One of the joys of working with Flower Essences is watching how children and animals embrace their gifts.
It has been my experience that children approach Flower Essences with enthusiasm, delight and confidence in Flower Esssences and in their ability to make the most of them.
Children like it when someone spritzes them with a mix of Flower Essences. They will dance around under the spray with joyful abandon. They also love it when they are set loose to make their own Flower Essence mix in their own bottle. They will select and mix Flower Essences with focus and clarity as if they have been making mixes from the beginning of time.
From babyhood, children will seek out Flower Essences when they feel in need. One of my children’s first words was “flower.” As a small toddler, Emily would say “flower” then open her mouth like a baby bird to receive drops of Flower Essences in her mouth. Now her children, nieces and nephews also reach for the Essences as do many visiting children.
Here Emily is using her skills as a second grade teacher to entertain the troops.
It is such fun when a new child visits, looks over our inventory of Flower Essences and then judiciously choses bottles. Children can read the energy of Flower Essences way before they can read their labels. If given a chance, they will flawlessly choose Flower Essences that address whatever is going on with them. I’ve seen so many children confidently choose what they need without a moment’s doubt. I have also gotten to read your many letters about children in your lives and how they use Flower Essences. We treasure all your stories.
I also remember so many instances when Flower Essences brought an immediate and noticeable shift in a child. Children’s work with Flower Essences is inspiring and aspirational. They don’t let ideas of limitation bog them down but recognize what the Flowers offer and embrace this fully.
Animals also approach Flower Essences with an attitude which both indicates they recognize the gifts of Flower Essences, and also that they know they deserve these gifts. Like children, they don’t limit their availability to the gifts of Flower Essences but soak them in fully.
Yes, I have witnessed sniffy cats who have to get used to the gifts of Flower Essences before cozying up to them, but in the vast majority of situations, cats, like other animals, make full use of the Flower Essences that they are offered. Animals recognize Flower Essences as healing energies they would have found in Nature if they were given full range to roam. When presented with these energies in a bottle form, they delight in their arrival.
Rescue animals sometimes take to Flower Essences differently than other animals because the damage done them by the human community has hurt their sense of the unlimited and supportive nature of life. This is one reason I am so grateful that so many of you and so many rescue organizations use our Flower Essences especially Abandonment & Abuse as over time, the shackles of these bindings can be dissolved and these dear ones can find a trusting relationship with life and with people again.
We do much work with the Global Sanctuary for Elephants in Brazil, and it is one of so many projects that bring us to tears of joy as these dear elephants find their true nature again after lifetimes of incarceration.
To come at this idea of moving from limitation to the unlimited, I want to talk about a book I reread and reread. The book is Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher. I reread the book during December each year and try to finish it by the actual Solstice. I have probably read it twenty times and practically know it by heart, but I have no intention of stopping.
I have no other book that calls to me in quite the same way, and I spend a lot of time wondering what possesses me to reread this book year after year.
My current theory is that it has to do with this topic of limits. I love all of Rosamunde Pilcher’s books including her best known Shell Seekers, but I believe this is her wisest book. There is no plot synopsis that could do the book justice, but I offer a short one anyways. The book is about a group of people who unexpectedly find themselves staying in the same house in Scotland during the cold, dark month of December. Some are related and others are strangers. Each person in the book has experienced a shattering blow in their lives. Rosamunde doesn’t belabor this nor do the characters. but each of them must find great inner strength and courage to rise above their personal pain to take care of each other during this unexpected house party. My description may make this book sound trite and maybe a bit grim, but it’s not. The story is told through all the different characters perspective, and the reader falls in love with each of them. Some characters even fall in love with each other, but unlike many of her books (all of which I love), other kinds of love join romantic love in this story.
The characters are plucky and don’t take themselves too seriously. They acknowledge their wounds but try to get on with it using humor as one of their survival tools. Rosamunde always has wonderfully irritating minor characters who do their best to selfishly ruin everything, but in this book these characters are dealt with and move offstage. The people gathered are flawed but trying to accept their fates with grace and selflessness. Again, this sounds BORING but it’s not.
As I dive into Winter Solstice again this year, I have been thinking how each character in the book has been given problems that could limit their outlook and approach to their unexpected new lives. They could rest in bitterness and even justify their bitterness because they have all been through the wringer. However, the difficulties they see each other facing bring out their desire to rise above their own situations and become a sort of unlimited version of themselves. Life has tested their faith and they have consciously decided to embrace life anyways.
I have made this sound much more obvious and reductive than the story actually is. Rosamunde is at her most subtle here, which may be why I have had to read the book twenty times to even begin to have theories about what makes this a magical book.
In any case, Winter Solstice inspires me just as the beloved children and animals do to not get so tied to what I think of as limits in my life or in “reality” or in my view of humanity and just know we all can and will rise above our limits to be more full of love than we ever imagined.
I don’t know about your household, but here at the farm this week’s focus is on turkeystuffingmashed potatoesgreen beansgravypumpkin piefootball soccer.
Most of those who will attend out Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday grew up with a soccer ball at their feet and for the entire crowd, soccer is the beautiful game and the odd timing of the World Cup during Thanksgiving week, a beautiful thing.
At the meal itself, I expect to walk on eggshells as I desperately search for benign topics to talk about. The flash points will not be politics but people’s deep and abiding affection for different soccer players. The Thanksgiving attendees watch a lot of premiership soccer, and all these soccer players have now scattered to the winds to play for the country they sometimes seem to have been born in. This leaves me 100 % confused about Thanksgiving attendees loyalties and 100% confident I will annoy everyone by liking the wrong player or the wrong team.
Will it even be safe to say, “How about that American squad?” Probably not because the USA team messed up their chances to get out of the group stage yesterday by earning a tie with Wales. And speaking of Wales, as I watched the game with some family members yesterday, I blurted out a comment about loving the Welch singing in the stands. Not a good moment. This is just the sort of annoying thing I am likely to do.
Perhaps my Thanksgiving should involve a vow of silence in order to avoid ruffling feathers. One thing is for certain, I will lighten things up with my usual “go to” of a Custom Flower Essence mix to spritz.
All attendees will get spritzed as they enter the stadium house. Seriously spritzed. The spritz will be heavy on Anxiety, the Letting Go Flower, Don’t Worry-Bee Happy, Arbor Garden, Indian Pipe, Fairy Rose, Grounding, Eyes of Mary and Gorse. We will need all the perspective, calm, peace, detachment, and humor possible because describing the Thanksgiving attendees as soccer fans is a cosmic understatement putting it mildly. This is a group in orbit passionate about the game.
Let’s just hope the spritz helps remind them soccer is a GAME (I swear I heard a voice shouting Soccer is Life as I typed that!).
But back to the Flower Essence spritz. As they always do, the little people in the crowd will dance around under the mist loving the spriz. The older ones will navigate through the Flower Essence mist without comment. Partly this is because they’ve experienced my spritzing for thirty five years and partly this will be because they will be DISTRACTED and not by the excellent cranberry sauce or pumpkin bread.
They will be concentrating on the day’s games which on Thanksgiving Day includes a 5 am tip between Switzerland and Cameroon, an 8 am tip between South Korea and Uruguay, an 11 am tip between Portugal and Ghana and a 2 pm tip between Brazil and Serbia. But I suspect the Thanksgiving day conversational fretting focus will not be on these games. Instead the gathered crowd will be doing the math about Friday’s game of USA vs England.
As I mentioned, the attendees watch a lot of the premiership games so they know a great many of the World Cup players. They love the English team. Frankly they know and love a lot of the teams, but still, the USA team will be messing with their heads absorbing their attention as they endlessly ponder, “Can the US overcome its heartbreaking tie with Wales yesterday to move out of the early rounds?”
Being the person responsible for four hundred forty of the last forty three Thanksgivings, I have my own reasons for spritzing with a mix that will help me detach and let go. I know what is involved in getting this feast to the table. I know how much advance prep and thought is required not to mention elbow grease. And this year for the second year in a row, I am not in charge.
Three serious soccer fans are responsible for the meal, and I am only in charge of the mashed potatoes. This is a needed refreshing and appreciated change for me. Let’s just hope I can really let go, because before this trio brings the meal to the table there will be 12 more World Cup soccer matches to divert them. Knowing how distracted this may make them, it will take my complete focus to NOT do any backseat cooking.
Yesterday I failed miserably at not interfering. I texted the three pillars of the meal- Ben ( lifelong soccer player and serious soccer fanatic ) Charlie ( lifelong soccer player and serious soccer fanatic ) and Emily ( lifelong soccer player and serious soccer fanatic ) to see if they “needed anything at the grocery store.” I am nothing if not obvious in my backseat cooking.
The trio is a group who keep their phones close so as to chime in immediately if someone shares a timely meme or gif on a group thread. The eight hours of radio silence led me to suspect know that the trio was watching glued to England vs Iran then Senegal vs Netherlands then Wales vs USA and also studiously avoiding my desperate bid to do some backseat cooking.
Radio Silence. It’s a special and rare thing in this era of cell phones. I should have enjoyed it. Instead I wondered if they knew exactly how limp the green beans on offer at the grocery store were and whether they had found better or were even thinking about green beans.
Frankly, after the USA vs Wales game I didn’t mind that no one was answering my texts. I knew they all needed to bounce back from the tie in their own ways. For me it was a wander through the produce aisle at the packed supermarket wondering if the chefs in charge of our Thanksgiving even CARED about green beans.
Hopefully today’s tips with Argentina vs Saudi Arabia at 5 am today Denmark vs Tunisia at 8 am, Mexico vs Poland at 11 am and France vs Australia at 2 pm will help them all get focused on the task ahead and take my mind of the green beans.
My confidence in the above statement has just been shattered. Its 6 am as I type, and I have already been informed the 5 am game is in CRISIS as Argentina is behind. This, I was told, is a serious problem because they all LOVE Lionel Messe. Apparently more than green beans.
Yup. I need to let go. On Thanksgiving day, I vow to join the grandchildren on the floor with the puppets, matchbox cars and play food and leave the cooks to their kitchen tasks. At worst we will have a meal of mashed potatoes. I will not care about the meal and if it contains green beans. If soccer is just a GAME then I need to remember that Thanksgiving dinner is only a MEAL. It’s the faces around the table that count and hopefully at least for a few moments they won’t be stewing about a thirty two polygon sided ball.
Fall has lingered here. Garden tasks are done, yet the gardens are still warm and inviting. Bulbs are planted (and eaten by the rampaging squirrels). Flower beds are tidied. The vegetable gardens are mulched with their winter coat of hay. In a region where fall often is a short season abruptly ending with the arrival of snow, this year is different. Each day I sit in the gardens and rest in the soft light and palette of still vibrant colors.
The word “becalmed” keeps coming to me as I simply sit
(sometimes knitting and sometimes not). According to the dictionary “becalmed”
means “(a sailing vessel) left
unable to move through lack of wind.” As
far as sailing goes, this sounds dire, yet the more I think about this word,
the more I wonder about its broader meaning.
Is being becalmed always a bad thing? There in the very word be-calmed
is the suggestion that to be becalmed can be a good thing too, bringing a state
of inner calm.
Rest is built into Nature.
Our long fall of good weather has provided me a chance to just be in the
gardens without a task list, but this time of year would bring rest even if the
weather was colder. In November, the growing season is over, and at least for
me, that means time to rest and let go and wait for the dream of the next
growing season to be born after the Winter Solstice.
Rest has taken on particular significance for me this fall. I have been inspired to rest more as a revolutionary practice after hearing Tricia Hersey, author of Rest is Resistance- A Manifesto, talk about the power of rest.
Hersey illuminates the truth that our system of
capitalism/patriarchy treats humans as machines bent to the wheel of profits
for a select few. Her lived belief is
that if each of us take back our sovereignty through the radical act of rest,
the whole system of exploitation and overwork will dissolve away, one nap at a
time.
Hearing Tricia galvanized me to rest more, but it also got me thinking about all the times in my life when rest has been transformative. Rest has always deepened my connection to our collective bigger self, and it’s often been a game changer in my life.
In case you are new to this blog, I continue by noting that my family of origin was a patriarchy with a capital P. This meant no one in the family believed in the power of rest. The primary patriarch, my maternal grandfather, wrote a book on the origins of French mercantilism/capitalism in the 16th century. This meant capitalism as the economic system of patriarchy was the mountain he lived and died on, and he expected us to die on it too. The family slogan was, “Work ‘til the work is done,” a grim even dangerous motto. No one questioned the legitimacy of this ethos, so family members either worked themselves to death or broke down in total exhaustion, depression, illness, unhappiness or addiction.
One therapist described our clan as a group of people all rowing very, very hard in a boat without the slightest clue where we were going. Throughout my childhood, human train wrecks happened in slow motion all around me, but no one examined why. We just kept rowing and rowing and rowing. Regardless of the pain patriarchy caused us, the climate remained one of endless criticism about not doing enough or not doing it well enough. In lonely isolation we each labored to become something, never resting in the truth of our innate wholeness or in the fullness of just being.
The woods, fields and waterways around my childhood home were the release valve from the crushing values of my home life. Nature was the saving grace in my life, but at home it was all about the patriarchal values of productivity, accomplishment, goal orientation and doing everything “perfectly.”
In musing about rest and committing myself more deeply to it, I recall how resting with two broken arms brought me to a new understanding of my wholeness. I also realize how all the built in naps and quiet times of rest with little children helped me birth Green Hope Farm and my calling with Flowers. I credit the rest, quiet, naps and the very slow pace of life with little people as giving me a spacious inner landscape to dream the dream of Green Hope Farm. In rest I found my passion for Flowers and the spiritual path.
One of my first transformative experiences with rest happened in college. My patriarchal grandfather paid for my college, and he expected perfect grades from me in exchange for his “gift.” During my freshman year, I studied night and day, yet my grandfather found my freshman grades unacceptable. They were truly the best I could do when living by his rules of constant, joyless studying, but they were not perfect as he demanded. Sad, angry, defiant and determined to just be me, I began my sophomore year with a different plant. I would stop chasing good grades. In fact I would stop studying. Instead, I decided to rest.
I did the required reading and went to class but then, before any exam, I would move my bed into the center of my dorm room and just lie there, becalmed. Once in the exam, I would turn over the exam to a part of my being that experienced its interconnection to all things and let that consciousness write the exam. My childhood time in Nature had given me a capacity to go into this consciousness and now it became my way to navigate college.
Not only did rest positively transform my daily life as a student, but the more I rested the better things went. This didn’t really surprise me as the stuff I was writing wasn’t from my limited consciousness.
As I rested and relaxed into this bigger consciousness more and more, I realized none of us needed to feel alone as separate test takers or separate isolated learners. The greater self we all share is ever there offering the support and insights we need. Rest and letting go were the doorways into this place of wholeness and expansiveness. All we had to do is stop listening to patriarchy and lie down and nap.
Rest made me aware there were plenty of ideas and as they moved through me, I didn’t need to claim ownership of them to feel like enough. It never felt like a less than experience to not see them as mine. Ideas were their own pleasure and didn’t need to be owned. I didn’t really care about the focus on ownership as I felt more whole and content listening to this bigger consciousness than I had ever felt leaning on “my own resources.”
My new approach to being a student threw patriarchy into the garbage pail. Patriarchy is built on the illusion of scarcity. It exhorts us to compete for limited resources against each other, yet here I was experiencing that we were all part of the same consciousness so all divisions were false, all ideas were shared and academic or any other kind of competition was like the left hand slapping the right hand.
This was just the beginning of many skirmishes with patriarchy. Another came much later when I began Green Hope Farm.
Out of enthusiasm, love and rest was born the business of Green Hope Farm, but business was a territory held by patriarchs and even in my tiny town, they didn’t welcome outside the box thinking. This meant that patriarchs who got wind of my tiny business seemed intent on caging me in with their rigid constructs or thresholds guardian of fear. Anything to stop me in my tracks.
Massive amounts of unsolicited patriarchal advice flowed my way the second I sold my first bottle of Flower Essences. One retired executive pinned me down at a party to drill me on something called the 80/20 rule and berate me that I had no business plan. I wanted to tell him I was lucky if I got the week’s grocery list written down on paper let alone a business plan. He leaned into me with questions like what were my short and long term goals? Ummmm. Grow more Flowers? Get the kids to school before I packed the day’s orders? Savor the fun of sharing Flower Essences with people and animals? Keep the cat from knocking over bottles of Flower Essences every day?
Thank goodness for my years being in the garden with children, the Angels and Elementals. As the patriarchs told me over and over again how little I knew and how screwed I was because of this, I listened instead to the ever peaceful and calm Angels and Elementals. They had been my partners in creating the gardens in the first place, so they were my partners of choice in this business too. With their input, we set the template of the business that broke with patriarchy. This group of advisors also solved problems for me before I even knew they were problems. They also respected my body and supported a humane and restful way to do business.
Not only did my advisors frequently speak to me about REST, but they built rest into the whole organization. We began our work days with meditation. Each day we would meditate for as long as we wanted, and this helped our work flow immeasurably. Our daily and weekly schedule was never a worldy one but one that was gentler and shorter. We ended our days at three or four because most of us had small children. If a staff goddesses needed to leave early or take time off for themselves or a child, it was not a problem. On Fridays, the office was closed. The Angels insisted we needed this time out from the pressures of the work week and the pressures of the modern weekend. How right they were, and how grateful I am that the Angels built rest into the very bones of the business. It made all the difference in how we moved through the next thirty five years.
Well I could yammer on and on about rest, but maybe that’s enough for now and I will just add, Long live REST!
I conclude this blog with some Flower Essence suggestions that support us to rest, help us dissolve the grip patriarchy has on us and sink us into experiences of our wholeness. Flower Essences and the occasional big drama like my broken arms have helped me keep focused on the reality of my wholeness and the ability of rest to remind me of this wholeness. Flower Essences have also helped me with the ongoing task of dismantling patriarchy and my inner patriarch (a.k.a. Goodbye Grandpa).
Patriarchal values reflect a values system based on ideas of
productivity, goal orientation, intellectual excellence and spiritual
perfection at the expense of being human with the underlying false belief that
we are not born perfect but must make ourselves perfect.
The suggestions given for dismantling patriarchy are:
Since we began sending Gaia Knows Best out into the world ( our gift with any order until at least 2023), we have been hearing back from you about your experiences sharing this Essence in your world. All you have shared with us is so precious, and we thank you for your notes, letters and today, photographs. We love thinking of so many of you dear ones giving back to Gaia by putting Gaia Knows Best Flower Essence in places on her. At least a couple times a day, we cry happy tears, feel shivers up our spines and find ourselves awash in gratitude to be part of this circle of healing. WOW! Thank you!
If you would like to send us photos of where you have shared Gaia Knows Best, I will post these photos in another blog ( or blogs). Here are the two photos we received today from one of you Beloveds who lives in Aquinah on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.
One other thing I wanted to share with you. As I passed the Gaia Knows Best garden one afternoon this week (probably with a wheelbarrow of mulch), I heard singing. Awash in tears yet again, I stopped to listen to the song. It was Gaia singing to all of you sharing this Essence. When I asked Gaia what was going on, she said you could all listen in your hearts and hear her singing to you. It may feel like just your imagination but it’s not. Gaia is singing to YOU.
Welcome Dear Friends to the annual meandering news from Green Hope Farm!
If meandering is not your cup of tea, in brief, the Venus Garden Flower Essence for 2022 is GAIA KNOWS BEST. It is a GIFT and a bottle of this Essence will be included with all orders. Mother Earth asks you to put drops of this Flower Essence in places on her where you feel called to put drops. This will help heal and uplift her and support us all to co-create a New Earth..
The second thing is that this growing season, as you shared with us your concerns and hopes, a group of Roses stepped forward to explain their timely support for these concerns. The qualities they embody and share via their Flower Essences are described by them as already within you. These Rose Flower Essences’ gift is to help you access these strengths as your very own.
Building from what you requested, here is a list of the Rose Flower Essences and the strengths they help you access from within yourself.
If you wish to get any of these Rose Flower Essences, please order the Flower Essence by name of the Rose not the topic. The Going Inward Rose Collection is also offered as a set for $120.
ONE REASON FLOWER ESSENCES HELP
Flowers become themselves. A Zinnia seed does not grow into a Daisy plant. Flowers have no interest in becoming something they are not. They remain ever true to themselves.
Flower Essences help us be like the Flowers and become who we are. They don’t thwart our process of self actualization or take us in rogue directions. They waste no time encouraging us to be what we aren’t. Instead, they help us let go of anything that blocks our unfolding into our true and authentic self. Often these blocks are limiting ideas we hold about ourselves.
The process of becoming our authentic self is a letting go as we are asked to let go of definitions that we thought helped us know who we are. Flower Essences reveal we are always much bigger than these self definitions. By releasing self definitions, we experience our vast and timeless self beyond duality and limitation. Flower Essences help us do this work.
A SUMMER OF “I DON’T KNOW”
This year’s growing season of virtually no rain and baking heat was a big shift from last year when in July alone we received nine inches of rain. In fact, our extremely hot and dry summer was different than any in the last four decades here. We also heard from many of you about extreme and unfamiliar weather. Farming always requires flexibility amidst unexpected variables and an acceptance of very different outcomes. This summer was a particularly unpredictable adventure.
The season started with a bang or rather a crash. Our enormous thirty year old arbor and centerpiece of the Arbor Garden collapsed in a big wind. To rebuild or not rebuild? That was the question. Every day I spent time in the garden space, open to what the garden wanted. Like all land, these gardens have their own destiny. I get to be a part of that destiny but not in charge of it. The cooling shade and feeling of sanctuary provided by the old Arbor was gone, yet with the arbor removed (a big messy project!) the surrounding gardens, long in deep shade, were now open, sunny spaces. Elsewhere in the gardens our perennial beds have filled in with trees and shrubs making these gardens much shadier. This gave the suddenly sunny Arbor Garden a certain appeal. A small arbor that survived the blowdown looked surprisingly happy and easily managed the now pruned grapevines. Its presence meant we could still call the Essence we make from this garden, The Arbor Garden, regardless of whether we built a new arbor. One day I knew the garden wanted to be left open. The loss of the Arbor had proven expansive and liberating to the space. I was glad I waited patiently in an “I don’t know.” state of mind. So was Jim who was happy not to add the construction of a new arbor to his long list of farm projects.
No rain fell for several months. What guidance did we receive to help the gardens through this time? The guidance was a single word I am deeply familiar with: MULCH. Building, nourishing and protecting soil with mulch has long been a focus, but this summer my Angelic and Elemental partners upped the game and had me put 20 cubic yards of bark mulch on the Flower gardens and umpteen bales of mulch hay on the three main vegetable gardens. If you want a visual on 20 cubic yards of bark mulch, it filled two industrial size dump trucks. My back can also give you more information. Every garden was top dressed with the nutritionally dense compost we make, organic soil amendments and then hay or bark mulch. Green Hope Farm is an organic farm so no pesticides, glyphosates or chemical fertilizers are used.
As one blistering hot day followed another, I questioned my feeling of calm. Was it nuts that I trusted the Angels and Elementals’ regenerative agricultural processes would help the gardens manage this extreme weather? I decided to remain confident. After all, the intelligence in Nature has been managing an ever changing planet for a very long time.
We still did some rain dances, talked about rain constantly, searched the two week forecast for predictions of rain and waxed poetic about last year’s rainy summer. I watered only when guided to water which was very infrequently. In conversations with my Angelic and Elemental partners, I stayed alert to any new way they wanted me to use my hands and feet for the team. Together we explored how we can co-create and heal the Earth in shifting circumstances.
In the end, it was one chubby woodchuck named Reginal Montgomery “Chuckie” Hogbottom who caused more distress in the gardens than the drought. You can check out Reginald’s report in a September 21, 2022 blog if you want to read about his successful plundering of the main vegetable garden. Everywhere else, mulch made a huge difference. Even the potatoes that love a wet summer managed to produce a good crop under their foot of mulch hay. Much to our surprise, one crop actually liked the dry heat. This crop was our beloved Red Shiso. Last week the staff goddesses and I cut and hung the crop to dry, and it was a magnificent harvest of deep purple and abundantly ruffled plants. It was our best harvest in many years.
Red Shiso early in the season. The Calendulas didn’t mind the heat either.
Doing what we could to manage the extreme weather then waiting in the unknown to see if our efforts would be enough had finished with experiences of hope. Our gardens had not become dustbowls because they all had “skin.” Plants had survived, not because of pesticides and petroleum based products, but because the soil was bio-diverse and alive with worms, bacteria, bugs, fungus and other forms of life that made the soil healthy enough to support life under arduous conditions. Efforts we made together were met with a response that revealed the powerful healing and adaptive capacity of Mother Earth. May we all move forward listening to her wisdom and letting go of our mistaken ideas that humans alone know best.
The Venus Garden is the center of our vibrational work at the farm. Since 1993, this beloved garden with its ever shifting designs ( and names! ) has resulted in deeply healing Flower Essences of a very high vibration. The Venus Garden is the keystone of the whole farm and our work in the world. I consider it our finest co-creation at Green Hope Farm (though our resident groundhog, Reginald Montgomery Hogbottom, would feel differently. He prefers a garden with more edibles). Each year us humans and our Angelic and Elemental partners build from all we have learned together in past gardens to create a relevant and healing garden and accompanying Flower Essence.
Our co-creative process has its own rhythm. The Autumn Equinox marks our harvest of the previous season’s learning lessons. At this point, the Angels hear from us humans as part of their process of figuring out where to take the gardens in the following year. During the darkest time of year, the Angels withdraw to plan how to take the farm forward in its evolution. Their plans for all the gardens including the Venus Garden are ready for us humans after the Winter Solstice. I look forward to the Winter Solstice for many reasons. One of them is because it is always very exciting to find out what the plan is for the coming year’s Venus Garden. It gives me a glimpse of the season’s focus and just plain inspires me for another growing season.
In January of this year, I settled down in all seriousness to receive the precise design for this year’s Venus Garden. As with all the gardens here, I expected to receive the design from the Angelic architects of form per usual. However this year came with a lovely twist. From the first meeting, Mother Earth was more involved in the actual planning of the garden than I had known her to be before. It appeared that this was HER garden in a more specific way than ever before. In many meetings, I sat with the Angels overlighting Green Hope Farm and Mother Earth to transcribe their input about the design. I started off not knowing anything and the knowing came from these precious partners.
Nature has more perspective than I do about what is needed in the gardens to create healing spaces and healing Flower Essences and to serve Gaia in the best way we can. This means I have always been completely happy to give over the designs to Nature. In the beginning, I saw this as reflecting my appropriate “less than” status in the partnership. I thought my partners were just being nice when they said I mattered and was an equal partner. With great patience, they spent years reminding me that my notions of inferiority were as false as human’s more common notions of superiority. In point of fact, we are all one. To bring home their point, they had us create Flower Essences that would help me grow into experiencing our onenness. Endless synchronicities in and out of the gardens and wonderful dreams also showed me our indivisibility.
As I moved towards a greater experience of us as one, I saw my divisive ideas were simply hogwash. First of all, oneness can’t actually have more or less valuable parts because in oneness we are all one. Additionally, we may all have different roles, but that doesn’t make any one of us more or less valuable.
I have come to realize that humans working in partnership with the Angels and Elementals of Nature is going to become the natural order of things. Together we can co-create more expansive and powerful healing spaces in Nature than when our human illusions of inferiority, superiority and separation take us out of the co-creative process. The future will be co-creation, and it will be fantastic.
To get back to this year’s Venus Garden, while some years the number of Flowers in the Venus Garden is limited, this year’s design included a very large number of different Flowers. With my partners looking over my shoulder, I spent hours pouring through seed catalogs to find the specific varieties required. What a moment of delight when I knew I had found all the seeds.
In March, the office and greenhouse spilled over with germinating seed flats. They were everywhere! By April our new hoop house was packed with baby plants for this garden. What a treat to have a hoop house once again thanks to former staffer Rex Miller and Jim. In early June, after the danger of frost had passed, Green Hope Farm friend Kathy Skolem and I planted the garden. The complex design included twelve distinct wedges, each containing sections of specific Flowers, all circling an inner sanctum of high climbing Flowers. It was one of the more complex designs we’ve planted. Kathy and I were very happy (and tired) when we had everything in the ground per the precise directions of our Angelic and Elemental partners.
Flowers planted included Dorothy Eckford White Sweet Pea, Milky Way Morning Glory, Holy Basil, Genovese Basil, Sweet Alyssum, Rocket White Snapdragons, Mehera Marigolds, Marine Blue Heliotrope, Verbena Bonariensis, White Gomphrena, Moldavian Dragonhead, White and Purple “Leda” Ageratum, Italian Purple Eggplant, White Peruvian Four O’Clocks, many varieties of White Zinnias including Polar Bear, White Wedding, Benary Giant White and Oklahoma White, Woodland “Only the Lonely” Nicotiana, Moonshadow Hyacinth Bean, Starlight Dancer Nicotiana, Jasmine Nicotiana, Belle Blanche Datura, White Queen Cleome, Horehound, Sage, White Cosmos BonBon and Purity Cosmos, Blue, White and Violet Bachelor Buttons including Select Ultraviolet, Krausa and Italian Large Leaf Parsley and Milkmaid Nasturtiums.
After we finished planting the garden, we stood back to admire our work and water in the plants. At this point, much to our surprise, we were asked not to go in the garden for the rest of the growing season. Gaia said complete sanctuary was what she needed to create this garden and a new healing Essence. From then on, there was no weeding or deadheading. Flowers came and went with many Flowers arriving of their own accord. These volunteers included Mustard, Belerephon of the Open Door, Dandelion, Blue Vervain, Mallow, Ajuga, Mexican Poppy, Bells of Ireland, Cosmos Picotee, Cosmos Sonata, Nicotiana Perfume in shades of pink, Coral Pink and Red Wine Zinnias. These plants shifted a white and purple garden on paper to one that included a rainbow of colors. When I walk by any garden, I routinely deadhead any spent blossoms and pull any weed I see. It took great concentration for me not to step into the garden. We were not even to lean over into its airspace! I only goofed once to deadhead a Cosmos. Sorry about that Gaia!
The garden gave Gaia a chance to express herself in a co-creative framework of us planting exactly what she wanted exactly as she wanted it. This is different than what can happen for her in a wilderness free of humans or in a setting where humans are not listening. Humans, in this instance, gave Gaia the opportunity to express herself in an innovative and new way. Like the Rose window of a cathedral, Gaia’s light flowed out of her through a garden mandala designed by her and worked by humans per her specifications. It was a vibrational model for what is possible when humanity and Nature work in conscious partnership. One day she said, “I am your mother, but I need the relationship to evolve. I wants to co-create the next chapter with humanity.”
This co-creative project was full of surprises. Over the growing season, I saw my ideas about what Mother Earth would want in her garden were misinformed. She welcomed various grasses and other weeds I considered messy and invasive. These newcomers in no way bothered the Flowers we had planted but seamlessly joined the space. I watered the garden once in a while, mostly because I wanted to connect with the space. The garden kept its serenity regardless of scorching heat. Once Gaia asked Kathy, who is a wonderful singer, to sing the garden a song. It was a beautiful heartfelt moment as Kathy sang, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” The rest of the time, it was my enthusiastic but not very talented singing that filled the air. It was very hard not to burst into song when near this garden. This was something Gaia seemed to love even when it was me forgetting the words to a song or singing off key. The back and forth reflected the flow of love from this garden which filled our hearts which would then spill back over into grateful song. That’s another thing, Gaia is not a perfectionist. She just wants us to try. My song was enough.
Yes, even as weeds proliferated, and nothing was tidied, the garden’s energy blew our socks off. Gaia certainly DID know best! Even now, after the Fall Equinox and first heavy frost, the garden broadcasts an intense feeling of sweetness and love, palpable and holy. Sometimes tears as well as song come as I walk by this garden. Along with sweetness is a calm certainty radiating from the garden that all will be well.
Mother Earth named her Essence, Gaia Knows Best. This garden was a refresher course reminding me I do not know what Mother Earth needs to heal, but Mother Earth does. This garden helped me listen more deeply and hopefully leave behind some “know it all” ideas I didn’t know I had.
And now, Gaia graces us with a chance to help her. She asked us to give the Flower Essence from this garden as a gift to all of you when you order so that you can share it with her wherever you live. She created a Flower Essence that will bring her solace, comfort and healing each time you share drops in other places on her surface. It will also ground a co-creative vibration where it is dropped and open wide the door for more co-creative endeavors. We send this Essence, Gaia Knows Best, to you with love and gratitude for your support of our dear Mother wherever you live or roam.
GAIA speaks: “Take comfort in the truth that I DO know best. Let go of your ideas and let me take myself and all you passengers forward. I know it has been a bumpy ride. It will remain so for a time to come, but I know what I am doing. All will be well.
It is a precious gift to me for you to share this Essence with places where you live and visit. I ask you to follow your promptings about where to drop these drops. These promptings are messages from me. In moving my Essence around my whole surface, a network of light is amplified. We heal together, and in the act of sharing this Essence, you support me more than you can know and solidify our unity of consciousness and purpose.”
A TIMELY RUMI POEM
As I began to write about Gaia Knows Best, I found these lines from a poem,
Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
These lines felt so expressive of Gaia’s Essence as each time a drop is dropped, it will be a different way to kiss the ground and express our love. When I went to find out who the poet was, I discovered it was 13th century Persian poet Rumi. I also found the whole poem.
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty / and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study / and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. / Let the beauty we love be what we do. / There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Somehow Rumi so accurately expresses our times with its collective distractions and stuck knowledge in counterpoint to the opportunity to be a sacred, beautiful and loving expression of the present. Since Rumi was God realized, the poem feels particularly encouraging and optimistic. The Roses also share this abiding optimism that even though things appear to be a total mess with not much clarity about where we are going, we can and will find our way using strengths already within us.
Grace Rose who initiated the Rose project
THE ROSES STEP FORWARD
The Angels frequently remind me that when people are confused, it can be easier for them to move forward in their spiritual evolution. I suspect this means we made a lot of steps forward this year!!! Yet the thing is, confusion still leaves us feeling confused. At one point, as the staff goddesses discussed how we weren’t at all sure what you needed, because for goodness sake, we weren’t sure what we needed, we decided to ask for your input. What issues pressed in upon you? What were you looking for? How best could we help you? From many wonderful conversations, we built a list of strengths and virtues that you wanted support to embody.
Much to our surprise and delight, as areas of concern came into focus, the Roses stepped forward to say this was their time to help you shine. What they said next echoes in my heart still. The Roses explained that each of us exists beyond the limits of our self definitions in complete timeless possession of the virtues and strengths required right now. Accessing these gifts is not a becoming something we are not, but an inward discovery and remembering of who we have always been and always will be.
Ispahan Rose
WHY ROSES?
Most Flowers come into incarnation on Earth to evolve and raise their vibrations in the milieu of duality. They do this to be part of the great experiment of Earth and to give us role models to raise our own vibrations.
Roses are different. Roses come into incarnation in a vibration beyond duality, aligned only with their unified experience of self as Divinity. In this way they are both a glimpse of where we are going and footholds for us to rise up into our untarnished soul.
Our mistaken self definitions bind us and keep us in artificial dramas on stage set Earth. Roses pokes holes in the stage set as well as in our mistaken self definitions. They dissolve away our attachment to the unreal and set us free to experience who we always have been, who we are now and who we will always be i.e. Divinity in a sea of Divinity. To put it more succinctly, Roses restore us to ourselves. How on Earth do they do this?
As the Roses stepped forward to be the wayshowers of the season, they explained that they help us find our divine and imperishable inner strengths much as a flashlight finds its target in the dark. It is not a creating but an illuminating. For example, when we work with Margaret Merrill Rose to access CALM, we are not pulling in calm from outside ourselves but finding the CALM that was always within us.
On the next pages, specific Roses share the strengths and virtues they want to help us access from within ourselves with their Essences. Each Rose wanted a brief explanation of its healing intentions to clarify the timely strengths it helps you access. Roses, like all Flowers, bring forward their strengths in accordance with our needs. These Roses heard your call.
Again, if you want any of these Rose Flower Essences, order them by the name of the Rose or order The Going Inward Rose Set to receive the whole group.
Alec Mackenzie Rose
ROSES AND THE FIGURE EIGHT
Before specific Roses are mentioned, there is one more thing. As we move our energy in the world, consider the figure eight. I’ve previously written about the figure eight as a symbol of how to bring things into manifestation. Now the Roses want us to consider how the eight also represents us going inward to our eternal self to refresh and restore ourselves and access parts of our bigger self in specific ways and then naturally flow back into the world expressing our bigger self and the qualities that make us who we are. The Roses want to support us in this inward and outward flow process.
Crumbling institutions and the “powers that were” would have us forget our own volition and our own powers of alchemy and transformation. This Rose snaps us out of that daze to remember we are powerful alchemists, able to transform lead into gold. Alchymist Rose roots us in an expansive self identity in which we know our inner power to radically heal and transform ourselves, and in every way, participate in the co-creation of a new Earth.
With so many outside forces clamoring to push us into pockets of group think, this Rose helps us ignore the hubbub and seek the steadfast grounding of our own true self. Wild Rose knows there is nothing more important than knowing who we are, so it escorts us inward to an expansive and liberating experience of this.
No matter how chaotic the outer circumstances of our lives, when we go inward, we find an eternal wellspring of stillness and calm. This Rose inspires us to breathe, let go of the surface circumstances and deep dive into this inner wellspring of calm.
Right now, as we experience so many things falling apart, Alex Mackenzie Rose helps us find our courage and inner fortitude to change what we must change and choose a new course with fearless determination. This Rose shines a light on our inner capacity to do what we are called to do and reminds us we have the inner strength to persevere and even flourish, no matter the external circumstances.
In times gone by we could live a life anchored in institutional values, requiring few individual choices or shifts. Direction, positive or negative, was provided by the surrounding culture. These externals have proven impermanent. Now disconnected from collapsing guideposts and confronted by a lot of half baked new ones, we must choose our own way amidst a cacophony of divergent opinions, few of which suggest a heartfelt way forward.
So how do we choose our direction? Ispahan Rose helps us go inward to access our inner compass that knows how to proceed in alignment with a more timeless experience of ourselves. It anchors us in an inner place where we can calmly and confidently sort things out and find our authentic way forward.
Whereas I often do not know why a Rose has the strengths it does, Ispahan’s purpose feels rooted to its source. Ispahan Rose comes from the ancient Persian city of the same name, Ispahan. Once the midpoint on the Silk Road and considered the center of the world, Ispahan was an extremely progressive city, integrating many cultures yet clear in its sense of self. This remains our charge in this time; to welcome different points of view then choose our way with confidence and acceptance of other viewpoints. Let Ispahan help you!
At her forty fifth reunion from college, Julia Child towered above her classmates. But it wasn’t her height or her fame which struck me as I watched her go by in an alumnae parade. It was her infectious joy that made her standout. Like sunshine in our midst, she glowed with an enthusiasm for life. How appropriate that this deep yellow Rose was named for her. As a Flower Essence, Julia Child Rose pulls us inward to find our own unquenchable enthusiasm for life. We too have a wellspring of happiness within us that knows the value of life and loves life regardless of its challenges. Anchored in this wellspring, Julia Child’s inner light lit the world. We too can anchor in our imperishable self, access our genuine and spontaneous delight in the living of life and let it shine as Julia did.
The collapse of the old is the birth of the new. Amidst the drama of the collapse, it can be hard to feel the reality of the new. This Rose Essence pulls us into our center which can dismantle our conviction that the endings stand alone. This Rose is a particular balm to those for whom the losses have stacked up. It quietly supports us to keep the faith and trust the flickers of new life and hope we feel within us.
Golden Wings Rose describes itself as a secret weapon that cuts us free of the binding of fear. Could there be any more helpful support as where there is fear there is no love.
While Rosa Glauca helps us see our external world with clarity and focus, it also helps us look inward to focus on our imperishable inner divinity as well. Rosa Glauca quips, ‘It’s no joke that “what lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
We necessarily seek a new way to live on Earth as institutions and circumstances we once considered permanent crumble and collapse. With fewer external pillars of society to revere or reject, we must build a new foundation from an inner experience of who we are versus an outer one. Ancient Rosa Gallica helps us anchor in this internal experience of true self as foundation, a foundation so much stronger and more imperishable than anything we could ever find in the external world.
This does not mean that Rosa Gallica dismisses the external world and our work in it as insignificant. Once we are grounded in an authentic foundation of self, Rosa Gallica helps us connect this foundation to Mother Earth’s grid so we relate to her as an inseparable part of our being. This dissolves patriarchal illusions of duality that would see us as separate and at odds with our planet.
I grew Grace Rose because of my grandchild, Grace. I thought it would be nice for her to have a Rose in the garden bearing her name. When Grace Rose first bloomed in all her ruffled peachiness, it stopped me in the garden to gently straighten me out about a couple things. Grace Rose pointed out that I had diminished the significance of her presence to her name. Grace Rose reminded me she existed in the gardens as the embodiment of grace, that all pervading Divine reality of love freely given. This conversation brought me up short. I hadn’t acknowledged the reality of the Rose or the reality of the grace she embodied either.
Grace Rose reminded me that grace is the inner reality that makes all things possible. It is a forgiving love which moves us beyond duality to love itself. It both oils the wheels of change and is the matrix of change. While grace is inseparable from our being, we sometimes lose track of its presence. This Rose helps us feel the grace of our circumstances and feel the grace of the omnipresent and personal love of Divinity that is with us always.
FJ as I call her, journeys us inward to experience the power of the small and simple things to bring joy. She ignites and expands any kernel of happiness in our memories or in our daily lives into a flood of renewing joy. She helps us feel this anytime, anywhere and regardless of circumstances.
Battered and bruised by uncivil dialog and stormy change, we all could use some kindness. Sarah van Fleet Rose anchors us in our inner kindness which brings a balm of healing both to ourselves and to those we encounter.
When we face any question or dilemma, Henri Martin Rose helps us patiently hang in an “I don’t know” space until a genuine knowing sweeps through us.
This waiting game may feel uncomfortable to us because we all grew up in patriarchy. This patriarchal mindset encouraged us to believe us humans are separate from and better than the rest of creation and the sole possessors of a de facto knowledge superior to anything else on offer in the cosmos. As children we were expected to learn the approved knowledge of our cultures in order to be part of this superior group of know it alls. Just as the Rumi poem says, we were taught to think we were empty and had to go to the study to fill up on recorded “knowledge.”
Where do answers come if we wait in not knowing? In this summer of unknowns, I’ve thought a lot about how often answers come to us after we’ve put the problem down and gone off to do something else. When we put the problem down, we accept not knowing, and then there is nothing in the way of the answers coming from oneness. While this may feel like no more than a giving up, when we let go of our problems, we’ve trusted in the oneness and out of this comes our answers. This oneness is the infinite self within us that is indivisible with everything and therefore tapped into a knowing far beyond the limitations of patriarchal knowledge.
Each night before I go to sleep I ask for help to let go of everything but my connection to my inner Divinity. So much of what I need to let go of are things I think I know because the culture told me it is so. Experiencing self as inseparable from everything requires letting go of all these bindings.
When we trust life and our inseparable part in it, we don’t need to “push the river.” We can wait peacefully in not knowing. Unknowing and knowing are part of the whole like the inbreath and the outbreath. We accept the answer will be found within us just like the question was. We rest in the truth that we have always been an indivisible part of an all knowing universe. We don’t have to be a separate someone or hold onto a separate frame of reference to have the answer we need. We already are the question and the answer. It’s all flow. The practice of just being in a place of not knowing reveals everything we need to know has always been within us.
Henri Martin Rose has always described itself as Bear Medicine. Bears live a cycle of being in the external world of unknowns, then going inward to hibernate in dreamtime to access the knowing of their bigger selves. Like the figure eight which the Roses talked about, Bears flow into spirit then return to express spirit in their waking physical lives. It is a seamless unity. Henri Martin Rose helps us with this. Knowing and not knowing move beyond duality into one state of being. It’s all Beauty, Love, Oneness.
This is a difficult and chaotic time, but it is not a purposeless one. Rosa Mundi restores us to this perspective in so many ways. First she helps us feel there is purpose beneath the dramas both in our individual lives and also collectively. We may not understand what the purpose is, but we can still feel there is a purpose. She also anchors us in knowing we are spiritual beings having a physical experience and not visa versa. Perspective is easier to maintain when we know we are in the world but not of the world. Perspective also frees us to do what we can with all our hearts yet let go of the idea that results define us. Rosa Mundi knows only Divinity defines us. Additionally when the plot is over the top, she helps us ground in the inner knowing that earth plane drama is not reality. We exist safely in Divinity and always will.
In this time when nothing much goes according to plan, we frequently need to find our inner resilience so we can go with the flow. Red Rugosa Rose helps us reclaim our inner skills to go with the flow and ride out the storms.
Resilience is essential right now. Being resilient is so much more useful than getting what we want. Deep diving into our pool of inner resilience frees us in a way that getting what we want never does.
The invasive technology that permeates our external world isn’t going to disappear of its own accord, and sadly it often leaves us prickly and defensive. Goldfinch Rose helps us find the inward place of imperishable tranquility and softness, no matter the invasive electrical and societal pressures of the modern world. We need and deserve this soft place. Thank goodness it is there waiting for us.
Roses encourage us on an inward versus outward journey. Take the Mary Rose for example. First of all, she helps us house clean our hearts. This makes room for us and for the pure vibrations of Divinity to live as one in our hearts.
The Mary Rose also loosens our attachment to an analysis of life based on external events. She ushers us gently inward to inhabit our souls where we naturally let go of any framework of judgment based on external events. In the sanctuary of our hearts, we know our soul remains untarnished no matter what happens to us. In the sanctuary of the heart we know all is well, we are safe and we can trust life.
If we were to fully grasp the vibrational truth of just one thing, this might be the most important one to grasp: We are not separate from Divinity. You and I are not we but one.
In closing I would like to thank you dear Green Hope Farm friends. How much sweeter our world is because of all of you. You shower us in love, you share your lives with us in such a heartfelt way, you are kind when we need kindness and you help us evolve. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
And to you dear Green Hope Farm Staff Goddesses- Vicki Ramos-Glew, Jen Lenz, Sam Heaton, Elizabeth Sheehan, Emily McNamara, Anna Wolke, Sydney Johnstone and Indigo Copp. I thank you dear ones for your love, zest, humor, curiosity, creativity, dedication, patience, thoughtfulness, initiative, focus and just plain hard work. You showed such grace under pressure amidst our technology challenges this year and in every way rode with the adventure which is Green Hope Farm with wonderful panache.
Love also to all the animals we get to know kindness of your stories and photos and a special shout out to our canine office mates, Bailey the sweetest pup ever and dear Sheba who just can’t start a morning without a bit of a bark. XOX, Molly
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!
