We stopped often in Lisbon, Maine on trips back and forth from Lewiston, Maine where two of our children went to school and the lovely old house a friend lent us in Damariscotta, Maine, our headquarters when we visited our kids in Maine.

An old friend had inherited “Old Yellow,” a wonderfully quirky sea captain’s house right on the Damariscotta River. Jim and our son (GHF webmaster) Ben spent part of one summer re-roofing “Old Yellow.” Their hard work earned us many happy stays in this house, savoring our children’s time in Maine.

On any visit, there was always a lot of back and forth between Lewiston and Damariscotta, but we liked the route. It helped us feel more connected to the geography of our kids’ world. Lisbon was usually our first stop leaving Lewiston.

Lisbon is the birthplace of Moxie, that Maine soft drink with the wonderful name and zippy, unique flavor. This meant we would stop in Lisbon not just for gas but to get some Moxie for the ride back to Damariscotta. I generally don’t drink soft drinks, so the Moxie was a treat. As I sipped my Moxie I would consider that marvelous quality, Moxie, and all its characteristics.

The dictionary describes Moxie as “courageous spirit and determination; perseverance.” Sometimes the definition for a word feels pitch perfect but not this time. To describe Moxie that way is like describing the great wall of China as a big stone wall.

Someone with Moxie acts courageously with sparkle, pizazz even swagger. They walk into a lion’s den whistling a cheery tune. They don’t ignore what is, but they don’t let it define them either. A silly example of Moxie came from my grandfather. He and his best friend were on a fishing expedition in which they were portaging a heavy canoe over many miles. They got hot so they took off their clothes and tucked them in the bow of the canoe. On encountering other hikers, they sailed on past the startled hikers as if naked was how everyone carried a big canoe. I liked that story. It’s a good image for Moxie.

One of the new Flower Essences this fall, Japanese Anemone encourages a causeless cheerfulness, and this is part of Moxie too. It’s not exactly gallows humor but maybe gallows adjacent. Moxie doesn’t have to involve a grand gesture. Small gestures bring miracles too, especially sassy Moxie filled ones that defy the norms.

I know a retired teacher who drank Moxie almost every day of his life. He spent 45 years teaching seventh and eighth graders, and when he retired he still had his sense of humor and love for his students. Was it all the Moxie he drank or was it his inner Moxie? Who knows, but to me he showed Moxie. When asking Jim ( another retired teacher with 38 years under his belt) who he thought had Moxie, he said Tom Brady. Fair enough. Sports does seem to be an arena where people show Moxie.

Now Lewiston is linked with a terrible tragedy and Lisbon linked to the final moments of a deeply troubled man. I wish for Maine and all of us dealing with tragedies and the challenges of these times a big dose of Moxie.

Why Moxie? As I think about Lewiston and Lisbon, the suffering of this community feels very real to me. The years our family visited Maine included many of the years when we were living with death threats from my mentally unstable brother. During those years, each moment of safety and normalcy felt precious to us. We lived with this black cloud that just wouldn’t go away, and it changed us.

My extended family didn’t weather the storm very well. The long years of threats and our differing approaches to these threats led to the complete break up of my family of origin. Even after my brother’s death from a drug overdose, the larger family remained divided. As a community, we collectively hadn’t been able to stay present to each other in our suffering. In the end I was disinherited and my immediate family of Jim, me and out children were permanently cut out of the fabric of our larger family.

Why was this? I don’t know. During the death threat years I learned that American culture generally doesn’t like a story of suffering that keeps on going. Did our situation get tiresome to relatives? I don’t know. Our culture also has a sneaky way of suggesting that those who suffer are responsible for their pain. We felt that attitude towards us. The culture also encourages people to believe we can push right past a tragedy and get back to good times as swiftly as the next news cycle. None of these ideas feel true to me or helpful. Sometimes suffering goes on and on regardless of our efforts to shift the situation. And when people play the blame game, it is deeply destructive. After my brother’s death, our fear ended but our suffering continued as we remained divided from those we loved. The recovery was complex. It’s been over twenty years, and I am in recovery still.

In thinking of what helped and who helped, I realized it was people with Moxie. Realizing this, I wish for the gift of Moxie for the Lewiston community. May it help them to contain each other in their suffering and grief. I remember the people willing to enter into our dark time and contain our family in our years of fear. I’m grateful they had the Moxie to come by our house and listen to us. They didn’t try to fix us or insist that it was no big deal to fear your brother would kill you and your kids. They sat in silence listening and then they said things like, “This must be incredibly sad and painful. I am so sorry you’re living with this.” This was tremendously meaningful to us.

The people with the Moxie to reach out and listen are deeply precious. Pain and suffering often brings some degree of withdrawal from the world. Suffering people need their energy for handling the pain and can’t always reach out the same way they did. As we found ourselves submerged in this fearful mess, I was grateful for the souls with Moxie that walked into the lion’s den of our family’s pain and invited us back into human community.

Our neighbors, Malcolm and Teddy, stayed with us in our pain. I recall a night when I flipped my lid over the need for police protection and constant vigilance. As I wailed on about my four year needing to know how to dial 911, Malcolm sat quietly at my side and contained me, unafraid of my emotions. Then there were Green Hope Farm friends who held me via email and staff goddess Lynn Tidman who listened to my struggles each and every week, willing to go over the same terrain again and again with me. I’m also deeply grateful to a family in town named Hardy. They had the Moxie to invite us to their family holiday dinners. They knew my family had cut us off, so they stepped in, making us feel as welcome as their Great Aunt Sis and her famous Lemon Cake. Theirs was an enormous crowd but another table was added to a string of tables to welcome us to their festive Thanksgiving feast. This was Moxie, and I am grateful for it.

Now, I hope for the greater Lewiston community, a whole heck of a lot of people with Moxie.

I asked the Angels and Elementals what Flower Essences they would suggest for bringing forward our Moxie. I believe we all have inner Moxie, and Flower Essences can help us let it flow. Below is their list of Flower Essence suggestions for encouraging Moxie. As I went to write down their suggestions, the Flowers got VERY CHATTY (I would even go so far as to say they showed their MOXIE). I left their sassy remarks as the description of each Flower Essence. Links to longer definitions are there too.

Don’t Worry- Bee Happy– “My name says it all. Stop listening to people who tell you it is not okay to be happy. Your happiness is an immense gift and lifts the heavy hearted.”

Radish– “I am sassy in a big way. I ignite that in you. Unapologetically.”

Yellow Mullein– “Yeah, you CAN do it. It’s not even a question. For goodness sake, get on your dancing shoes and get dancing.”

Borage– “No throwing in the towel with me at your side. I’ll keep you keeping on with confidence and and humor. I’ll spark bold gestures of love for yourself and everyone else. I’ll comfort you in dark times. I’ll help you find your sparkle again when things are tough.”

Blueberry– “I help you live true to yourself even if it means taking the road less travelled ( and yeah, it usually does mean that).”

Alex Mackenzie Rose– “Speaking of all things Scottish (and why are we doing that? Well, just look at my name), I help you embody your bravest self. Spritz with me, add a kilt and you are good to go.”

Rosa Mundi– “Yes, I know you are feeling bone tired of tragedies. I am with you in your pain. I’ll help you get back on the horse and keep going anyways. Believe it our not, this story turns out well.”

Pink Grootendorst Rose– “I am a life raft of love, the only real thing. Hop aboard.”

Trabadelo– “I am going to help you let go of personality patterns even when you don’t know what your lives will look like without them. I’ve got you! Let’s do it! It’s going to be okay.”

Harebell from Dog’s Bay– “The wind may blow 24/7, but I am going to ring my blue bell of determined joy anyways and help you do that too.”

Zinnia– “Okay, maybe like me you sometimes think, “The weather is horrid, I’ve been planted in a half inch of concrete and where’s the sunlight I was promised?” Like me, I know you can be your joy anyways and I remind you how.”

Pink Yarrow from the Cliffs of Moher– “What is more courageous and sassy than growing on a sheer 700 foot cliff buffeted by gale force winds in a spot that may crumble and fall into the sea at any moment? Yeah, I know your situation can feel like that too, so join me in persisting with MOXIE in spite of it all.”

Allamanda from Taiwan– “Give your personality’s Bummer man, he delivers monologues a rest and dive deep into your inner spirit. It sings another song.”

Golden Wings Rose– “I help airlift you out of the illusion of duality. This is the biggie that binds you to stuff that’s not real. Find freedom. Give up the idea that duality can be real in a matrix of oneness.”

Morning Glory– “This isn’t about managing things by not taking stuff seriously. You can honor grief and also welcome joy at the same time.”

Love It and Leave It– “I bring the happiness that comes when you let go of outcomes and rest in the unshakeable knowledge that all things of this world are momentary and passing. And why is this comforting? Because you are not of this world. You are spirit having a physical experience not a physical being having a spiritual experience.”

Segesta “I help you find your genuine self amidst cultural pressures (of which there are many) encouraging you to have no faith.”

Japanese Anemone– “Isn’t causeless cheerfulness the ultimate in Moxie?”

PS I am thinking of making this into a combination Flower Essence ( which of course I would call MOXIE). What you think of this idea? Let us know! Sending you all much love!

Many years ago we created a Flower Essence combination remedy for houseplants. Staff Goddess Deb Cardew from Cornwall, England ( where they love their gin & tonics), coined the name Green & Tonic, and we went with it.

Each spring, I use Green & Tonic on seedlings. I spritz the seeds before planting then when the seeds germinate, I spritz the baby plants with Green & Tonic again. When I transplant seedlings into the garden I will make up a mix of organic fertilizer and Green & Tonic ( see the green bucket in the above photo) and water in the transplants. In the case of planting the Dhuni Garden above, I dipped each plant into the green bucket of fertilizer/Green & Tonic water before planting then watered them again when they were in the ground. I have found that it is so important to water in transplants even in a summer when it never stops raining (like this past summer).

Inside in our small greenhouse I grow tropical and semi tropical plants including Lime, Lemon, Orange, Grapefruit, Loquat, Calliandra, Shrimp Plant, Sweet Olive, Pomegranate, Dittany, Dombeya Wallichii, Red Hibiscus, Sago Palm, Coffee, Solandra, Rosemary, Kangaroo Paw, Bottlebrush, Pink Tecoma, Aloe Ciliaris, Bignonia and Allamanda so we will have a supply of these blossoms if unable to gather them in a tropical or semitropical location. I put Green & Tonic in the water in my watering can when I fertilize all these plants. I also put Green & Tonic in a spritzer bottle to spritz the foliage of the plants. I lean on this remedy to help the houseplants live in conditions that are not natural to them. They love this remedy, and I can almost hear them sigh when I get the spritzer bottle out!

As soon as the danger of frost is past, I move the houseplants outside for the growing season. I keep the houseplants in their pots but bury them in loose compost to keep them cool and moist. Some plants stay under the oak tree outside the office windows where they get the shade they need. Most stay on the south side of the house in big frames filled with fluffy compost.

The plants usually love their five months outside. While I prune them when they go outside, they usually spring to life with new growth and look their best in a matter of weeks. Usually is the key word here as this summer with all the deluges, the soil in the pots got drained of nutrients. I vastly increases my fertilizing, yet the storms of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 inches of rain were tough on the houseplants. Tough on the gardens too, but especially tough on the houseplants. There was also very little sun what with the smoke from wildfires and the many rainy days. So when I moved the houseplants into the greenhouse recently, I was sad to see that their summer vacation had not left the plants with their usual glow. They looked spindly and unhappy. I cut most everything back rather hard, channeling Jayn Bier, an early staff Goddess who also worked in the greenhouses at Dartmouth and advocated radical pruning. Then I situated everyone inside and got going with the Green & Tonic spritzing and more fertilizer than I usually use going into the winter season.

The houseplants are beginning to bounce back. Not too much in bloom yet but this Mexican Sage, Sweet Olive and Pomegranate, but everyone’s color is beginning to improve. Once again I am so grateful for Green & Tonic. I hope you will try it and share with us your experiences!

Here at the farm, frosts have begun their work of closing down the growing season and autumn leaves, without much fanfare, have fallen to the ground brown and crisp.

As I work my way through various gardens, preparing for winter, I am struck by the tenacious and audacious Flowers of autumn.

Whereas the maple, beech and birch trees have given up the ghost, many Flowers are at their most beautiful. Defying the inevitable, they declare themselves without regret or restraint.

Flowers have no ego. They neither edit their self expression or put on a show to make a point. There is no self aggrandizing. There is no false modesty. They simply express who they are, and we all get to benefit from this life affirming act.

I can think of no better Flower Essences to embrace in any autumnal season in our lives than autumn Flower Essences. They linger in the joy of being themselves. With complete abandon, they shine their radiant colors undiminished by a brown, maroon and gray landscape. They live in the now.

So here’s to autumn Flowers who set such a joyous example for us to be our sweet imperishable selves no matter the temporary form our physical bodies take. Here’s to the Flowers of autumn that encourage to be fearless and free in all our endeavors. Here’s to the autumn Flowers who empower us to be true to ourselves.

When I look at the Dhuni Fire garden, a bit tattered now by the chill of fall but still radiant, I bow in gratitude to a garden that has offered up so much healing energy to so many for thirty years.

I recall the many mandalas that have existed in this garden space since 1993, and I am still startled by their complexity and the specificity of their healing vibrations.  The many mandalas that have blossomed in this place have each brought so much more than seems possible.  The Flowers in this garden always welcome the light pouring down into them with such complete abandon that something well beyond three dimensional reality is grounded in the garden. Thanks to the Flowers and all our partners here, this is the spot on which the whole of Green Hope Farm spins.

The initial garden in this space back in 1993 was called the Eight Garden. Not surprisingly, the garden design was a pine needle path in the shape of the number Eight embraced by rows of primarily purple and orange Flowers. After that first season, the garden became known as the Venus Garden.  A combination Flower Essence is made from the Venus Garden each year, and these can be found in the Venus Garden section of the website. This year’s Essence is the incomparable Dhuni Fire Essence.

The Venus Garden is a mystery.  Wondrous things happen here.  In that first season of 1993, many spontaneous healings occurred at the center of the garden where the lines of the eight crossed. One memorable healing for all of us in attendance was when a dear beloved with AIDS came for a healing.  During our time with him, we received the message that he would not die of AIDS. In 1993 this was considered impossible, so this message shattered our preconceptions about AIDS and pretty much everything else.  This beloved is still alive.

In so many ways this garden blew our assumptions out of the water.  It still does this each and every growing season. If you have the opportunity to work with any of the Venus Garden Essences, you may have felt this ever loving but always dimension shattering energy. 

I thought today I would share a message we received in 1993, the year we were open to visitors.  We had been told in an earlier message that the Eight Garden existed in the fifth dimension.  We had no understanding of what this meant. Then spontaneous moments occurred where “random” people sat down in the center of the garden and unique healing events happened.  These healings in the garden began to reveal the nature of the fifth dimension where things moved in and out of manifestation and form with much greater ease. But still we had questions.  We still do!  

As I have mentioned before, these messages began in May of 1993 when the four of us planting all the healing gardens came to loggerheads over our different opinions about garden priorities. Gardeners can be strong willed and ours pulled us in four different directions.  Mired in disagreements, it seemed unlikely we would be ready for visitors in a few short weeks.

In despair, I was prompted to go sit at the computer and ask for guidance.  After receiving a message that helped us continue on in greater harmony and oneness, I was asked to check in for messages every day at 5 am. Each afternoon, the four of us would collect our questions for the nexxt day’s guidance. The next morning after receiving answers to our questions and a whole lot more,  I would print out copies of what I had received. When the farm opened for visitors on the Solstice, we kept a book of the messages there for visitors to read.  The book grew to over three hundred pages (which will surprise no one who knows how much I like to write!). 

At the time of this specific message, it was early June, and the four of us were doing the last of the planting with the designs we had received from the Angels and Elementals.  We had no idea how many people were about to arrive and we had no real conception of the power of all the gardens we had created, most especially the Eight Garden.

While the discussion begins in the specificity of planting, it becomes a discussion of how to move forward when people don’t agree with us and don’t resonate with our choices to reach for the fifth dimension and ground it, as best we can, here in our daily life on earth.

This is a day in which to stay fully present in your present reality and not move forward or backward in time or space.  Make the act of planting each plant an intentional act of bringing heaven to earth.  It has always been the intention to have this happen in the places of nature on this planet but it seldom happens when there are people involved because their need to get a certain response or product from what they do in nature interferes with the full manifestation of heaven on earth.  

How can you bring about the greatest realization of what I want to accomplish here?  Give up any notions you have of what is going to happen because they are all limiting notions, developed in the lower dimensions.  You must understand that the world is moving…into fifth dimensional reality and most of you have only conscious recollections of third dimensional reality… You need to stop your worries about how many plants or what they look like amassed in the gardens or how they will mix because it is all three dimensional concerns and ego concerns at that.  You do not know what can be accomplished with one plant in the fifth dimension or you would most certainly ease up in your concern about the way the number of plants in the eight garden seems to slip lower and lower.  

Let go and let the energies I bring this place manifest as I see fit.  This place is a forerunner of what is to come and does not operate on third dimensional rules and regulations.  Each time you find yourself feeling anything that is not a complete openness to a new vision, you are caught in useless dogma.  Dump it.  

In your struggles amongst each other you may not always be in solidarity about something.  You may be holding a lone point of view that is not where the rest of the group is.  If you examine the threads of this conviction and know it is not tied to ego fears and worries then understand that if you are the lone individual in the group holding a different way of being or doing then perhaps you are the first in the group to catch a fifth dimensional strand that it is your job to pull down into reality.  Hold on courageously even if the others look at you askance.  

This whole place will be something that others may not understand or agree with you about.  Consider these times of being tested a chance to practice your skills of holding onto my vision in the face of skeptics.  It is your chance to decide who or what is going to run your life; approval and acceptance from ego bound individuals or the light within you.  It is your chance to love unconditionally those that do not understand, those that resist the fundamental changes in all reality which such gardens as this usher in, and those that would turn on you in fear and self doubt.  Love them and let them go.  

Know that if you hurt then you must come to me for solace.  I am your rock and your comfort.  I am the one who understands the purposes behind each instant in your life.  I am the one that calls you to this work which will require that your connection to me is rock solid.  You will face many critics in the heated days that lay ahead, and you will only find the inner calm and fearlessness you seek if you do this work with me, for me and comforted by me.

Question:  What should I do when I am aware of these currents of disapproval, judgment and misunderstanding, and I feel so alone.  How can I connect most fully with you to feel the comfort which you speak of?

Answer:  Once you truly understand that you will never get the love and acceptance that you are searching for from anywhere else but me, then you will stop putting any energy into trying to get it elsewhere.  That alone will be a major breakthrough for all of you.  

When you are hurting, most humans are like animals without healing instincts.  They head straight for the very situation in which the wound was created, and they exacerbate the situation and the wound again, thinking that is the only place that healing can come from.  Healing will never come from reopening the situation.  It is unrealistic and unproductive to assume that if someone has called you a hurtful name that battering away at them until they take it back will cure the situation.  Even if they take it back, you have left it a situation in which you have given your power and self worth in the situation away to this other person’s ego.  There can be no strong balance or centeredness until you realize with all your being that it doesn’t matter in the slightest what anyone else thinks of anything you do.  If you do it in alignment with me and come to me for the love and support that you need and deserve then you truly begin to have the immutable, centered, balanced life which is your birthright.  

When you are aware that you feel hurt or judged, remember that it is only the part of the person operating in the dark that is sending out that energy.  Take the time to immediately go inward to ask me to help you through the pain or difficulty you feel and to help clarify for you whether there is something to be learned from what has been said.  If you are looking for vindication or understanding from outside yourself then you are still looking for it in the wrong place.  

The wisest teacher in the world is not meant to be your permanent emissary from me to you.  All of you are called to have a personal relationship with me.  The teachers are here to return you to this, not run interference.  Your own training is to give your power away to whomever you like, admire or emulate.  See them as a facet of me shining their own unique light so that you can better see the light within you.  Then use your energies to look to the light within you, not copy their light or try to get them to approve of your light.  The most vital relationship you will ever have is with me.  It is all you need or ever will need.  Turn and come inward to me.  Understand that the challenges of those that disapprove of you or misunderstand you are my way to get you to give up what you do not need and find the relationship with me that you do need.