A busy week. Rain a near constant companion. Joy too!

Here is Lizzy surveying the scene with her cousin Caroline, moments after receiving her college diploma amidst a torrential downpour. Note mended ankle!

Everyone, including cousin Taylor in her signature pink raincoat, beat a retreat across a lush landscape to the dance studio where the cousins celebrate with some improv dancing.

The next day, Sunday, Ben runs a half marathon. The rain begins again right after he finishes running.

There is a two day pause in rain storms on Monday and Tuesday with overcast skies perfect for planting. The Angels’ plans to have us plant the gardens this week prove inspired, as always. Emily, Lizzy and their friends Lilly Callahan and Anna Pierce Slive prove to be a joyful foursome of enthusiasm, humor, and zesty wisdom. I haven’t had this much fun planting the gardens in years! Here we are planting the main vegetable garden which this year is a series of concentric rings broken by three equidistant paths. From above, it looks sort of like a peace sign.

The center was all lettuce.

In addition to the lettuce in the center, this garden has beans, parsley, leeks, basil, squash, pumpkins, corn, zinnias, and red shiso planted in it this growing season.

Compared to many years, this garden is very simple in its design and I am grateful for this.

The fabulous foursome rests on their laurels for a victory photo when the first garden is DONE! We even have a few moments of blue in the sky!

May May also thinks she needs a rest after her arduous supervisory duties.

The next garden, planted on Tuesday, is a spiral of brassicas including cauliflowers, broccolis, cabbages, and brussel sprouts with the outside of the spiral several rings of potatoes.

Here is Lizzy planting tomatoes behind this crop of garlic. Peppers and Eggplants also went into spaces outside the bigger gardens.

A pause at dusk on Tuesday. Almost a real sunset but not quite.

On Wednesday Emily and I worked to put annuals in all the different Flower beds. It rained harder and harder but we kept at it until everything was planted. Tomorrow we plant the last of the big gardens that needs to be planted.

When I first moved to New Hampshire, one thing that delighted me was that there was so much less poison ivy than where I grew up in Connecticut. Avoiding poison ivy was nearly impossible in my childhood world, much as I tried. Consequently, I had many bouts of poison ivy as a child, including one case where I puffed up from head to toe because a neighbor had burned some poison ivy in his leaf pile and I had gotten downwind of the smoke.

When I arrived in Meriden twenty seven years ago, it was rare to see poison ivy. Between vigilance about avoiding what little poison ivy there was and this general lack of poison ivy, I had many years free of poison ivy problems.

But not anymore. Poison ivy is spreading like wildfire throughout the region. Here at the farm, there is more and more poison ivy in the hedgerows. And despite my best efforts to avoid contact with the plant, I have gotten poison ivy a lot the last few growing seasons. In fact, I have a bad case of poison ivy right now. I seem to get it from the dogs’ fur. They run through the poison ivy and when I pet them, I get poison ivy.

Right now my glass of water is dosed with liberal amounts of Healthy Coat, Breathe, and Outburst. The Healthy Coat and Breathe are excellent for any situation of skin irritation or allergic type reaction like my reaction to poison ivy. Outburst helps with any kind of explosive situation and I consider poison ivy to fit this bill. The Angels also suggested it would be good for me to work with Flee Free more. This helps both animals and people to rebuff all sorts of irritants and pests. They said it would help increase my poison ivy threshold. Will report back.

Sadly, I am steering clear of love fests with Riley and May May in order not to get more poison ivy. They are acting understandably confused by this. I will ask the Angels for some ideas about what I can do about the poison ivy patches the dogs run through most frequently. I would welcome your suggestions too. I am hoping for a non toxic, earth friendly spray that kills the poison ivy but does not hurt anything else. Yeah, yeah, I know. What can I say but “Hope springs eternal”. And you are right. In the fifties, I would have bought swamp land in Florida.

Jim heard on the Vermont public radio yesterday that the reason poison ivy is spreading like mad is that, like most plants, it thrives on the increased CO2 build up of global warming, but that with poison ivy, the CO2 build up also seems to make poison ivy more virulent. It’s just so nice to know that signs of global warming are all around us.

I sit here trying not to scratch and also trying to accept that global warming is a necessary learning lesson for humanity. If I talk with the Angels, they calm me down and help me see that it IS all for learning. As you already know, when I sit with the Elementals, the mood is a bit different.

Speaking of my partners, I have had unusual instructions this year. The greenhouse is full of plants ready for planting, but nothing has been transplanted into the Venus Garden, the main vegetable garden, or the Cherokee Trail of Tears garden spaces yet. My guidance is that it will be planting time all next week, several weeks after things usually go into these gardens.

This could simply be the Angels way to keep me sane. Lizzy graduates from college on Saturday and I am cooking for three different gala events this weekend. This doesn’t exactly leave time for transplanting several hundred heads of lettuce and every other plant baby awaiting life in the soil.

So the next couple of days I will be cooking not planting. I think Lizzy will be glad to see me at Bennington on Friday with dirt free fingernails and my gardening pants retired for a few days. Will also try hard not to look like a poison ivy test volunteer.

And now, I need to go fill up my water bottle with my Flower Essence friends from the Animal Wellness Collection.

PS Vicki’s husband Kevin is doing an oral history project about Green Hope Farm. This has given us a chance to boggle his mind with our stories. Today he wanted photos of life in the office. We took some action shots of us reading the alumni magazine of the school where he teaches. He is on the cover of this edition of the magazine. Since we all have the sense of humor of students in junior high, we thought it was so funny to take these shots of us reading the magazine.

Kevin is the guy on the cover wearing sunglasses. He is responsible for Vicki’s big belly. Baby due in October.

Birthday girl Patricia on left ( her birthday was yesterday) and new Jane have a Kevin moment.

Here come the Tree Peonies.

And below, a well mulched garden.

Yesterday afternoon Sophie and I got the okay from the Elementals to clean up the main vegetable garden for planting. Until then, the Elementals had asked us to stay out of this and several other gardens. We never know exactly why we get these directions. It could be as simple as our feet would pack down the soil too much, but we like to imagine there are all sorts of esoteric reasons.

Sophie and I hauled a couple of piles of weeds like this out of the main vegetable garden, glorying in the hot sun ( which you’ll note from today’s picture has gone AWOL on us again!).

Some weeds came up in places where I didn’t put enough mulch on last fall but most of the weeds come from the interface where hay meets lawn. For how big this garden is, we cleaned it up really fast, thanks to the mulch. (Yes, I am still happy to break into my MULCH INFOMERCIAL).

We also pulled out corn stalks that the Angels had asked us to leave in place all winter for energetic reasons. Now we’ll spread more mulch.

Under the blue tarp in the background is the hundred bales of hay we will use this spring for mulch.

This morning May May and I spent a good stretch of time weeding violets out of one of the perennial beds. Okay, so May May supervised with a tennis ball in her mouth while I weeded.

When I was first in Meriden, gardening my tiny plot in the village, I watched another gardener ruthlessly weeding out the Violets in her garden. I was shocked and therefore completely disregarded what this suggested about Violets. When I went to plant the gardens here, I welcomed two Violet plants and since then, much as I love the Violets, I have had many an hour trying to reign in their glory.

Okay, back to work.

I thought you might like this. Let me know if it is a help and I will keep it updated and post it every so often.

All Blogs are archived by the month in reverse order of when they were written. Just click on the month and then scroll down to find the blog you are looking for. You might have to go to next page to find ones early in a month.

Okay, so it makes no sense to have them in reverse chronological order. I take no credit for this. I didn’t write this blog program. If I had, it would probably be more complicated! Just know that ALL blogs are right here! Really!

BLOGS ON ANGELS
Angel Designs, January 31, 2006
The Angels on Grounding, May 24. 2006

PARADIGM SHIFTS
Team Earth, February 28, 2006
When Life Throws us off a Cliff, March 2, 2006
The Emperor’s New Clothes, April 5, 2006
More on the Family River or Farewell to Rusty Plumbing, April 7, 2006
On Being an Empath, Some Thoughts, Some Tools, April 20, 2006
An Excellent Question that led to Thoughts on Following Guidance, April 19, 2006

BLOGS ON ELEMENTALS
Land Clearing: An Elemental Request, February 13, 2006
Elementals Deliver the Goods, February 20, 2006
From Entitlement to Gratitude, May 4, 2006
Elemental Love, May 9, 2006

BLOGS PRIMARILY ABOUT FLOWER ESSENCES
Flower Essences that get the Party Started, February 21, 2006
Common Issues with Suggestions for Flower Essences to Consider, February 23, 2006
Flowing with our Resistance to Flower Essences and Life Changes, March 1, 2006
When Life Throws us off a Cliff, March 2, 2006
Maple Flower Essence, March 16, 2006
The Generous and Safe Gift of Flower Essences, March 22, 2006
Fears, Doubts, Worries, Shopping Lists, March 23, 2006

BLOGS ON GREEN HOPE FARM OFFICE LIFE
Flying Mattresses and Fireside Moments, February 2, 2006
Some Serious Oneness Going on, February 9, 2006
Yessenia’s Baby Shower, March 9, 2006
Thanks to Ben, Here we Go!, March 26, 2006
An Americana Food Moment, April 15, 2006
For Yessenia’s mother Rosita and sister Edith, April 18, 2006
Sophie, Thursday and New Animal Wellness Brochures, May 11, 2006

BLOGS ABOUT FAMILY LIFE
Progress Report on the Knitting Olympics, February 14, 2006
The Dish, February 15, 2006
February “Vacation Week”, February 22, 2006
Update from Projectville, March 6, 2006
A Lot of M Words, March 24, 2006
The D Word, March 25, 2006
Jim Sheehan Stretches his Legs, April 5, 2006
Safe Arrival, April 11, 2006
Has it Been Forty Days Yet?, May 14, 2006
Happy Birthday Dear Katy or There is Something Wrong with this Sock?, May 23, 2006

BLOGS ABOUT THE FARM
The Maples Console, Feburary 6, 2006
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2006
Backyard Sugaring at Green Hope farm, March 14, 2006
The Last Boil, April 1, 2006
April Projects, April 24, 2006
Cats will be Cats, April 27, 2006
The News on Sunday, May 2, 2006
Has it Been Forty Days Yet?, May 14, 2006
New Bees, May 15, 2006
Friday, May 19, 2006

LOCAL HEROES
This one is for you Mrs. Gallagher, March 9, 2006
Be a Local Hero, March 28, 2006
MayMay and I make our Firday Morning Tour, May 5, 2006
Two Shining Lights on a Rainy Day, May 17, 2006