Staff Goddess Lynn grew up on Bermuda when it was a sleepy island flush with fields of Bermuda onions. Her parents had a house across the harbor from the city of Hamilton. From her bedroom Lynn could watch all the boat traffic in and out of Hamilton harbor. She took a ferry across the harbor to go to school, and on weekends she captained her small sailboat with her dog as crew. It was an idyllic and happy childhood.
When she invited me to visit Bermuda in the 80’s and 90’s, she was a grandmother living in Vermont. Her job at Green Hope Farm was writing the labels for our Flower Essences. We called her our Lady of the Labels.
Lynn’s mother was still alive, so Lynn went out to Bermuda every two months to check in on her. One day she invited me to go with her. I had three little children at that point but also a very helpful husband who said he would cover for me for a week away. Off we went. Little did I know how much I would love Bermuda or how often I would return in the years to come. Tropical flora, pink sand beaches, colorful houses with white roofs all mixed together with a British twist. Lynn knew just about everyone on the island, and once we explained our mission to make Flower Essences from Bermuda Flowers, her friends welcomed us into their ancient gardens to wander and pluck to our hearts content.
Our days were continuous fun. A gorgeous morning walk topped off with a blissful swim would be followed by afternoons in one glorious garden or another, always with our glass jars at the ready. In the days before 911, we knew we would be waved through customs by friends of Lynn. They had no problem with our “potions” so we made a lot of them. And I mean LOTS.
We would finish our afternoons with tea at various old fashioned resorts that served scones strawberries and clotted cream. Something about our days searching for Flowers made us feel like teenagers again. A bit of Nancy Drew because we were always sleuthing for new Flowers met with a bit of just plain teenage silliness.
One afternoon as we were making Monkey Tail Flower Essence, we were interrupted by a group of British tourists that didn’t know about our quest for Flower Essences. The look of horror on their faces as they saw us with our tweezers carefully lowering a two foot long fuzzy red thing into a jar of water struck us as so very funny. Some of our delight came in shaking things up. Lynn’s friends also seemed to like how we were turning their understanding of their gardens on its head. The veil is thin in Bermuda. Both Lynn and I had unusual dreams, saw unusual things in the gardens and got very specific messages from the Devas of the various gardens. We were happy to share all that we were learning, and Lynn’s friends embraced it all.
The reason I thought to write this blog today is because yesterday I mixed a batch of Watch Your Back from the many Bermuda as well as GHF mother Flower Essences in our collection. As I was working my way through the Palm Essences, I remembered the particulars of finding each Palm in bloom. At one lovely lunch in the garden of one of Lynn’s old friends, I noticed a Palm blooming twenty feet over our heads. No sooner had I mentioned this to our hostess than she whipped out an enormous step ladder and I found myself climbing up to meet and greet and then harvest Queen Palm blossoms for a Flower Essence.
Bottle Palm, Chinese Fan Palm, Coconut Palm, Date Palm, European Fan Palm, Figi Fan Palm, Fishtail Palm, Golden Areca Palm, Manila Palm, Queen Palm, Royal Palm and Travelling Palm all go into our Watch Your Back Flower Essence. All have a story and came to us due to the generosity and interest of Lynn’s childhood friends. We collected Palm Flower Essences so assiduously because the doctrine of signature and our eyes and then our experiences revealed the profound strengths of these Flowers with their energetic support for our backs, the central nervous system and the chakra system.
Bermudians are serious gardeners so every garden friend knew their Flowers or had reference books for when we were stumped. I learned so much about tropical and semitropical plants from this learned group. On one trip we focused on Flowers we delicately called P plants to support Lynn’s husband with his urinary tract and prostate problems. This was how Flow Free came to be (and why we were lowering Monkey Tail into a jar).
Oddly enough, many Bermudians used to get their tropical plants from a mail order place in Connecticut named Logee’s. It is no longer possible to mail Logee’s plants to Bermuda, but back in the day, the plant tags in people’s gardens on their tropical specimens often sported a Logee’s logos. Once I had befriended plants in Bermuda, I filled my greenhouse with these same plants purchased by me from Logee’s. This bringing Bermuda to New Hampshire proved essential as we often need to have tropical Flowers for Flower Essences at the ready here at the farm.
But for the Palms, we are still grateful to Bermuda friends who shared their gorgeous Palms with us with total generosity. And of course, I will always be so very grateful for my now departed dear friend Lynn who introduced me to Bermuda, its glorious Flowers and made our adventures there so much fun.
