Reginald Montgomery “Chuckie” Hogbottom here, Order of the Woodchuck, Recipient of the medal of honor “Marmota Monax” September 2019, Groundhog Knight of the Realm, May 2022, and Recipient of the Order of the Garter July 2023.
I call to you- sleeping matriarchs of our groundhog coterie, you frisky maidens looking forward to our annual spring frolics and the many groundhog males living in the illusion that you will intrude on my hegemony. Get your rest now because our day, Groundhog Day, February 2nd, approaches swiftly. Not only will we look for our shadow on this day, but tours have been organized to check out what’s what above ground and in the Green Hope gardens we call home.
Stirring myself from a robust winter sleep, I launch this newsletter to you all as we face the biggest challenge yet to our undisputed rule. Yes, the fence is finished. A door with a latch leads into our once prized domain. Will we breech these barriers? Will a forgetful human leave the door open? What is the outlook for 2026 and our dawn to dusk daily veggie fest? Let me fill you in on the current situation and given you my prognostications for 2026.
First let me start the report with the very good news that the human is busy buying seeds for us just as she always does. She seems a bit giddy that maybe this year there will be home grown vegetables on HER table. As far as this optimism goes? I guess we should expect this. After all she did name the farm Green HOPE Farm.
Second we can expect people to be who they are. In this case, I for one count on someone leaving the door into the garden open. As with last year, all we need is one moment, and we’ll be back in summer HQ in the center of the garden. I for one can’t wait!
Third, yes I know. I’ve heard the reports from some of you fearmongers. She DOES have her children reading The Secret Garden to her grandchildren. Yes, she DOES have the grandchildren picking out the vegetables and Flowers they want to grow. Frankly this makes me LOL. Her thinking there is anything SECRET about her garden is ridiculous. We know EVERY SQUARE INCH. I also consider the involvement of grandchildren to be a boon to us as the more people using the door the more likely it will be left open. Let’s remind ourselves. She is a naive soul who always underestimates us. That’s why we call her Mollyanna. (For those of you who don’t know this reference, there is a copy of the book Pollyanna available to read at our winter HQ)
I must stop here. I need another couple weeks sleep before the Groundhog Day Love Fest. Please join me then at the usual location to celebrate our indubitable and imminent success in retaking the vegetable garden.
Here is a story shared with permission about a GHF friend and a a Custom Flower Essence mix made to support her with painful sinus pressure, related vision issues and what she experienced as pressure to open her third eye further than she wanted to open it. This GHF friend gave us the backstory on what she thought was going on and asked us to create a Custom Flower Essence mix for her. (And BTW, anyone connecting with the farm is a GHF friend!)
To given an overview of why she would link sinus pressure to her third eye, let me briefly say a few things about our chakra systems.
Incoming light energy or prana moves down through our chakras from the top of our heads to below our feet. Prana fills us with life force energy, but it ALSO supports us to raise our electrical vibration to keep in homeostasis with our swiftly evolving planet.
Our chakras are energy hubs co-exisitng within our physical body. Each chakra is responsible for moving this incoming light energy into a specific part of our energy system. The chakras are linked to spiritual and vibrational issues, but they also coexists within a specific part of our anatomy and therefore connect with physical issues as well. Symptoms in our physical body indicate spiritual issues in a specific chakra and visa versa.
Different chakras are linked to different spiritual work. For example our first chakra, located in the base of our spine, is linked to issues of survival, grounding, safety and family or tribe of origin.
Because we adapt to change in some realms of our lives better than others, sometimes a chakra will have a challenging time moving all the incoming energy through itself. I think of this as like a garden hose where kinks, blockages or weaknesses in the hose can impede the flow of water. If we know the spiritual concerns of the chakra, we can work to heal both the physical symptoms and the spiritual issues thus opening the chakra to more life force energy. Unkinking and strengthening a chakra by working to heal the issues of the chakra make it possible for more light to move through the chakra. This will improve the health of that area of the body and allow for more light to move through our whole energy system.
If you click the Find A Flower Essence tab on the Home Page then click on Topics in the bar on the left, you can scroll down to the Topic Chakras to find a discussion of each of the seven main chakras in our energy system and tabs for Flower Essences which support our work with these chakras.
In response to this GHF friend asking for a Custom Flower Essence mix for her sinus concerns, the Angels choose Flower Essences from the upper fifth, sixth and seventh chakras with an emphasis on the sixth chakra which is also called the Third Eye Chakra. The sixth chakra is all about the issues of vision, sorting truth from illusion, letting ourselves open to expand our definition of what we see and know to be true and bravely living from this truth.
I use the word bravely for a reason. When I did past life readings back in the 80’s and 90’s, on more than one occasion the person sitting with me for the reading had been mutilated on their forehead or third eye area by someone else such as a religious priest in order for them to receive higher guidance. In one case the person was mutilated then thrown off a cliff because the mutilation hadn’t worked. This was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of seeing past life reels in which people were hurt or killed because of their communities religious beliefs or because their own beliefs did not conform to the beliefs of their community. Needless to say, this trauma leaves scars in peoples’ memory/ etheric bodies ( the memory/etheric body is described in this document on our Resource page). These wounds make people hesitate in this life to live their spiritual truth.
One thing I want to add here is that in my experience, past lives are only brought to the surface when we need to see something in them that will help us heal and move on. Information is brought forward from the akashic records only to serve our eternal souls and not our personalities.
When we composed this Custom Mix for the GHF friend, she told us she was reluctant to further open her third eye to more clairvoyance. She described herself as a psychic who really didn’t want to further pursue this path as it had brought her considerable grief. However the symptom of sinus pressure would just not go away, and she felt she had to surrender to whatever was being asked of her.
Tuberose is a key Essence in this mix. It is deeply supportive of her release into her divine purpose and flow. Flow Free also concerns getting stuck energy moving. I consider it one of the most vital Flower Essences in our collection. Not surprisingly, the Vision Flower Essence focuses on issues of vision. Breathe is the standby for ear, nose and throat concerns. Grapefruit, Snapdragon and UCal Snapdragon (a Flower Essence mix of many colored Snapdragons grown at the farm) support the adjustment of the cranial plates to allow for more light to flow through these upper chakras. Symptoms in the head can be caused by stuck cranial plates which happens frequently when the vibrational energies of the planet rise as fast as they are doing right now. Snapdragon also supports us to have spiritual spine and live our complete truth. The Flower Essence friend Wound Healing helps heal the past life as well as current life wounds that create the fear of going forward on our spiritual paths whether this means further clairvoyance or something else entirely. The GHF friend requesting the mix noted that her family of origin had not taken kindly to her different kinds of experiences of reality, and this had meant an isolated childhood as well as a feeling that being true to self was a lonely thing. In addition to this concern about further isolation, sometimes clairvoyance can be unsettling because the person sees things they would rather not see. Bottle Gentian and Eyes of Mary help with this. Specifically Bottle Gentian helps us keep seeing clearly in tumultuous times (as in right now). Eyes of Mary supports us to see clearly but not process this as meaning we are responsible for everything we see. In the same vein, Through Angels’ Eyes is a Venus Garden creation that helps us hold a higher point of view which blends love with discernment about what is and isn’t our path. Scarlet Runner Bean helps us release our fears of change and supports our physical body which can experience change as an existential threat. Safe Passage is a powerful balm for this time, palpably reminding us that together we will birth a new iteration of love on this planet and this work is profoundly supported by untold spiritual beings as are we.
This mix both respects this dear GHF friend’s reluctance to open the chakra fiurther and gives support for her to trust the wisdom of letting go. This is always the dance of our spiritual journey isn’t it?
The Staff Goddesses teach me many things. Lately we’ve had many conversation about the planetary movements from Capricorn to Aquarius officially ushering in the long heralded Aquarian Age. While I am certain I will not explain this as well as the Staff, the gist of it is that the energetic focus is moving from Capricorn to Aquarius right now with both some outer planets and inner planets on the go heading for new Aquarian territory. The next few weeks, in fact the next few days, bring some rare conjunctions and a whole new dynamic in how we experience our world and our learning lessons on stage set earth. Slow moving Pluto was the vanguard of this shift and will be in Aquarius for the next few decades.
The focus of a lot of this decade has been on building from the strengths of Capricorn. This includes mastery of form, thriving within complex structures, generally being a goat going up the mountain of structures that are perhaps not of our own creation but are something we worked hard to master. Sometimes the climbing was so consuming that we didn’t get a chance to think whether it was an expression of our soul or simply a job we were expected to do. Well that is all about to change.
The energy we move into couldn’t be more different. We move from generally navigating other people’s structures to exploring the unique purpose of our soul and ways we feel called to express this. If there has been a feeling of constriction during this Capricornian time, this is about to shift.
As Staff Goddess Elizabeth said, what lies ahead is a little bit like leaving our childhood home for the first time and realizing that we are no longer confined by parental rules. Instead we are called to go within and find our own rules. It may feel a bit disorienting, but I expect it will feel exhilarating too. The planetary astrology will encourage us to dream our unique dreams and go outside exisiting structures to live these dreams. A conjunction of Neptune and Saturn means the dreams won’t be based on illusions. Instead we will be supported to link our dreams to deep soul purpose.
The Capricornian work we’ve been doing to learn how to bring things into form will serve us to bring our unique vision and soul purpose into the world. We won’t have to throw out the baby with the bath water.
One example of this shift to Aquarian self expression occurred to me today. In a family of men who love their sports, I often watch golf, soccer, basketball, you name it. This week’s golf news was that golfer Brooks Koepka left the Saudi run LIV golf league to rejoin the PGA tour. This struck me as an Aquarian move in alignment with his soul purpose. He will not get the insane amount of guaranteed money he would have gotten had he stayed in the LIV structure. In fact he will pay $5 million to charity to rejoin the PGA tour. In choosing to return to the PGA, he will live on his own terms and rise and fall on his own merit. This kind of choice will be part of the shift from Capricornian structures to Aquarian times. We will live on our own soul driven terms, make our own heart felt choices and face the exhilaration and challenges of living our own version of our unique soul purpose. (And if you had asked me if I would ever have mentioned golfer Brooks Koepka in a blog I would have thought it improbable, but then we head towards an improbable but wonderful shift! )
As we begin to imagine and then inhabit this Aquarian territory, I am grateful for many a Capricornian project here at Green Hope Farm. Today I think in particular of the Sovereignty Set. This set was created to help us protect our own personal sovereignty in a time in which the misuse of power has made this difficult. As we move into the Aquarian Age the Sovereignty Set will help us find soul purpose, soul identity and soul sovereignty. How marvelous this set is here ready to serve us on the threshold of this wonderful shift.
A mother of two adult children asked for a Custom Flower Essence mix. She explained that despite her traveling across the country to meet up with her children over the holidays, they were critical and dismissive of her. She expressed a deep desire to move past old patterns of engagement and find a new harmony.
After the Angels gave me the recipe, i saw that they had concentrated on family river territory. By that I mean inherited strengths and weaknesses that move down through our family systems. Healing family concerns so often comes from seeing familial patterns, habits and mindsets so as to either to embrace them as serving the light of the family or let them go if not.
I hoped her adult children would work with this family system healing mix with their mother. More healing can happen when several members of a family work on a family system than when one person tackles it on her own. We sent off a mix with three spritzer bottles to make it easier for the adult children to engage with the mix and it’s healing intentions.
The first Flower Essences the Angels chose for her mix were The Family River trio of Black Currant, Bloodroot and Borage. These three Flower. Essences support us to heal inherited unhelpful patterns in how we communicate with each other and how we live. Families have both tendencies towards spiritual growth and tendencies to block growth. Sometimes it is very hard to discover these strengths or dissolve the weaknesses and this mix is very clarifying.
The Black Currant helps us see and release family baggage going back seven generations. This baggage includes things like dysfunctional ways of handling problems or unhelpful patterns of reacting to each other. For example, in my own family of origin positive approaches to life were compromised and often dismantled by arrogance, over intellectualization and alcholism. The Black Currant powerfully helps break up counter productive familial tendencies.
Many people have shared stories about working with this Flower Essence. One story I remember is someone who worked with Black Currant reporting that she dreamed she was leaving baggage at a train station, understanding in the dream that the baggage was not hers but her grandparents.
Bloodroot helps us recognize and bring forward the strengths of our family system while Black Currant supports us to shed the baggage of unhelpful qualities. Here is a bit of how Bloodroot is described here on the website: “Bloodroot acts as a very powerful beam of light that cuts through the surface muck of our family of origin’s ego driven patterns to illuminate the family’s divine wisdom.” The Angels feel it is such a vital remedy that they had it grace the cover of one of our guidebooks.
Borage is there in the trio to help us have the courage to do this intensive cleansing, clearing and clarifying work. This is difficult and brave work, and this Flower Essence helps us keep going when the going gets tough.
The healing practitioner who coined the name Family River Trio for this trio went on to use it with hundreds of clients and this trio has always had a very active presence in our collection.
Next the Angels chose Wound Healing, an Essence that helps to heal wounds of all sorts. The versatility of this Essence never ceases to amaze me.
Musk Thistle helps restore order after a release and is particularly effective in rebooting the physical body after an emotional siege.
Climbing New Dawn Rose brings reassurance that all family dynamics exist within a framework of loving evolutionary change, and things will move forward.
Sanctuary was another choice the Angels made for the mix. Our right to sanctuary remains a pressing matter. Family members feel more able to engage in ongoing harmonious interactions if they feel in personal sanctuary. I plan to write more about this topic soon. Sanctuary and the sovereignty of each of us remain a central focus of the Angels work with Flower Essence support, and even a cursory look at the news tells us why. ( In the meantime check out blogs and full description of the Sovereignty Set and each of its six Essences).
Heliotrope helps us lay down any grudge we hold against ourselves, an often inherited mindset that makes it difficult for us to be gentle with ourselves and those around us.
Meadowsweet works to dismantle this mindset further by encouraging deep self love and an almost playful and soft experience of self as Divinity.
Queen Anne’s Lace helps pull the threads of a divided situation back together into wholeness and harmony. Despite its fragile appearance, it is a very powerful Flower Essence.
Most fruit trees have white or blush pink blossoms but Peach has very robust and gorgeous deep pink blossoms. This echos its ability to open us to greater love. Peach helps us find a joyful kindness, compassion and love for ourselves and all around us. It is a marvelous and sparkly ally.
So there is the 13 or baker’s dozen going into this Custom Flower Essence mix. Please remember we are so happy to make up a custom mix for you or anyone in your world. We learn so much from what Flower Essences the Angels collect into these healing bouquets and we love serving your light in this way!
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.
Don’t we look like we are having fun?
As a community of Flowers, Angels, Nature Spirits, Dogs, Cats and even some People, Green Hope Farm can be a funny place……and I love telling you all about it!
