This growing season our newly fenced vegetable garden is overflowing with produce. The season is young, but already the garden is a cornucopia of bounty. At every meal, I prepare as much produce as possible, yet my counters are covered with more. I planted two fifteen foot rows of peas. Every night finds us shelling peas. Yesterday four grandchildren shelled and ate raw peas for an hour, and still there were more to shell and eat.

Oddly enough, this has left me thinking a lot about when things DON’T go well. I am NOT a better gardener than I was last year, but it’s tempting to think I am. Last year deer and groundhogs took down every crop except the garlic and onions. I didn’t get a single zucchini or pumpkin. I harvested six string beans. The entire pea crop was eaten, leaves and all. This explains why I planted so many peas this year. I had no idea what a garden free of deer and groundhogs would actually produce.

Here is photo of four of the six beans harvested.

While I tried to keep up my spirits with silly blogs from the point of view of the plundering groundhogs, this seige really sapped my confidence in myself as a gardener.

This was what the garden looked like a year ago. It was a low point, but the erosion of confidence happened slowly. This was because the assault on the gardens began slowly. When I first started the gardens here, there were fewer deer and no groundhogs. However each year the gardens were damaged a little bit more as more animals moved into the neighborhood. To begin with, there were still vegetables to harvest. By last year however, the assault was total. We had to build a fortress with wire fencing all the way to bedrock and eight foot high above ground fencing or give up growing vegetables.

Here is the view of the garden now, looking past the free standing screened porch we call “the Peloton”

Here beloved Sheba makes the garden even more secure.

Here is inside the garden looking towards the peas in the back corner. Is anybody surprised that my vegetable garden is full of Flowers too?

So back to my thoughts on outcomes. It’s very hard NOT to let outcomes define us….. BUT… it’s worth trying to do, because outcomes DON’T define us. Things that go wrong are sometimes on our watch but often not. Things that I have worked very hard on have failed to thrive, and the reverse is true too. While both successes and failures give us opportunities to grow, the failures often give us more opportunity to grow than the successes. We all know this, but it’s still hard to accept.

This July I’m having fun with a vegetable garden that has vegetables in it. It gives me delight to walk through the double locked garden gate and look around. However, the total decline of the garden over the last decade made me take myself less seriously and work on my sense of humor. It was humbling to be a “local farmer” frequently buying up every vegetable in sight at the local farm stand. But if what we are REALLY here for is to lose our egos and find our true identity in Divinity then this sort of wearing down helps more than triumphs.

I guess I should be TOTALLY grateful that life is still sending me humbling circumstances OUTSIDE the vegetable garden….but I must say that at least this growing season, I am enjoying eating fresh tender delicious green shelling peas along with my humble pie.

Flowers call out to us when they can help us.

Flowers call to us so we can learn from their healing electrical vibration (as well as savor their beauty). We can work with any Flower calling to us in a variety of ways. We can spend time with the Flower out in Nature. We can gather a bouquet of blossoms and keep it nearby to soak up the vibes or we can get a bottle of the Flower’s Flower Essence for long term work with the vibrational energies of the Flower.

If you find yourself noticing a specific Flower again and again, check out its energetic description here on our website and see if it might support you in whatever is going on in your life.

One way I notice how precisely Flowers and Flower Essences call to people is with my grandchildren. Most of them are too little to read, yet they always pick out Flower Essences for themselves that feel relevant to what they are going through.

Most visits conclude with them coming into the office to pick out a couple of Flower Essences for themselves. I love their affection for Flower Essences, and I love setting them loose to pick what they need. In a room of hundreds and hundreds of different Flower Essences they quickly zero in on a few bottles. Usually they get to pick three. Their choices are always spot on. I enjoy this so much. They do too. Their parents fuss that the kids usually drink their bottles, but I remind them they did too when they were four.

To bring forward a group of Flower Essences than might serve ALL OF US right now, we “randomly” picked from a bowl that holds the name of all our Flower Essences. Here are the three we pulled and a brief description of their gifts. They felt pretty darn helpful for right now. What do you think?

The Sunflower Spiral– This Flower Essence was created in the high vibration Venus Garden. I usually think of it as helping us feel connected and valued in our communities, but today I was struck by how it describes itself and its support, “Don’t lose faith. Help is here. Things are going better than they look. You are doing better than you think. Keep shining your light. You can do it. You are doing it. Feel the energy underneath the chaos. Yes, healing is happening.”

Beau Narcisse Rose– I recently heard a pundit calling our time the “Age of Comparison” because of the relentless comparisons forced upon us by social media. This Rose addresses this dynamic as it helps us to see the core truth of our circumstances and move beyond surface preoccupations and cultural obsessions to penetrate the Essence of things. Beau Narcisse Rose describes itself as helping us find purpose beyond any material preoccupations that have held sway and helping us live in a way true to what we really believe matters. I say, “Yes to that!”

I AM my deepest truths seen, owned and realized. I AM one with the eternal verities of life.

California Poppy– This is an eventful and chaotic time on every level. During this spiritual roller coaster ride, we can use a great deal of help with discernment. California Poppy helps us anchor in our heart as the ultimate authority. Grounded in our hearts, we can sort out what matters and what does not. California Poppy is particularly helpful when the side effects of one’s spiritual awakening involve weird symptoms and unusual psychic events. California Poppy helps us keep our eye on the prize of our spiritual growth and not get caught up in phenomenon that doesn’t matter.

I AM a chalice of God.

PS The Grandchildren are ALSO enjoying garden produce protected by our new fencing! This makes a refreshing change from Chuckie Hogbottom and his crew of bandits eating all the vegetables as in recent year’s past.