You may have noticed that the Report from Reginald Montgomery “Chuckie” Hogbottom, Order of the Woodchuck, Recipient of the medal of honor “Marmota Monax” September 2019, Knighted as Groundhog of the Realm, May 2022, Recipient of the Order of the Garter July 2023 somewhat slowed me in my blogging tracks. Yes, Chuckie completely took the winds out of my sails.

How was I to respond to his bragging, his jabs, his puffery given the fact that he did seem to have completely submarined my vegetable gardening efforts this season?

Yes, there was next year to consider and grim plans to outsmart Mr Order of the Garter himself, but there was also the fact that I was having to whip over to the farmstand on the other side of the town rather frequently.

Then came the harvest of the onions. To back up a moment, one day in early spring I asked Jim to stop in at a local garden center to get me a bag of onion sets for the garden. Onion sets are those baby onions that you can plant instead of onion seedlings. They wake up and grow into onions just about as big if not bigger than onion seedlings. I asked Jim to pick up the onion sets because I had some onion seedlings going in the greenhouse, but they were limping along. Given our endless gray skies, I wasn’t sure they would amount to much.

I am not sure how specifically I described what I meant by a bag of onion sets to Jim. I think we talked about volume, but apparently not accurately enough, as Jim returned with an ENORMOUS bag of onion sets. When planted out, the sets filled more than a quarter of the vegetable garden and also got shared with Vicki, Jen and Sam for their vegetable gardens. I think there might have been onion sets LEFTOVER even after our HEROIC EFFORTS to plant all the onion babies. In a word, Jim filled our lives with ONIONS.

Miracle of miracles, this is actually why Reginald Montgomery “Chuckie” Hogbottom, Order of the Woodchuck, Recipient of the medal of honor “Marmota Monax” September 2019, Knighted as Groundhog of the Realm, May 2022, Recipient of the Order of the Garter July 2023 did NOT entirely triumph in the vegetable garden. Apparently Chuckie doesn’t like onions and left them be.

Last week it was time to harvest the mighty and untouched by groundhog paws onion crop. FINALLY a moment of ABUNDANCE!

Here is a photo of just a small swath of onions now air drying on the screen porch before being braided into so many braids I may well have to fill a room with them. (Needless to say everyone will be getting an onion braid for the holidays).

So did Reginald Montgomery “Chuckie” Hogbottom, Order of the Woodchuck, Recipient of the medal of honor “Marmota Monax” September 2019, Knighted as Groundhog of the Realm, May 2022, Recipient of the Order of the Garter July 2023 get the last word?

I think not for the last word this garden season, Chuckie, is ONIONS.

Report from Reginald Montgomery “Chuckie” Hogbottom, Order of the Woodchuck, Recipient of the medal of honor “Marmota Monax” September 2019, Knighted as Groundhog of the Realm, May 2022, Recipient of the Order of the Garter July 2023.

Yes, it’s been another splendid year to be a woodchuck, especially one living on this acreage. And yes, it’s true. I received more well deserved accolades this year, adding another medal to my lapel. How nice was it for King Charles to invite me to his Highgrove estate for a special induction into the Order of the Garter. I enjoyed the apres feast of young Artichokes a la Barigoule (organic of course, this is Charles we are talking about). It was also helpful for future plans to meet up with other woodchucks of my level of sophistication and epicurean appetites. How we encouraged each other in greater feats of glory!

But back to more mundane news. Once more, the sadly misguided human in charge of the vegetable garden depended on a flimsy 8′ tall deer fence to keep me out. Even after a big meal, and there were many, I could easily slip under the fence. When will she learn?

Of course I am glad for this ridiculous fence as it kept away the pesky deer. With the deer excluded (as they should be), there’s “more for the rest of us.” as I like to say to visiting relatives. Often as I snacked on gourmet treats, I pause to thank both the silly human and her silly fence. They work so well for me.

This year I partook of the entire Pea crop. I meant to leave a few pods to ripen, but the tender shoots and baby pods were just so scrumptious. The silly human planted three different kinds of shelling Peas, two different kinds of Sugar Snap Peas and those fantastic Oregon Giant Snow Peas. Yes, I ate them all. No sense doing anything halfway!

I was a bit miffed that the human had planted so many crops that just didn’t appeal to me- Onions, Celery, Parsley, Dill, Basil, Cilantro and Bunching Onions. Is she doing this on purpose? I mean, half the garden seems to be onions!

Fortunately she put in a bumper crop of Beans which I have eaten to the ground twice. She tried spraying the remaining Bean stalks with Garlic spray to deter me. I like a little Garlic with my French Filet Beans and Roma Italian Green Beans. I chuckle at her efforts and wonder who doesn’t love Garlic with Beans? It was almost sad when I saw her creep out of the garden clutching seven beans. She actually looked excited. Pretty pathetic if you ask me.

We had our biggest tussle over an unlikely crop- the Swiss Chard. I think she was particularly proud of this crop because she started it in the greenhouse so it was robust and vibrant early in the season. What do they say? “Pride cometh before a fall.” I was happy to provide the deflation moment and wipe out this early crop. The pink, orange, yellow and red Chard helped me through the lean early garden season when I was only eating six meals a day.

I laughed uproariously when the human wistfully covered the tattered Swiss Chard roots with some sort of mesh screening. She was hoping the crop would survive. Around here, we give her leeway with her “hope springs eternal” efforts. But in fact, this time she was right to hope. The crop came springing back to life. I waited until the Chard was six to eight inches high again before demonstrating my skills removing the screening. Oh how tender was this second crop!

As I finished off the crop for that second time, I could only wonder, “How did she know of my great love of baby vegetables?”

I tried to make a burrow in the center of the garden as I did last year. This vacation home had proved so lovely for mid forage siestas. The human seemed a bit faklempt by the return of the burrow. She filled it rather aggressively with a lot of rocks. I gave her this one and settled on snoozing above ground au naturel with slices of cucumbers on my eyes to cool my fevered brow. Yes, in between 5,000 thunderstorms and days of smoke, we did have a few days hot enough for a fevered brow.

One of the high points for me was when I hosted friends, members of our gastronomic social club Le Marmiton, for our August full moon meeting. Under the light of the moon, we toasted the human and her commitment to keep us in fresh and tender vegetables. Oh what a night! The dancing, the romance, the baby Carrots…. it was perfection.

If you are a woodchuck in the area during the second blue moon this August, please feel free to join us for another epic feast. The Swiss Chard will no doubt have returned to glory and I can promise you some very special Lettuce, Beets and Borage. (I’d offer more but I am afraid I’ve eaten pretty much everything else.)

In the meantime, Bon Appetit!

I am most sincerely, R.M. “Chuckie” Hogbottom

I have shared some of the channellings from the summer of 1993. This was the growing season when the farm was open to visitors. The four of us working with the Angels Elementals to create healing gardens expected a few dozen friends to visit. Instead, even without the internet, word spread about the gardens and we had thousands of visitors.

Personality clashes early in our planting process led us to try to surrender our egos to the common ground of the God within us. Among the tools we used to surrender to the God within us was to have me get up each morning at five am to receive guidance from the God within. Any roadblock we ran into, and there were many, was brought up at dawn for guidance. Thirty years later, I am still learning so much from the messages received.

I reread some of the messages today and found one about thunderstorms as a metaphor for the often tumultuous process of shifting our vibration upward and releasing the old. In 1993 as we worked to let everything go to the God within, us gardeners and many of our visitors seemed to have explosive and messy releases. We began to refer to these moments as thunderstorm moments.

As I came on this message about personal thunderstorms during a weather thunderstorm ( a near daily occurrence here) I took particular note. After I read the message I thought you might find it interesting too.

THUNDERSTORMS- July 1993

First, cast no judgements on yourself or anyone you witness in the throes of a thunderstorm.  If it is someone else, neither pity the person experiencing the thunderstorm nor try to fix it for them or force them to take the situation back into cover.  Understand that they are bringing the garbage to the surface for a release.  Understand that interference can hamper their efforts unless you are expressly asked by me or (a spiritual guide) to explain the transmutation process to them or aid them in the transmutation process such as with a hands on healing.  Unless you are given guidance, remember that the God in them knows what it is doing.  This is not asking you to refrain from loving another.  It is asking you to love with detachment and appropriateness.  To love without your erroneous ego filters which see thunderstorms as bad.  Believe me, if you insist on keeping those filters about thunderstorms you will exhaust yourself in about 10 minutes.  There will be nothing but thunderstorms on your planet in short order.  Get balanced living in and amongst them.

If it is a thunderstorm in your life, there are ways to expedite the cleansing.  When you realize that for whatever reason you have embarked on a thunderstorm, stop whatever you are doing and go inward into your heart.  Stay there as best you can, for this is the place of balance and connection with me.  Ask me to move all the negativity up and out of you.  Follow my prompting about what it is you need to do.  No matter how peculiar the guidance, follow it.  Your choice is to wallow unnecessarily in your accumulated negativity or let me handle it fast and efficiently.  Let me handle it.  If I tell you to go to the garden and do somersaults, go do it.  If I tell you to take a nap.  Do it.  If I tell you to drop everything and go find a pond to swim in. Do it.  This is a complex time for all of you.  You need to follow your promptings from me immediately.  It will save you much grief and pain.  There will still be pain and grief until you have transmuted all your karma and ego illusions (really the same thing).  But you can go through the process of release with me and come through it well on your way to your ascension or you can stick with your ego and leave the planet through the death process.  There is nothing in between.  I tell you this with gentleness and love, but I want you to understand the full significance of what I am saying.

To reiterate, you are not automatically to assume that you are responsible for how anyone handles the transmutation process.  Take your directions only from me.  Yesterday, Molly, you had a lesson in this.  You had no boundaries about whose transmutation you were responsible for and as a consequence you let yourself get walloped.  Let it be a lesson to you to respond to every request to help someone by asking me what it is I would have you do.  Then do only that.  You need to slow the pace so that you do not let someone set up a situation before you have asked me.

One of our volunteers who read the guidance each day found herself getting the same message when she tried to fix a situation in her family. 

Your grandson is involved in a necessary transmutation process.  To stop this transmutation process would hurt him a great deal.  It would cause him to get ill.  The intentions of other family members such as yourself may be to help him, but they are not helpful.  Out of your ego illusions about thunderstorms you want to stop his thunderstorm.  You will not stop anyone on this whole planet’s thunderstorm.  If you try you will just add more thunderstorms to your own plate.  They will recreate another thunderstorm for themselves and you will be carrying around the last one you tried to take off their hands.  This could make everyone ill.  YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THE APPROPRIATENESS OF EVERYONE’S THUNDERSTORMS.  Let them have their thunderstorms.  Unless in the absolute quiet of meditation you are told clearly by me that it is your job to help transmute a person’s thunderstorm DO NOT GET INVOLVED.

You are all going to get hammered in this regard until you learn this lesson.  You need to learn this lesson or you will not survive on this planet.  (Another visitor) said something very true when she spoke on this during your talking stick circle after meditation.  You must learn to let go and let God in every thunderstorm on the horizon.

If you need an image for this, consider the thunderstorm that occurred (during Molly’s stay) on Cranberry Lake.  What if Molly had gone out in the middle of the lake during that storm, thinking it was her job to fix it and transmute the negativity.  She would have been struck by lightning and be dead.  Molly, you knew this was not appropriate.  It never crossed your mind to do so.  You respected the God in Nature as knowing what it was doing.  Every time you see another soul’s thunderstorm, respect the God in them.  Only get involved at my request or if the person expressly asks for help and information and this checks out with me as a good idea.  This land is to be used as a transmutation tool by many people.  If you get involved in this you will get struck by lightning and get very sick from too much negativity that you are unnecessarily processing.  This land is set up to handle the transmutation process without your input.  When people ask questions or you get a sure prompting, know that for that particular person you are meant to be a part of the team.  Otherwise, stay in your center minding your own thunderstorms.

Learn this now or learn it the hard way.  The reason you got so exhausted Molly was because you got caught in the cross winds of another’s thunderstorm.  It was a “doozy” but a necessary “doozy”.  You had no appropriate boundaries and got pulled in.  It was electrically like going out to the middle of Cranberry Lake during the storm.  I hope you learned your lesson.  You are only going to be given thousands more situations in which you must be clear and appropriate.  You will have to learn this lesson, all of you.  Take this message seriously or get walloped until you take this message seriously.  

There will be so many thunderstorms for all of you on earth that it is a lesson all of you will have to learn in order to survive.  I would suggest that you practice this skill by doing the following.  Decide on a basic line to give people when they demand that you enter their thunderstorms and fix them.  Something like “I need to check with my guidance before I make any decision here about whether it will be appropriate or helpful for me to get involved.”  You must understand that as people’s thunderstorms grow in size and magnitude, people are going to seek out all you brother’s keepers out there to try to unload on you.  It won’t help you and it won’t help them, but that won’t stop them from trying.  You will have to take responsibility for being appropriate here.  After you have said your line, go inward into communion with me and follow what I say.  If you respond to this request by saying: “But I don’t know how to connect with you and get that kind of information”, then let this message of today encourage you to crisp up our connection until you can.  There will be no other way to survive here on this planet unless you are in your heart in communion with me.

You must use discernment to see the very subtle ways people will want to pull you into their thunderstorms.  For example, Molly, when that garden group wanted you to speak, they wanted you to handle their group thunderstorm.  I know it was uncomfortable for you to say no, but it was very important that you did.  They need to transmute a big thunderstorm, and there is nothing you can do to help.  You would really have been walloped if you had gone down there and tried to fix it.  

When you gave your tour to the group of skeptics right before your vacation you also tried to facilitate a pleasant release of some of their personal thunderstorms.  It was not your job.  It left you drained.  You must see the various ways that you let yourself get into the brother’s keeper role.  Just because you see an imbalance doesn’t mean you are supposed to fix it.  Not even a dozen Ascended Masters could fix the thunderstorms that cross your path unless the Masters violated everyone’s free will which of course they would never do.  So stop assuming that because you see it clearly, it’s your job.  You will worry yourself to a nubbin with that illusion so GET RID OF IT.  

The group of you need to give yourself some credit for having brought into manifestation a place which automatically releases negativity before, during, and after people’s personal thunderstorms.  Do you see your partners the Angels and Elementals rushing around trying to fix everyone?  No!  So let them be your role model.  Immanuel remains in the garden as does Raphael but they only work with those who ask for help or open to receive their love.  This was a very important talk to have.  You all need to work very hard on this in the next few weeks.  Otherwise you will have a very difficult time with the crowds that want to come here.  In some ways the crowds have been held off by me until you could get clearer on your boundaries because you truly would have been laid flat, all of you, if they had descended en masse.  As you get clearer, you free this place to be used by greater numbers.  It was a great gift for you Molly to see how much people enjoy the self tours.  That was a step towards appropriateness.