When summer staffer Charlotte Hastings left for Cape Town, South Africa to work for Grass Roots Soccer, we had no idea our Africa connection was only just beginning. But within days Sithemiso Muhlauri from Harare, Zimbabawe had joined us here at the farm.

Thembi’s husband Charles was the soccer coach for the Zimbabawe national team when he found himself on Mugabe’s list and in serious need of political asylum in the US. After Charles left, it took Thembi three years to get herself and their four young boys out of the country to join Charles. By then, Charles had found a home in our town where he runs the regional lightening soccer program and works at the same school where Ben Sheehan also works.

Thembi and Charles’ eldest son Charlton at 15 1/2 is now in school with William and lifting spirits with humor, charm and a beautiful singing voice. Kudakwashe at 13 is in Jim’s school and Jim tells me he has yet to see Kuda without a smile on his face. Thembi’s Tinashe is 6 and in kindergarten while the youngest Andile at 4 is in pre-school. I don’t know when I have met more adorable and well behaved kids. They arrived in America on the 4th of July. Each has been learning our country ways ever since, and for the youngest kids, learning English too.

And us? We are learning all about life in Harare. Thembi was born in Bheregwani hopsital in Johannesberg, South Africa. Her family’s tribe was the Ndebele tribe which is the zebra tribe. They moved to Harare because of her mom’s work and this is where Themib met Charles who is from a different tribe. Until her early death, Thembi’s mom ran a bus service from Harare to South Africa where her mom’s uncle ran the whole transport business. That this bus service came to be used by most people, Thembi included, to go get food in South Africa when there was little or no food to be found in Harare, makes the whole story a different one.

Thembi has an infectious sense of humor no matter the challenges she is describing. Her boys are settling in happily, and she entertains us each week with descriptions of her adventures as she gets used to living in the country. That seems to be the real culture shock- country life versus city life.

“What is with this need to scrape the icy windows of the car for fifteen minutes each morning?”

In late summer, Thembi would arrive for work dressed to the 9’s. The click of such high high heels had never been heard on our office floors. But soon, it was less than 70 degrees and Thembi started to arrive for work dressed as for arctic exploration. Perhaps the most often heard refrain in the office this fall has been, “Thembi, it’s NOT that cold yet. Save that gear for later .”

When we had snow flurries last week, we all thought of Thembi and her boys. None of them had seen snow before. She was with Andile picking up Tinashe from kindergarten when the first flakes fell, and apparently it was quite a moment for all of them. We can’t wait to see the boy’s delight and Thembi’s surprise when the snow gets serious. In the meantime, Thembi has taken over all restocking jobs from Sophie and is now in charge of keeping all the shipping stations ready to roll.

Right now there is a lot of teasing as Thembi often doesn’t remove her coat even inside because of “the cold.” But even in this, Thembi is teaching us country mice a bit about fashion. Well, at least on the days when it is not seriously cold. Here she is trying to restock with several dogs thinking it is actually their photo moment.

Thembi is wearing a drop dead gorgeous coat and her four foot long dreads are wrapped effortlessly in a stylish chignon. As she is chatting away with me while I try to get a photo, she is no doubt explaining to me the intricacies of iphones, text messages, instant messaging….something foreign to me but not to her.

When I was posting the new Irish Flower Essence definitions, I mentioned that Ben had gone to Ireland this summer because of an arrow that appeared in the surf at the end of his pilgrimage across Spain.

Ben sent me his photo of the arrow and described the moment for us, “Here is the arrow in the surf at Fisterra…the surf held that vivid directional arrow for a full minute, enough time for me to take a picture and remark on it… since I knew the arrow had pointed due north, (back home) I used google earth to trace a line of longitude. What was due north of Fisterra within longitudinal seconds? You can assume that what you are guessing is correct.”


A random errand takes me
past a
rogue
field
alight in Mustard Flowers.

This boon of Flowers
is rare October fuel,
a wonderland of pollen.
I hope
the bees have found this flood of yellow
too.

Into the blossoms I go
listening across the wind
for the telltale hum.
There.
I hear them.
My tribe.

A less certain beeline,
has brought me this gift;
to find
my sisters in the bliss of an equal joy.

Returning home,
I sit by the hives,
observe the traffic,
and watch each bee depart,
setting a course
through notched hills.
Their trajectories tells me they head for the Mustard.
My heart sings as each bee lifts off
in confident departure.

My teachers.

They live
not for self or even queen but for
this sure flight,
this buzzing oneness.

When I began the gardens here, I trucked in dozens of loads of composted manure to build the flower beds. Each season since, the gardens have needed new servings of this wonderful stuff as well as some of that compost I showed you in an earlier blog. Last week I found myself focused on replenishing my supply of manure, and I naturally looked to our go to guy, Scott MacLeay.

Almost thirty years ago, Jim was picked for jury duty in a long and ugly murder trial. He carpooled to duty with Scott, sharing many hours when they could talk freely to each other about the trial. It proved a bonding experience, and they began fast friends.

Scott has gone on to be one of our most helpful of friends as well. He dug the foundation for our house, built our septic system, contoured the land around the house where the gardens now live, put in our driveway and the upper lot for staff goddesses, moved rocks for steps and brought us many loads of gravel from his gravel pit across town. And you’re right if you think you’ve heard tell of Scott before, because I have shared photos of him tearing and hauling away the sorry building on the farm land we bought down the road. When Scott was done there, he left us with a beautiful field of clover.

The longer we live here, the more impressed we are by Scott’s impeccable work. We have found a driveway put in by Scott doesn’t wash out like our neighbors’ driveways and a septic system by Scott gives no trouble unlike one neighbor’s fragrant mosh pit. His elegant work around our house has left us a dry basement with all precipitation draining away from the house. To watch him on his dozer or back hoe has always been an experience of watching a master at work, but thirty years later, I observe him with greater respect, ever glad Jim met Scott.
Scott has been a wise and generous steward in our small town as well, sharing his talent and time with the town. One of his recent projects was to put in a new parking lot for the town school, charging only for materials but not his time. What an incredible gift. Because he has been so many people’s go to guy for so many years, Scott probably knows more about the underpinnings of this town than anyone else, but he is restrained, discreet and if your oil tank leaked into the ground and he had to come in and clean it up per EPA standards, he did the job and that’s was the last time he spoke of it. He could probably embarrass just about everyone in town, but he never does.

Last week he came over to discuss one of our next projects, and I mentioned my search for composted manure. He offered to load up our pick up truck with manure composting down at his gravel pit. This was an eye opening experience for me because I had never seen Scott’s pit. We met him there early last Sunday morning, an enormous landscape of sand and gravel on the flood plain of the Connecticut River.

As we looked over an area fifty acres wide, Scott explained how as he finishes harvesting rock, sand and gravel from any area of his pit, he uses the horse manure he hauls off from farms in town to rebuild the topsoil and re-contour the land. He always looks to the closing of this pit, working each day to leave his pit a usable field for future generations. Scott mentioned his concern with our town pit where this proactive work is not being done. So many things press in on small towns right now, and properly sorting out the town pit is not a very sexy expenditure and one that our town has decided to hold off on until the entire pit is harvested. Scott worries that when the time comes to close the pit, the town will face a half million dollar cost to do the work Scott does each day. Looking at how Scott had spread manure onto smoothed out sections of his own pit, I noticed the vibrancy of the returning Flowers. I only wished Scott was in charge of the town pit as well.

But there was not much time for wishful thinking. Scott had his back hoe poised and loaded with some lovely brown stuff for the farm. It was time for Jim and I to go back to the one place where we could serve the seventh generation and do our best to return to the earth everything we had taken from her.

When Ben Sheehan finished walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in the summer 0f 2009, he’d been following arrows across Spain for 600 miles.
There at the end of his Camino in the waters of Fisterra, he saw one last arrow made of ocean froth, pointing towards Ireland.

This summer Ben followed that arrow and went to Ireland.


On his walkabout, he visited Omey Island again and also new northern territory .

Before he left, I asked him to make Flower Essences from some of our most popular Irish Flower Essences, shoving photos of Flowers at him with a lot of comments in the margins like, “We are DESPERATE for this one.” He exceeded all my expectations by returning from Ireland with many new Irish Flower Essences as well as new stock for all our original Irish Flower Essences. He also took some incredible photos of longtime Essence friends including this one of Kidney Vetch.
and this one of Wild Fuschia



Here are descriptions and photos of the new Flower Essences Ben brought back for us. See Ben’s blog post, back a few posts, for his humorous description of his trip!

First new Flower Essence? This unidentified Flower which we are calling, ‘Bofin Unusual.

‘BOFIN UNUSUAL This one helps us assimilate unusual, outside our ken past life skills, unexpected circumstances or people that have unexpectedly come ashore into our lives. The vibrational shifts of the summer of 2010 are bringing forward unexpected tools of support. This one helps us to assimilate these gifts into our lives even when the people, talents and skills arrive out of the blue.
Ben made the Essence from a Flower that had seeded itself on the water’s edge on Inishbofin, an island of the west coast of Ireland. The Flower grew with abandon in a spot all but devoid of soil indicating the way things can arrive and make camp in our lives even when there seem to be no support systems in place to sustain the new arrivals. Our cousin Roisin said this was not a common Flower either in Ireland or on Inishbofin. Having searched my many English and Irish Wildflower books, I suspect this Flower is not native to Europe but came ashore from parts unknown.
The Angels tell me that vibrational shifts on the planet do not happen in a steady stream but more in leaps forward followed by periods of assimilation. This particular leap in the summer of 2010 leaves us in need of some new tools of adaptation, and the Angels encourage us to be open to gifts out of the blue. This Essence will help us assimilate these gifts and will also help us when we remember long forgotten skills and people. The Angels explain that due to the shifts in the vibration beginning in the summer of 2010, we are experiencing time differently and bumping more often into our “past life” experiences. This can be all for the good if we have a handle on this phenomenon and understand it is a dynamic meant to help us evolve. I can imagine these bumps will be quite frightening for those who do not believe in past lives, and the Angels said this Flower Essence would help these folks ease into this belief structure in the face of their own heartfelt experiences
Here our cousin Roisin gives Ben the tour of her home island Inishbofin. In this shot, she’s just about to get him to jump into the icy waters of the North Atlantic for a bracing swim.

After his time with cousins in co. Galway, the Elementals took Ben north to the Giant’s Causeway.

GIANT’S CAUSEWAY (in Dragon’s Teeth Tetragonolobus maritimus) This Flower Essence comes from a place of great significance, an ancient celtic crossroad of maritime travel known as the Giant’s Causeway. Its distinctive rock formations give us its name, but the Angels explain that it is actually the place’s capacity to move energy that serves us in this Essence. I enjoy that the Elementals grounded the vibration of the place in a Flower called Dragon’s Teeth, a name wonderfully evocative of the way this Flower Essence helps us form a bridge between modern times and ancient wisdom as well as form a bridge from our present day vibration to the expanding possibilities of the future AND THEN MOVE ACROSS IT.
This is one of a couple of Essences that the Angels said were particularly important right now as we reach across a gap from our present vibrations to where we must be in the near future. The Angels have described the current times as a big improvisation in which they are doing everything they can to support us in the uncharted waters of the higher vibrations being grounded on earth. They note that this Essence is one of the tools of support they offer us right now to help us take this vibrational journey. I AM manifest light.

Another view of the Giant’s Causeway and also the Dragon’s Teeth Flower used to make the Flower Essence at this spot.



GREAT WILLOWHERB Epilobium hirsutum This one helps us keep an open heart in despairing times and be a vessel for hope and optimism during difficult transitions. It is helpful for healers and those who serve others with their efforts to stay cheerful and optimistic even in the face of significant challenges. The Angels have said this is another Essence that will speak specifically to many healers who are helping all of us across this next vibrational shift.
I AM a light and free heart.

HAREBELL FROM DOG’S BAY Campanula rotundifolia Perseverance. Support to rise up with strength and determination when our efforts seem against all odds and bound to fail. This one helps us tough it out and prevail no matter the outcome. I AM the courage to persevere.

SEA ROCKET Cakile maritime Like so many seaside Flowers, this one grows in inhospitable terrain. As a Flower Essence it helps us get the most from whatever nutrition and light energy our environment and diet offer us and helps us make the most of what is available to us. Again, this is a particularly good Essence for this time as one of the challenges for us as we make this vibrational shift is to have a physical body that can contain the higher vibration. One of the wisest Flower Essence practitioners I know noted that this Essence was particularly important for the animals right now who are in a deep struggle to bridge the vibrational gap that I have been speaking of. An immediate flurry of shivers up my body when she told me this made me know she had hit the nail on the head with her insight, so please consider giving this to your animals right now. I AM the wise and efficient use of the resources given me.

SPIDDAL (grounded in Birdsfoot Trefoil Lotus corniculatus) During his travels in Ireland, Ben let the Elementals take him where they wanted him to go which didn’t mean it was always a place he wanted to go. As he explained it, “While I wandered the rocky beach in Spiddal, I had an uneasy feeling and was not sure any flowers I collected would offer beneficial vibrations. Upon returning to New Hampshire, I had a fitful night of weird dreams in which I was driving towards Spiddal where I was to be burned at the stake for unclear reasons. These dreams clarified my uneasiness in Spiddal and offered an explanation for the flowers that I had picked during my strange night in this little coastal town. Somehow I had tapped into a past life experience, and the flowers of that rocky beach understood how to navigate such a jarring and inexplicable sentiment.”
When I asked the Angels about the Essence Ben made in Spiddal, they explained that it would help people take back personal power lost through traumatic past life experiences especially violent deaths. They also explained that working with this Essence would help soften the negative impact traumatic past life experiences have on our current situation. They mentioned that past life aftershocks including a dislike of anything around one’s neck due to having been hung, a fear of heights due to having been thrown off cliffs, issues around burns resulting from being burned alive as some of the multitude of lingering issues such traumatic past life experiences leave within us. Spiddal is about seeing and physically holding these situations in detached overview and from an empowered place. Not only will this help us release inexplicable anxieties caused by these traumas and thus stop leaking life force energy around these issues, but it will help us be more present in the now.
I AM released from any lingering damage from all painful experiences.

THISTLE FROM OMEY Cirsium The protective energies of Thistle get an Irish twist, specifically offering support to close down energy leaks caused by people passing out of our lives for any reason.

I am going to ask Ben to post the photo of the arrow in the surf off Fisterra. I don’t seem to have it here in my computer. For now, I will close with one other photo from his trip. On his way to Galway, Ben stopped to visit the Autograph Tree from Coole Park. This tree has offered solace to so many of us these last few years. How glad I was Ben could go and thank her in person.