brings me joy and help me harvest bigger picture realizations.

Perhaps I would have found this focus on nature no matter what, but I credit my sixth grade teacher for igniting this fire of observation. He had each of his students make an insect collection of 50 different species, identified and properly mounted. It was a long involved project that saw me and my classmates running through fields and forest with nets and collecting jars, looking closely at every tiny thing.

I don’t think I could bring myself to kill any insects now (except when swatting black flies), but ironically this love for all life was vastly increased by this assignment. In many ways it changed my life. After that spring chasing bugs, insects and other small creatures of the world became more precious to me. This science project may well have brought me to Flowers too, because Flowers and insects are seamlessly connected one to the other.

Once I started looking and listening carefully, it was hard to miss that the world talks to us ALL THE TIME. Even when I don’t understand, I know that every tiny event in the garden holds significance.

Which brings me to Monday morning at 7 am. Expecting a large contingent of staffers, Lizzie went out to move the various farm vehicles from the upper staff parking lot down towards the house to make room for the staff cars. I was heading for the gardens when I saw our red pick-up truck wildly careening down the driveway, plowing through stonewalls to stop at last in our ornamental pond out front of the office.

The brakes on the truck failed and Lizzie was unable to stop the truck’s charge into the pond. By the grace of Divinity, Lizzie was safe. This was a miracle that filled our hearts as we considered how easily this brake failure could have happened with one of us going down our steep hill or on a highway with other traffic. No one was hurt. Even the polliwogs were still swimming around the submerged wheel.

In the wake of the truck’s path, garden pots lay smashed, stonewalls were leveled, the welcome arch covered in Hops was flattened to the ground and the truck found itself jauntily perched in the pond. Oddly enough the pond’s fountain was unscathed. We enjoyed its saucy burble as we noiselessly surveyed the scene.

When the tow truck guy arrived to pull “Old Red” out of the pond, he took a lot of pictures to show the folks back at the dispatchers. This was not the usual tow job. Slowly, slowly he pulled out the truck as we watched to see what the damage would occur on the reverse path.

When the dust settled, we discovered the ornamental pond, fiberglass in structure, had a repairable crack. The cedar arch was history. Almost at once, I began to replant the surviving plants and consider what new structure to create for the languishing Hops.

For someone who looks for significance in a slug invasion, raucous crows or a Bindweed problem, this moment gave me a lot to consider. Here are some of my initial thoughts.

Hops is all about spiritual growth. For some reason, ours needs a new support. What will this be? Big picture, little picture things are falling away and new ways of being in the world and seeking the Light are coming into form. And some of these new ways will arrive in dramatic and unexpected ways in terrain we thought was just fine as it was. After all, that arch seemed perfectly good to me, and never did I imagine the truck would need to plunge through this garden for a visit to the pond.

I have always called this garden the Entrance Garden as it welcomes those going to the office and those going into the farmhouse. It feels important to step up the energy of welcome. The old arch was two cedar posts with a cedar post across the top. It had a heavy, grounded feel to it. After checking in with the Angels and Elementals, they had me move an existing more delicate but actually stronger arbor up from the Rose Garden area for a new welcome arch. This was made for us many years ago by a local welder. It is round and very tall with hearts welded into the design. When its settled in place I’ll post a photo. Because of its immense size, we joked that it looks like we are expecting guests from Mt Olympus. Who knows?

Around the original arch lived a cluster of planters. As I put new planters out and began to replant them, I chose plants I had never grown here before that I know nothing about. It’s time for us to welcome the new, and not what we imagine the new to be. I think for all of us everywhere, it is going to be better than anything we can imagine.

I replanted using shards of pottery from the broken pots in the bottom of the new pots. If some old structures survive all the change occurring, these old structures will be used in new ways. They’ll serve the new evolved creations coming in but not be in charge anymore.

And then there was the pond itself and the fact that this body of water had stopped the truck. We built this pool as a representation of the Sacred Feminine. The Sacred Feminine is the deep pool of inner wisdom and intuition within each of us, ever there to guide us towards a path of unity consciousness and light.

Our version of this sacred well of feminine intuition and deep wisdom is what stopped an out of control and very solid truck. This gives me hope that all the out of control destructive energies of this time will meet their match and be stopped by the rising energies of the Sacred Feminine awakening in every one of us. This event leaves me not only with hope but with confidence. It shall be so!

PS A week or so later:

I love all you’ve shared about what you make of this event. One beloved GHF friend said, “Wow, what an amazing happening, and I love what it symbolizes! The male patriarchal energy does seem out of control in the world, but there is the divine feminine that will ultimately transform it.” Another beloved said, “As far as the Lily Pond- deep emotions, feminine, flow, no wood which in Chinese medicine feeds fire which is anger. No stone, the keepers of knowledge and history, stopping this so old history cannot stop new from coming in.”

Keep those insights coming! We’re in this together and not alone!

To imagine me this last month, think of every stereotype of a gardener of a certain age and you have the visual- Straw hat smushed down on my head, garden pants more dirt than canvas, black flies swirling around my head and my feet moving as fast as possible as I tear through the gardens with a wheelbarrow loaded with clippers, twine, compost, soil amendments, shovels, stakes and flats of transplants.

May (and now June) are a blur for a gardener like me. So many things to get done in a short amount of time. But the work environment couldn’t be better (except for the black flies). There is so much beauty to savor on trips to the compost heap or doing any one of the many splendid happy jobs of May in a garden. It’s glorious to just stand there and soak in the gardens around me.

Here are a photos of some of what I have been enjoying. I hope there have been Flowers (or the equivalent bliss) in your life this month too.