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

A Green Hope friend named Mary asked me what I mean when I use the word Grounding.

I thought we would all learn more if I turned the discussion of Grounding over to the Angels of Green Hope Farm. The following is their words as received by me.

Angels: Grounding is not about anchoring to the material plane. Grounding is about anchoring to what is real and true and this does not include the material plane.

What is real and true? Few things that you see are real, but everything that is real is true.

We will forgo the riddles for a moment.

The truth is simple. God alone is real. Divinity alone is real. Love alone is real, No matter what word you choose to apply to what is real, it alone is real.

So grounding is a process of anchoring in the real, the timeless eternal God in everything.

How do you do this?

Your heart is the place to go. Your heart is anchored and in divinity more so than any other place in your life.

Other things and other people may be grounded in divinity, but you cannot ground through something else or someone else that is grounded. It must be your own connection.

This does not mean that you do not need wayshowers, other people and ideas guiding you to uncover what is real and what is not. You will need wayshowers, like the Green Hope Farm Flower Essence Grounding or a good spiritual teacher. The electrical patterns of wayshowers give you information that helps you on your journey to your own heart and to being grounded only in the real, but it is YOUR journey and you must take it. No one else can do it for you.

This gives you a litmus test for your spiritual journey. If some idea, person, or practice takes you out of yourself, away from the primacy of your own heart felt connection to divinity and leads you to rely on the practice or the person, then it is not leading you to divinity and it is not grounding you.

Most of humanity is in a swirl of ungrounded information in an ungrounded culture. Try to remember that all this is not real.

We offer you a metaphor that is timeless, even though it refers to a piece of equipment whose time has come and gone.

Consider a record on a record player. Consider this record turning at an accelerating speed. The experience of being grounded is like being at the center of a record where nothing is turning but everything is real. The experience of being ungrounded is like being out on the edge of the record while the record spins. It is easy to be in the center of the record. It is very hard to hold on from the record’s edge.

Anything that helps you ground will help you with that journey back to the center of the record where all is real. Anything ungrounding will keep you in the dizzy spinning place at the record’s edge, feeling like you are spinning out of control.

The good thing is that this spinning is not real. Nothing is real but the center of the record where divinity is. Even remembering this truth will help you back towards groundedness at the center. All things grounded, be they Flowers, their Essences, Teachers or their wise words will encourage you back to the center. All things ungrounded, and therefore not real, will not.

Molly: Why are Flowers and their Essences helpful grounding tools?

Angels: Consider the music of the spheres. The harmony of creation comes as each part of creation sings its unique song. Flowers know themselves to be divine, at the heart of creation, and part of all that is. They also know how to sing their unique songs. They sing in harmony with the music of the spheres.

Again, this does not mean you are to sing the same song as a Flower. It means that a Flower can offer you course corrections as you find your unique song.

This is really the aspect of grounding beyond the generic. When you are anchored in your divinity, it is not that you are nothing in a sea of nothingness. You are a unique expression of love in a sea of love. You have a song to sing, unique to you, in harmony with the whole of creation.

Flowers and their Essences guide you towards a remembrance of who you are and what your unique musical song is. They do this almost as a pitch pipe tunes an instrument. You play your musical song as best you can. A Flower or its Essence offers a musical vibrational note that helps you course correct towards a more refined expression of your true self’s song.

Then you play your song again. Other Flowers or their Essences help refine the tuning as needed. This is what good teachers do. They contain you. They help you see what you are and where what you do and how you express yourself falls away from your true self. They are pitch pipes for tuning the true self.

Like the Flowers or a wise teacher, we from the Angelic kingdom experience and contain the real you as well. We offer vibrations to help you tune to this true self. We too offer ourselves as wayshowers and companions for your journey to knowing self. The divine in us salutes the divine in you.

For example, if you have temporarily lost the bead on self kindness, we might bring to you the vibration of mercy. This vibration of mercy might remind you of a tender love that lives within you, a love not predicated on your mind’s idea of what is deserved or just. This vibration of mercy might help you find the place within where a similar love, something essential and eternally part of you, can be found.

In this way so many parts of your eternal self come forward to be remembered and the music grows sweeter with each remembering.

This blog could have so many titles.

Something like “Got Gauge? NO!” would work.

Or “Too Smart for my own Socks.”

Or “Oops! There will be a slight delay in your Birthday present!”

I decided to knit a pair of socks for my sister in law Katy’s birthday which is today! Happy Birthday Katy!!!!

She has petite feet, not much bigger than her daughter Taylor’s feet. I picked a sock yarn I thought Katy and Taylor would like. Obviously Taylor would need to approve of the yarn choice in order for this to be a successful project. I thought I had done well in my choice of an easy care washable wool ( for Katy who does the laundry) in pink with a metallic fiber and soft grey irregular stripes (for the almost six year old Taylor who LOVES pink). The metallic fiber was to give the socks a bit of glam. Katy lives nearby in the eternally wet north woods, but that doesn’t mean her socks and therefore her life can’t have glam.

A couple nights ago, when I still thought the project was sailing along well, I read a discussion of gauge in Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s latest knitting book Knitting Rules. She had my number inspired me to promise myself I REALLY would knit a proper gauge swatch on my next sweater project, so I would no longer have sweaters the size of small countries. Really, I would deal with that lazy enthusiastic streak that saw me skipping over doing a gauge swatch. With a gauge swatch under my belt, it would be much more likely that I would knit the project on the right size needles and end up with the right size sweater. This seemed like a sensible alternative to wasting six zillion hours knitting a sweater that would easily fit a small hippo.

As I read her book, I laughed to myself, thinking how great it was that I HAD SOCKS DOWN COLD and didn’t need a gauge swatch for them! I always got gauge with my socks! ( famous last words)

By this time, I had knit the whole top of Katy’s sock with a ribbing so that it would fit on her lovely slim ankle like a…. well fitted sock! I was so impressed with myself that I hadn’t bailed out on ribbing an inch or two into the sock like I usually do, but had kept on doing this tedious ribbing all the way down the ankle part of the sock to give Katy this really nice fit.

I knit the heel flap and then turned the heel. This is always a magic moment as far as I am concerned. Don’t you non- knitters out there WONDER about the magic of socks making that right angle turn? I always did and it amazes me how it is done. But this time my amazement was somewhat dampened by alarm bells ringing. This sock seemed too large. I knit a bit longer and had that unpleasant and all too familiar knitting experience. That sinking I HAVE GAUGE PROBLEM feeling.

I could no longer deny the truth. Katy’s sock was enormous. It was too big for Katy’s foot. Why it was too big for Katy’s husband’s foot too. It was too big for Katy’s husband’s head and he has a big Sheehan head!

Somehow I had knit with a sock wool that was just a tad thicker than my usual sock wool and because I hadn’t knit a gauge swatch, I hadn’t noticed that this thicker wool was going to knit up into a bigger sock….

Suddenly, I had this extra large pink sock on my hands. One of a kind because I don’t know any elephants to give a pair to!

Happy Birthday Katy! Think of me tonight, back to the drawing board to try and do better next May 23rd!

Friday. It’s that day I spend in the gardens. Only today I would need a snorkel or an ark, maybe both, to garden out there. Ironic, isn’t it? My artsy photo of a hose almost covered by water.

I tried to garden. I really did. I went to get a load of mulch in the back of the truck. People at the garden center where I get my mulch spoke to me gently as to a person who has lost her marbles. They wished me luck. The rain was falling so hard on my return to the farm that I threw in the pitchfork and beat a retreat into the house. After all, there is always my other big project calling to me.

Will’s afghan.

I am half done the squares. Maybe, I will get another one done today. It’s a tough job but somebody has to do it. I have made myself the necessary supplies for the long siege by my knitting basket.

Oatmeal raisin cookies. The milk is chilled too. There might even be a few left when Will gets home, but I wouldn’t plan on it. I mean, knitting is almost as hard work as hauling mulch, isnt it?