In the early years at the farm, the Angels and Elementals supersized the vegetables. I began my partnership with these beloveds with great hope, enthusiasm and love, but in the mammoth cabbages there was encouragement that I wasn’t imagining the power of our work together. As visitors began to wander into the gardens like a scene from “Field of Dreams”, I grew to appreciate other harvests beyond big produce. The gardens felt happier and more light filled than any place I’d ever been. The garden and its Flowers were proving to be a source of healing light.
Thirty five years later, the produce is usually of normal girth though most years something is surprisingly supersized. In general, I face the same dilemmas other gardeners face like weeds and slugs. Nonetheless, my partnership with Angels and Elementals keeps our work full of innovations and wonder. For every mundane problem, my partners have a solution that often is both unusual but somehow down to earth. When I get in my own head with my own (unfortunate) solutions, the Angels and Elementals have patience and humor. Humor is one of their main ingredients in everything we do together (and I am sure my antics make their humor easy to come by). Sometimes when I am submerged in a gnarly garden difficulty and I can’t get out of my own way to believe it when the Angels say, “All is well.”, the gardens themselves are the cure. To walk through them is to feel loved and uplifted by the beloved Earth and all beings connected with her.
So why go over this territory about this partnership? In truth, this partnership is no special relationship available to only a few. This partnership is available to one and all.
Why did this partnership happen in my life? I’d read several books about Findhorn, a community in northern Scotland where the humans worked consciously with the Angels and Elementals of Nature. I was so inspired that I wanted to do this too. I thought I needed to visit Findhorn to learn how to catch the magic, but I didn’t have the money for such a trip. At first, I concluded this meant I was out of luck as far as working with Nature the way they did at Findhorn. Yet a conviction arose within me that maybe I could make a Findhorn here. After all, I loved everything about Nature, Angels and Elementals, and if they talked to me, I would listen.
I asked to begin a partnership with these beings. I asked for signs they were there. I got so many signs I was tripping over them. Literally. Then I figured out how to ask them questions and get answers through the yes and no format of kinesiology. As the path of connection deepened from daily even hourly communication, I began to hear and see these partners. I was on my way, asking questions about every aspect of gardening and life.
In my enthusiasm, I shared what I was doing with other people. I even gave classes after a few years of astounding results. Some people were really interested and joined me in gardening in this way. Some felt I was delusional. I’ve always marched to my own drummer, so it didn’t much matter to me when others thought I had flipped my lid. After all, it is none of my business what other people think of me. The vast love and kindness of this unfolding partnership was enough without validation from the world. However, validation came faster than I could have imagined possible when other people and animals experienced the energy and vibration of our main harvest, Flower Essences.
I’ve always loved the feedback from the animals. Here’s a memory from the first season I had Flower Essences at hand. A raging pit bull came roaring onto the farm from parts unknown. He circled the Venus Garden at a ferocious pace. Quickly a couple of us working in the garden offered this canine visitor a dish of water with a few drops of Flower Essences in the water. He drank deeply then abruptly settled in the grass to sleep peacefully for a few hours. After that he trotted off never to be seen again. This happens so often. We are a destination for animal who have the volition to hightail it over here for a vibrational fill-up. And we are so glad we can get our Essences to the animals who can’t visit.
One more thing about “garden problems”. As my partners and I consider typical concerns like strange weather or poor germination, in addition to offering effective if unusual suggestions my partners also share the underlying energetic reasons for why things happen. Slowly they have taught me a lot about balance.
My garden difficulties in all their forms are often metaphors for changes I need to make in my own personal life or in the life of Green Hope Farm. For example, two summers ago I got a kidney infection right when I needed to plant the Red Shiso. I couldn’t plant the crop on my own as I had been doing, so I asked all my adult children to gather and dig the garden and plant the seeds. This was the first inkling for me that I would be passing the baton of the daily operations of the farm on to the younger generation that fall, and that doing all these things on my own was not a balanced way to go forward.
Our world is going through a process of finding greater balance. It’s the death of patriarchy with all the sour, sticky business a dying age brings, but that doesn’t mean that the new world we enter isn’t being born right in front of us. Because I have seen challenging situations turn around on a dime here at the farm, I know that will be the case in the broader world. As our focus shifts to truly caring for our Earth, we will flow into a new way of relating to our precious planet and each other. And yes, I feel that shift is well underway and we will get to this work in time to save our precious planet and ourselves.
It is always true that when there are endings, beginnings have already begun . We don’t always see them because we are so focused on the drama of the endings. Working consciously with Nature is a beginning that is underway in many places including here. The old way of ignoring, patronizing and destroying Nature is dying. When we look up from the death of the old way, we will find so many new beginnings. AND our Angelic and Elemental partners will be there with us, grateful that we have made the collective turn.
I am excited at the prospect of being able to help more people to work consciously with the Angels overlighting Nature and the Elementals that bring it all into manifestation. My partnership with Angels and Elementals has been a central joy and purpose in my life. I know it can be a joyful path for anyone who wants it. I see the Angels and Elementals standing ready to begin and continue with us all.
I asked the Angels and Elementals if the blog was complete and they said no. They asked me to mention the Lion’s Ear in this year’s Venus Garden. This is a beloved plant whom I first met in St John, USVI. It’s a plant originally from Africa with deep connections to African shamanism. As an Essence it brings so many profound gifts, but the one that the Angels and Elementals want me to mention right now is the gift of bringing us closer to the wisdom, love and guidance of our wisest ancestors.
The first time I saw this plant, I found a two foot specimen on the side of a St John road. A speeding jeep sent me into the bushes and there I found this old friend. Last year, I grew Lion’s Ear in the gardens here. It grew to five feet in height nestled under the Tansy in the Rose Garden. This year it played a major role in the Safe Passage Garden ie this year’s mandala in the Venus Garden. It is currently eight feet tall and still reaching higher. The garden resembles a womb receiving the spark of life then giving birth to this new life. The Lion’s Ear sits on either side of the birth canal of the garden where the energy is born and the birth is complete.
Lion’s Ear lifts us up for this final push. Yes, we are almost there. And yes, our ancestors from time immemorial when harmony with Nature was the way of life are here with us, helping us, nudging us into a New Life. It is a New Life that springs from a recollection of this ancestral wisdom then takes off into new territory more beautiful than anything that has gone before.
