The Winter Olympics started last Friday. As you may or may not recall, this meant I was supposed to grab my knitting needles and begin my wildly ambitious knitting project as the torch was lit, thus beginning my own parallel Knitting Olympic event right there in front of the television.

What actually happened?

I did not see the torch lit nor have I seen a moment of Olympic action. Sure, I’ve gotten reports about what’s happened so far. The Y chromosome requires memorizing and reciting sporting results and there are three Sheehans with the Y chromosome keeping me updated. So I know Apollo fell in his favorite event and Bode came in fifth in the downhill. But live coverage? Did I see these moments? Nope. We have a problem Houston. Actually, we have several problems.

Problem number 1
We live on a quiet dirt road. This means the cable company passed on providing us service. The hills that surround us mean we can’t get the local NBC station even with our gigantic unsightly 1980’s type antennae. We do have a mini dish but the dish company is not allowed to give us their New York or West Coast feed for NBC because we might miss the local ads on the local NBC affiliate we can’t get and not be out there buying local products. We have written many testimonials about not being able to get the local feed to no avail.

Last week, my husband called to beg for Olympic mercy. Jim hoped someone would believe our sad tale and agree to flip a switch at headquarters. But no, the dish people said the only solution was to install a SECOND dish that would get the local NBC affiliate. More good news! They couldn’t come to install the dish until today, day five of the Olympics. I expect the installers sometime this afternoon. I look forward to adding to the forest of ugly technology on the roof of our home.

Problem number 2
My project choice was ridiculously ambitious but sadly, not out of character. I decided to knit Willy a log cabin afghan during the Olympics. The last log cabin afghan I knit was for Ben. I planned to have it as a gift when he graduated from college. I started it at the beginning of his senior year. He got the afghan 18 months post graduation. One might think I would have done the math and decided to knit Willy one of the twenty five squares needed for the afghan. But no! I told him I was going for it. So far, I have one half log cabin square, knit while watching a Gilmore Girl rerun.

This basic overreach reminded me of other moments when my enthusiasm has been somewhat unrealistic. Say the time I called Jim at work on a Friday afternoon and asked him to build me a tool shed that weekend. He asked how big a tool shed I was hoping for. I said 16’X24’ with a second story. He sweetly said “That’s a barn not a tool shed.”

I am sure he loved spending October, November, and December of that year out in the elements. There was a particularly special moment when he and his brother were trying to put up the ridge pole in a gale force wind and both of them almost blew off the second floor of the barn. Ahh the memories!

Problem number 3
Who are we fooling about what kind of TV viewing is going to be going on once this dish is in place? I don’t remember the last time I was in charge of the remote and so much channel surfing happens during any viewing experience that its a good thing I look at my knitting and not the television. Watching the screen causes motion sickness.

The Y chromosomes in the family, who understand and have custody of the remote, have already informed me that they think sappy life story pieces on the athletes have ruined the Olympics. These are the things I like best. When the dish is installed, I will be watching their idea of sports coverage. Actual sports in action. Really, how pathetic when I could be watching docudramas about why that little old lady from Michigan became a world class curler.

So e-mail me the story lines of the Olympic docudramas because I will either be out in the snow helping the dish guy drill holes in our home or watching some sort of hockey game/ nordic combined event/ ESPN sports update/ UConn basketball game happening simultaneously.

If you have read our newsletters, you may remember that for many years, I rarely left the farm. Going into the village of Meriden to get the mail became a big expedition. In my effort to align myself with divine will, I ask for guidance about what to do and not do in my life. In effect, I use my free will to turn over my decision making to the still small voice of my inner divinity and my Angel guides. I do this because, like a hiker up Everest who seeks the best sherpa guide possible, I am also on a spiritual mountain that I don’t know how to climb. Seeking guidance from God as I experience God and the Angels as I experience them feels like a wise choice to me.

As I said, in recent years, my marching orders from my guides have been non-marching orders. After awhile, I came to expect that I would always have this quiet life. When I was guided to go on two big trips in 2005, one to Ireland and one to St. John in the Caribbean, I was surprised. I was also grateful for this opportunity to stretch my legs!

During the trip to Ireland in June and July, I had many conversations with Irish Elementals. Elementals hold all creation in manifestation. Particularly in Ireland, the Elementals have a long history of being acknowledged and honored by humankind for their work. Sometimes the core of what they do has been misunderstood or forgotten by us, but at least in Ireland, the Elementals are often acknowledged as real.

On this trip to Ireland, the Elementals were impassioned in their requests that humanity clean up its emotional garbage or suffer the consequences of much water cleansing our world for us. Since these conversations, we have lived through all the hurricanes of 2005 and fall flooding in the Northeast. And water keeps coming. On the day I started writing this entry, we had such serious rains fall on partly frozen ground here in New Hampshire that local streams and rivers flooded their banks. Clearly, we have much work to do before this kind of watery cleansing is not necessary.

In December, my guides sent me on a trip to St. John in the United States Virgin Islands. I thought a lot about the Elementals of Ireland while conversing with the Elementals on St. John. While they conveyed the same message, the demeanor of most of the Elementals I spoke with on St. John was in sharp contrast to that of the Irish Elementals.

This summer, the Irish Elementals called a spade a spade. They spoke vehemently about humanity trashing the Earth. They noted that the consequences for our trashing were coming soon. They also very much wanted me to make many Flower Essences that would help humanity with the challenge of cleaning up our garbage and taking responsibility as co-custodians of Earth. They deeply cared about our fate and wanted to help. I felt great urgency from them to get a move on but also some semblance of affection for humankind despite our errors.

On St. John this past December, I met with Elementals that were so weary and beleaguered that I felt they had completely given up on us. They were dispirited almost beyond sorrow. During my last visit in 2002, I had felt a partnership with the Elementals of St. John. This time, while I had the occasional spirited exchange with an old or new Flower Elemental friend, the mood was generally somber, even dire. Most Elementals I talked with seemed beyond caring what happened to us or their island world. Many didn’t even want to talk. It felt almost like they were no longer holding the land in form.

I was upset to see the Elementals of this region so despairing. Since my time with them, I have tried to figure out why so many of the Elementals of this region were so world weary and hopeless. The geographical position of the region seems a key factor.

In thinking about the energetics of the United States and the Caribbean region, I see comparisons between parts of our country and parts of the human body. The Mississippi River is an enormous cleansing mechanism for our country much like the intestines and the urinary tract of the human body. In this analogy, New Orleans becomes the place where the waste materials leave the body of the United States and flow out into the sea. This analogy offers one possible reason why New Orleans might have attracted such a big watery cleansing event. This also suggests that the Caribbean region, where the waters of the Mississippi eventually go, is the dumping ground for our refuse, much as a toilet receives human waste.

I think it is fair to say that the dumping is both metaphorical and literal. We pollute the region but also use it with impunity as a place to act out our second chakra garbage. This trip suggested to me that the Caribbean has absorbed as much of our negativity as it can and that the Elementals of this region are literally waiting for a big flush.

As I thought about the Irish Elementals and their ability to hold on and keep encouraging us onwards, I realized that they may have more fortitude in their dealings with us because at least at times during their history with mankind, they have been acknowledged and appreciated. There hasn’t been this appreciation for the Elementals in the Caribbean. As far as I can tell, they have just had to keep dealing with our energetic garbage with virtually no gratitude from the human community.

How long could any of us keep cleaning a community’s garbage without any kind of acknowledgment? The Elementals of the Caribbean have been at this work for centuries with no support from the human community who makes the mess. Little wonder they wait for a big cleansing flush and don’t really care what this flush takes out.

So what can we do? Send LOVE to the Elementals of our planet! Send LOVE to the planet and consider incorporating the following energy cleansing technique or some variation of it in your daily regime. Bless you! Thank you!

LAND CLEARING- A GENERAL OVERVIEW

Negativity builds up on land in many ways. Human discord of any kind settles on the land where the discord took place. If you have a temper tantrum in your backyard, that energy remains in your backyard. Even the most pristine piece of land, uninhabited by humans, will have negativity delivered to it by wind and precipitation. For example, rain clears the atmosphere of negativity but leaves this negativity on the land.

This discord stays in the land UNTIL the negativity is either cleansed energetically in conscious cooperation with Nature (ie the Angels and Elementals) or is forcibly removed through extreme weather such as hurricanes,thunderstorms, floods etc.

When land is energetically cleaned, the vibration is raised and the negativity is dissolved or transmuted without any side effects. Elementals and Angels, particularly the Elementals, do the actual energy cleansing but this group CANNOT do this work in the same benign way unless a human asks them to do it.

ASKING FOR THIS CLEANSING MUST BE DONE BY A HUMAN.
It is one of our vital roles in the co-creation and maintenance of Earth.

If a human doesn’t ask for energy cleansing for a piece of land and this land is holding a lot of negativity, the Elementals only options for removing this negativity is extreme weather. Because the Elementals are supposed to keep the planet in form, steadying and balancing it as we go, they WILL clear land that is very negative in order to help this balancing process. Without our help, big weather events are the operative mechanism for such clearings.

ENERGY CLEANSING PROCESS
If you can do this every day, this is of maximum benefit to land you live and work on, but even occasional cleansing will be a great help! It should not take more than a few minutes. I like to sit quietly while doing this but if need be, do it on the fly. The cleansing will be done when you ask for it, no matter how or when you ask.

You can ask for assistance from
1. THE OVER LIGHTING DEVA of the piece of land you want to clean.
This being from the Angelic kingdom holds the divine plan for this piece of land.
2. ANGELS OVER LIGHTING THIS PIECE OF LAND
They work with the Deva of the land.
3. THE ELEMENTALS OF THE LAND
These are the beings who bring your land into actual form and then hold it there so we can live in a world of form.
4. PAN, Head Elemental of Earth
5. Any ASCENDED OR GOD REALIZED BEING WHO IS CONNECTED WITH THIS PIECE OF LAND
There may or may not be any connected depending on the piece of land.
6. Deva of the Earth’s atmosphere, LUNARIA
7. Deva of the Earth’s surface, SAPPHALO
8. Deva of the sun in the center of the Earth, DARNDELLA
9. Our Sun, HELIOS AND VESTA

You do not need to list all the names above to get help!
YOU CAN SIMPLIFY THE PROCESS and ask for the Angels and Elementals of the land to help you-

After you call in some variation of this group, ask them to CLEANSE, CLEAR, REBALANCE, AND ILLUMINATE the land you are clearing. You can ask them to clear the EMOTIONAL, MENTAL, PHYSICAL, AND ETHERIC BODIES of the land of everything that is not pure divinity.

Ask that any negativity be released through a CHRISTED GRID. This is not a religious thing. This is just a way to describe a cleansing filter that purifies the energies so that they do not come back to the land again.

You can visualize all the negativity being removed from the land both below and above ground or you DON’T HAVE TO VISUALIZE anything. The land will still be cleansed because you have asked to have it done.

If you want, after the cleansing, you can ask that the land that has been cleansed be filled with divine love and light. This fills the land that has been cleared of negativity with positive energies so that negative energies don’t just rush back in to fill the void created by the clearing. This is an optional step but a good one.

Please close the session with a thanks to everyone involved. AND I THANK YOU as do the Elementals for your efforts!

We have a new person coming to work here soon. We are going to have to say goodbye to darling Yessenia soon. She is in the third trimester of her pregnancy with her baby due in early spring.

Today was the first day for our new person, Jane Taupier. She lives just down the hill from us on a beautiful farm that she and her husband created together. I have known her for twenty four years. We were dorm parents in the same dorm at Kimball Union Academy when our babies were little. Many an afternoon was whiled away with our toes in the same sandbox. When Jane’s children got older she went off to teach while I was off on my own adventures here at Green Hope. Now that her life has changed directions, she is free to come work at the farm. We are very excited about this.

The Angels suggested for day one that all of us take Jane on a walking tour of the office space. It was such fun! As we yammered away about our little world here, we got a glimpse of this landscape through each other’s eyes. For example, we were surprised to discover exactly how seriously Jayn takes her responsibility to keep a sterile sink when she bottles! I don’t think any of us will ever consider putting a dirty dish within a 50 yard range of her bottling zone ever again! The whole tour got us laughing and telling funny stories. It was a wonderful, unexpected moment of community.

One thing that was particularly fun to tell Jane about is the synchronicity of orders here. It doesn’t take very long before anyone shipping or invoicing orders begins to notice that there is some serious oneness going on in the world. On a regular basis the following drama takes place. A sweet Flower Essence, usually one that has had a relatively quiet presence on our shelves, suddenly is ordered by a large number of people all over the planet. This wonderful mysterious flow has nothing to do with us and we love this!

These dear Flower friends wait with infinite tenderness and readiness for their moments. Then, when the moments come and they fly out the door to you all, they go out like joyful music into the world.

Some of the beloved Flower Essences that have stepped to the front lines in recent times include Niella, a marvelous mint Flower Essence that offers wonderful information about aligning the chakras. Loquat, a powerhouse of information for the digestive system and Ixora one for discernment of appropriate and affirming sexual boundaries are two from Bermuda that stretched their legs recently. Pink Laurel, an Adirondack gem that helps us be our most articulate and truest self, and Agrippina Rose, an ancient rose that supports us to turbo charge our healing process also flew out our doors.

It is true that these are useful Flower Essences most all the time. They move steadily into the world throughout the year. Yet the fact is that this lovely big holograph we are in seems to support healing some issues more at some times than at others. We notice this on the phone and on e-mail too, not just in the waves of same Essence orders.

When an issue has cropped up in our lives here in the office, in your calls and e-mails to us you often speak of the same issue. The issue is ripe for healing and when all of us look to the Flowers for support, the Flowers are ready. The Angels know what we will all be working on and when. They get the very Flower Essences we will need all lined up and ready for us to offer before the issue comes to the fore.

This was never more apparent than this past year. On my trip to Ireland in June of 2005, I was asked to make so many Flower Essences for watery times, times of constraint, limitation, and unexpected difficulties. When I returned to the farm with these new Flower Essences, one of them, Yellow Loosestrife, explained its area of service in this way:

“I AM indefatigable gratitude for this life of life, even amidst trials and tribulations. I AM joyful appreciation for life no matter the circumstances. I will help you to find the bead on the positive and valuable in your life during flood times and turmoil as well as during times when things are flowing more smoothly.”

No sooner had we started bottling these precious new Irish Flower Essence friends than we were swept into the flood times of last fall. The very Essences needed were in place. We were ready to serve displaced folks, rescue animals, and all the myriad people suffering in wake of all the water.

Its not always easy to be here on Earth, but daily life here in this little office reminds us that we are not alone in our suffering. So many beloveds are looking out for us. That is sweet comfort.

Snowdrops! I have Snowdrops blooming in the Arbor Garden and not just a few. A whole patch has poked up its heads and opened into full blossom.

This should be a long awaited, much anticipated moment of pure joy for our winter weary souls. Instead, I feel both deep pleasure in seeing these dear friends again and a bit of anxiety as well.

The timing feels off. Snowdrops usually don’t blossom here until the end of March or beginning of April. They come at the tail end of our maple sugaring season, not before we have even tapped the maple trees.

That’s another thing. It’s been so warm that I am sure the maple sap is running. I asked the maple trees we tap if I should tap them now, weeks before we usually begin our sugaring season. The maples suggested I wait, but not for long. Maybe next week? They too seemed a bit up in the air about when to tap.

I expected to remain concerned about global warming in general but glad for our micro-climate. New Hampshire winters feel like a small eternity to me. But this moderating weather is not leaving me glad for our micro climate either. I had a wake up call last fall that suggested a moderating climate poses unexpected difficulties for all the plants here on our hilltop.

Last fall, we went deep into the season without a killing frost. This seemed like a gift until we had a snowstorm just days after the first frost. Because of this late frost, the leaves were still on the trees so the snow stuck to the branches of trees that usually do not have leaves on them when snow falls. As a consequence, many trees suffered damage. Apple trees in our orchard and poplars along the hedgerows were uprooted by the weight of the snow. Almost every tree in our garden lost big branches with several trees split in half.

The Hawthorn with which we make our beloved Honeybees in the White Hawthorn Flower Essence went from being one of the most luxurious trees in our yard to a skeleton of just a few branches. The combination of its gorgeous orange berries and leaves still on the tree left this tree particularly vulnerable. The snow broke all but a few of its branches. Come spring, whenever that may be, I am not sure the tree will be able to go on. This lovely friend in our garden may be gone.

So now I am not so certain that what appear to be benign changes are benign. Is it a good thing for us to have Connecticut winters? I don’t know.

I close with a message the Maple elementals gave me after I finished writing this piece. I found their words consoling and comforting. I hope you do to. I share their message with much love.

“Winds of change blow in your valley Molly. We remain grounded in the eternal verities but weather is not one of them. So expect the unexpected but also know that we will prevail through this bittersweet time.

It is your community with us more than the fruits of your labor which matter most to us. So let go of your concern about the right window for sugaring this year. We cannot predict ourselves what will happen during this unusual spring. Rest in the knowledge that even if there is only a small amount of syrup made this season, it is your daily visits to us that are the real gift to you and us.

So look into each bucket with your same curiosity and wonder, even if the bucket is empty. Chat with us and hug us as you always do. Walk beneath our outspread branches and feel our love for you, unchanging season to season. And let go of your worries. To stand together in loving embrace and together love the earth beneath us all. This is the imperishable sweetness of our time together.”

Perhaps I should have asked more questions as I made my glass of Flower Essence water yesterday morning. I remembered the Green Hope Farm friend who had a mattress fly off the back of a truck onto her convertible as she cruised down the pacific coast highway. On the morning of the flying mattress, her Angels suggested she take Jade Flower Essence which offers support for unexpected and out of control events. She wanted to know why her Angels couldn’t also suggest it wasn’t a good day to take her convertible out for a joy ride. Good question!

Yesterday, I wasn’t asking any questions. I whistled away while I got the nudge to assemble a glass of Flower Essence water, pink with Anxiety, Emergency Care, Golden Armor and a whole cast of characters for soothing the nerves. Yeah, yeah, I was probably daydreaming about this blog!

My morning began with a call from “the supervisor” at a label company we work with. It’s never a good sign when any supervisor calls and I knew this wasn’t going to be a hallmark memory.

Earlier in the year, I had ordered 100,000 of our Rose Flower Essence bottle labels. I signed off on the order when the press proof matched the dark pink roses of the last batch of labels. The new ones were delivered and the roses on these new labels were a faded coral. My account rep agreed that they were not the same color and needed to be rerun so I shipped back the 100,000 and waited for the next run.

This second group arrived with the same case of label anemia. When I got back to my account rep, she went quiet on me. I could guess what was going on at their end. I am not exactly their biggest client and the cost of printing these labels with consistency was beginning to outweigh my value as an account. When I got word a supervisor was calling, I knew they wouldn’t run the labels again and that I needed make the best of it.

Why? Because we have about 35 labels from the old batch left. Well, I consoled myself, it IS the same great vibration inside! And maybe you are going to LOVE the mellow rose color! And that chat with the supervisor? It WAS the most cordial drop kick I have ever received.

So, as I surveyed the boxes of labels I will learn to love, I sipped on my pink water and decided to make lemonade out of labels. The stars AND the supervisor were pointing out that maybe it was time to rethink our whole label design. The exciting work of Dr. Masaru Emoto in his book The Message of Water suggests that labels put on water bottles with the words love and gratitude on them amplify the vibration of the water within. Since that’s what we are all about, offering the best vibrational road maps of love possible, I am now excited by the prospect of seeing how we can redesign our labels to incorporate even more loving vibrations into our Essences via the packaging as well as via the Essence itself.

The real flying mattress drama of the day happened during our lunchtime walk with the dogs. A small group of us were hiking up a long winding dirt road across from the farm, past a house under construction. We heard a gun go off as we began the walk but weren’t sure where the sound was coming from. As we got closer to the construction sight, a man with the gun started firing in rapid succession from the porch of the half built house. We yelled out to him. We were clearly visible in a wide open field, yet he kept firing. I was close enough to see the barrel of the rifle pointed down the field, not quite towards us, but much too close for comfort. Poor Riley was very scared but all of us were shaking. We came off that hill at a run and the gunfire followed us all the way back to the farm. When I called the owner of the house, he suggested that we had heard a nail gun going off.

I do not quite know how to make lemonade from this lemon. I certainly was glad to return to my pink Flower Essence water and we gave Riley and May May Anxiety and Emergency Care too. While I was writing this, I stopped to do today’s e-mail and a Green Hope friend named Spring reminded me in her missive that it’s St. Brigid’s Day / Candlemas / Groundhog Day today.

She reminded me we are half way through winter and moving towards spring. The air does smell faintly of spring today and the light is wonderfully stronger than it was even a week or two ago. My friend Spring said she is going to have a traditional St Brigid’s day bonfire outside tonight to celebrate. I told her I would have an echo bonfire here at the farm.

Maybe that is all we can do in the face of crazy energy like the man with the rifle. Just keep on lighting our fires and building community. And tonight, when we are sitting around the crackling fire, enjoying its light and warmth with the dark snowy landscape at our backs, this circle of bright faces around the beautiful fire is going to feel like quite enough.