After drenching rains consumed most of May, we’ve finally had a few days of glorious sun. The gardens are very lush after all the rain. The humans relieved to be outside and dry.

Here is what the gardens looked like this morning as we greet a third day of sun.

Here is the center of the Rose garden. You can tell I am experimenting with Alliums this year, seeing if the deer really don’t find them tasty. So far, so good. The deer have eaten my clematis, phlox and asiatic lilies instead. I have been spraying Deer Off liberally around the gardens since the snow melted, but the amount of rain washed it off, and of course, the deer have taken advantage of that.

This is the same garden looking up towards the house. I’ve temporarily put the tomato cages around some new Roses to keep them from being trompled. None of the Roses are blooming yet, but this garden is awash in Tree Peonies.

This is the oldest Tree Peony in the garden. She is a good thirty years old. I find it impossible to photograph Tree Peonies in a way that even begins to suggest their beauty. In some countries, they put parasols over Tree Peonies while they bloom. This shades them so their blossoms will last longer. They tend to go by fast in bright sun. We have six more days of overcast days and rain coming after today, so the Tree Peonies should hang on well. Maybe better than the humans who are over this endless rain.

This Lavender Tree Peony has the most outrageous yellow stamens. The honeybees were already hard at work harvesting pollen.

This is one of many Rose beds, as yet not doing its thing. The yellow is Woad. What an astounding friend this plant is. Until the introduction of Indigo at the end of the Middle Ages, Woad was the source of blue dye. As a Flower Essence it helps cheer us up if we have the blues. It certainly is very cheering as a Flower too.

This shot is looking down one of the perennial beds where Purple Sensation Allium rules the day. Another plant beloved of the Honeybees ( but not the deer).

Here we are in our very strange vegetable garden where nearly everything is covered in frost cloth to protect the vegetables 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) and all his clan.

We have a friend, stonemason, Stephen Overman coming to build a very very very complicated deer and groundhog fence around this garden in July. Our flimsy eight foot fence is not cutting it. Stephen does the most wonderful stonework all over our region, but also built himself a fence for his own garden that I have talked him into replicating at our place. The fence will go down to bedrock so that Chuckie and crew can’t dig under it. Until Stephen arrives, things will have to remain under cloth.

Speaking of stonewalls, this is the wall Ben Sheehan built us that runs along the southern face of the house. The flat space created by his wall is covered in all sorts of Thyme with a patch of Lamb’s Ear too.

Yesterday I planted seedlings in the Venus Garden. The design was modified many times this spring, and unexpected plants were included even as I planted the garden. I look forward to experiencing its energy and beauty this season and sharing this with you in the form of a combination Essence come fall.

Here was me and Sheba early this morning. She is working hard as you can see ( Sheba is the little black bundle sunbathing in the dirt). I edged this garden so that I can plant Zinnias here but also not drive St Jim, the man with the lawnmower, crazy with a difficult to mow edge.

In the grass you see my two favorite tools- my sunhat and my cobra head weeder. I only learned about the cobra head weeder a few years ago from gardener and herbalist Kimberly @RootVineHealing. I can’t imagine my life in the garden without this tool as I can weed, dig, cultivate and plant baby plants using it. I have added a link to Johnny’s Selected Seeds where they sell this wonder tool.

Okay! I’m off to plant the Zinnias! Sending love and blessings from all of us at the farm!

PS Went back out to Lavender Tree Peony after planting the Zinnias.

Isn’t she a stunner? Turning around I saw that the Grande Dame had really opened up and was also showing herself to advantage so here is another shot of her.

Also noticed that the visiting grandpuppy had been busy!

The question is…..if this is mostly ripped up lawn does the lawn care expert (Jim) have to fill in the hole or does the gardener in charge of the gardens (me)?

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.