Spring is can be a hot mess around here. Snow flurries one day and the next hour day it is 80 degrees and EVERYTHING is going nuts in the garden sometimes including the humans. This GO GO GO energy is not a green light for us humans to DO everything at once a truth I can too often forget. Flowing in spring is a more complicated dance of listening, doing, restraint and surrender.
Noah Kahan wrote Stick Season about the upper Connecticut River valley where I live. He grew up just across the river from here. Stick season is real. It’s not our prettiest season, but it is a sort of calm time for introspection and rest. What comes next is a season in which every living thing wakes up at the same moment and THERE IS too much A LOT TO DO.
Spring requires mind discipline. I can only do one job at a time though I often try to do three jobs at once. I need to only think about the job at hand. If I am watering the hoop house baby plants, I have to ignore the dead plum tree that needs to be cut down and a garden bed inundated with crab grass, knowing that these are not the priorities right now. Grounding Flower Essence helps me to stay in the now.
Spring requires me to FOLLOW my guidance and trust the priorities of the Elementals. Spring is the Elemental’s season. The Spring Equinox marks the transition from a time of planning with the Angels to a time of manifesting the plan which is the Elementals’ work. This means the Elementals know best what needs to be done as they patiently remind me six zillion times a year, specifically what needs to be done immediately and what can wait. More can wait than I think.
The Elementals are strategic and have an overview about what lies ahead. Also they have a great sense of humor about me which is totally necessary. Growing things is a confusing mysterious business with factors beyond my comprehension. These unknown factors drive what grows well one season but not another. While Earth moves into unknown times for all of us, the Elementals still know much better than us humans how to manage these times and specifically manage growing things in this time. Available to all of us if we but listen, their guidance is essential.
On a personal level, following the guidance I receive has become ever more essential to me. I am no longer the spring chicken I was in 1987. Back then I built 20 raised beds because I read in some book raised beds were the way to go. Then I filled them all with composted manure and tried to grow Flowers and vegetables in these beds. No matter how much I watered or how much it rained, the winds on this hilltop dried out the soil and left these charmless beds like dioramas of the Gobi desert. This motivated me to learn how to get guidance from the Elementals as Eileen Cady and Dorothy MacLean did at Findhorn, an inspiring cocreated garden I had read so much about.
In my early conversations with my new partners from the Elemental and Angelic realms, I knew I was not talking to myself when the Elementals told me to take apart the raised beds and cover the garden with a deep layer of mulch hay. This was a BIG reverse engineering project and not something my personality would have chosen to do. However I needed this kind of fiasco experience to bring home how important the Angels and Elementals were in farming and life. This kind of “learning lesson” when you are thirty is something different when you are sixty eight.
Since the raised bed era, I have tried to listen carefully, but now I try to do exactly what I am asked to do precisely when asked versus later when I feel like it. For example, in the past I might have been told to stop and rest. This guidance would translate into me doing seventeen other tasks on my way back to the house. You know, that Daylily clump that just has to be deadheaded that moment or that section of the asparagus patch that absolutely needs weeding that instant. Now the Elementals will yell at me if I even lean over to pluck a weed saying, “How is this defined as rest?” This is the kind of harassment cajoling I need appreciate and now try harder to follow.
I want to be gardening for another couple decades, so I have to conserve my energy. If the Elementals say STOP, I really am trying very, very, very hard to stop without pulling another weed. Do you get the feeling that I am trying to make excuses to the Elementals here for my slip ups?
This flow of REALLY LISTENING and then DOING AS I AM GUIDED TO DO requires Flower Essence support. And a lot of it. Flow Free helps with surrender. I want to be the thirty year old with the stamina of a mountain goat. But I have to surrender to what is actually the situation. I am a mature mountain goat now, one that has to take breaks from hauling compost. Sometimes going with the flow is not doing anything.
Elizabeth’s wonderful Camino Flower Essence Sahagun helps when I push my body too far. She made this Essence after a day when she walked over 30 miles and came to terms with the realization even a twenty something can push it too far. Sahagun helps me both find a better flow but also forgive myself for the pushing. Sahagun is described by the Angels as THE Essence for surrender.
Solandra is good for breaking up the habit of doing too much. Maple also helps to find the middle ground with a sweetness that doesn’t involve puritanical and patriarchal judgment. Don’t Worry-Bee Happy helps with this too. It’s okay if we goof up. We can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, laugh and be happy anyways.
Spiderwort, Daffodil and To Hear the Angels Sing help with listening skills. I need this in Spring in particular because I can get going so fast that I forget I have to stop and listen first. I think these Essences help my guides break through to me better when I get in one of my spring tizzys.
Rain also helps with flow. Today it is cold and rainy. It is much easier to follow directions to do less when its cold and rainy. Rainy days in Spring are such a reminder that sometimes often our job is just to enjoy the glory of the greening world sitting by the window with a nice hot cup of chai.