The news for 2024 is just about ready to roll and I have promised the staff goddesses that I will have everything launched and on the website by next week! In the meantime I have had a morning on email which always helps me learn so much.

I have received a few questions about working with the Flower Essences WITHOUT taking them internally or having them touch the skin.  The good news is that there are many ways to work with Flower Essences that do not involve taking them internally or having them touch your skin.  In fact, the Angels gave me a new suggestion today to add to the methods they had already mentioned!

But first off, let’s consider the question: how can Flower Essences work when they are not taken physically into our physical bodies?
Flower Essences are an energetic tool that brings our electrical system information to raise its vibration. We want to raise our vibrations because higher vibrations mean better health and wellbeing. Additionally it is necessary to raise our vibrations right now because our planet is rising in vibration, and we need to raise our vibrations to stay in sync with our planet.

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Because Flower Essences work with our electrical system, when we take them internally, it is to get their information to our electrical system, not to give them to our physical body.  Taking them internally means we guarantee that they are received by our electrical system but other methods can guarantee this too.

  
Spritzing Flower Essences mixed with water is my favorite way to use Flower Essences. Since our electrical systems extend out from our bodies, we can spritz Flower Essences around our bodies and not even on our bodies and get the information of the Essence loud and clear.  I personally feel this is one of the most effective ways to work with Flower Essences, but there are many others.

Before I mention other methods that do not require physical exposure to the Flower Essence, let me say just a couple more things.
Let’s examine the foolish movie heroine who has ignored all the signs like heavy breathing telephone calls and stayed in the creepy house alone on a deserted road on Halloween? You know how she can feel that the creepy guy with the mask is in the next room?  Her electrical field has bumped into his!  Our electrical fields really are a lot bigger than our physical bodies, and we all have experiences of this.

A situation when I always noticed this was when I lived in a dorm with my husband and forty teenage boys back in the 1980’s. Even in the middle of the night there was an almost palpable feeling of other people in the building, This was caused by their electrical fields.  Then when the students were on vacation, the dorm felt completely different.  We feel people’s electrical systems all the time as well as bump into and overlap with them.

All this means in addition to spritzing, we can use the Flower Essences effectively by putting drops in the bath or as the Angels suggested this morning, by putting the closed bottle in the bath. This also means we can access the energy of Flower Essences just by carrying them in our pocket or leaving them on our bedside table. Why? Flower Essences have an electrical field too, and we can receive their energy through the bottle.

 
The fact that Flower Essences can be accessed even when someone doesn’t open the bottle is a good thing, but it also means that Flower Essences need care and protection.  If you leave your Essences in a locker in Grand Central station, they will be pulled on by passerbys and drained overtime of their electrical charge.  Why? Because consciously and unconsciously, we are always seeking higher vibrations. This is why we suggest in our FAQ sheet on the home page and on the one we send to you with your first order that you don’t store your Essences in a place in your household that gets a lot of traffic. This is also why we ask the Elementals to protect your Flower Essences until they get to your door! 

Whew! Hopefully this has answered some of your questions if you want to work with the Flower Essences without taking them internally but aren’t sure this will be effective!  If not, email! I or another of our fabulous staff goddesses will be there!

I am working on the Fall 2024 newsletter in which our garden season is described and the new Flower Essences for the year are highlighted. I always try to get this news onto the blog and into your packages shortly after the Fall Equinox, so I have a bit more time. I can tell you now that the focus for the Angels in new Flower Essences creation has been on supporting forgiveness work. If you’ve read this blog for long you’ve probably noticed that forgiveness has been a difficult challenge for me at times, so much so that I call forgiveness the f-word. In any case, I am looking forward to describing to you my Angelic inservices on forgiveness this summer, because I think it will make you laugh!

As I grappled with describing marvelous new Flower Essences serving a quality I aspire to but don’t always master, I had a thought about forgiveness work that helped me. I don’t think it is going to make it into the newsletter so I thought I would share it here.

Our long time neighbor Teddy Grobe was the reason we came to this property, and she was in the thick of all things Green Hope farm during its first twenty years. Living into her 90’s with joie de vivre, a chic quality indicative of her many lives in France not to mention her passionate love for the Divine, she taught me so much.

Teddy was a fabulous cook, arguably the most amazing cook of my whole life. The first dinner party I was invited to at her house blew my mind. She had an enormous wooden table sourced when she lived in Portugal as a Navy officer’s wife. Because this table was so gargatuan, it took up most of an entire room. At this party and at every Teddy party I would ever go to, the entire table was covered in a lavish array of gorgeous dishes. There were often lobsters harkening back to her childhood in Freeport Maine, but these were always surrounded by so many other exotic offerings that one really didn’t know where to begin.

Teddy made copious amounts of fresh rolls from grains she ground herself and croissants were a staple at her house, so bread at Teddy’s house was never a side but always a sublime front and center treat.

When desserts invariably followed, there were eclairs, trifles, crumbles and pies. No one made better fruit desserts than Teddy, and her hand at pastry was legendary.

She often invited near strangers to her table, but everyone was old friends by the time we rolled out of her house towards our respective homes. Any crowd no matter how dissimilar found common ground over the deliciousness Teddy’s food. This in itself is a reminder how food can move us towards harmonious community. Oh if only Teddy were still here to feed us all!

So here is my funny story about Teddy which ties in with forgiveness work. The ONLY thing that Teddy made that was not delicious was her hummus. Her homemade hummus was quite simply one of the worst things I have ever eaten. I have no idea why, but it was really bad. At one point Teddy got a bee in her bonnet about all of us in the neighborhood cooking different things for each other and sharing our offerings so as to make cooking meals easier for all our households. How I hoped Teddy would pick rolls or pies or her stellar danish for this multiple household sharing but no, TEDDY CHOSE HER HUMMUS!

For way too many weeks Teddy would come by with a tub of her hummus and I would hand over my dish with a smile on my face. There was no way I was going to tell Teddy what I thought of her hummus. Eventually through a decided lack of enthusiasm on everyone but Teddy’s part, the hummus sharing stopped.

Now remembering this has made me smile even burst out into laughter all morning as I made hummus for my family. There was no need to forgive Teddy for making atrocious hummus. Even this nearly perfect cook made mistakes. There was no need for anything at all but humor about her imperfect sharing. Perhaps forgiveness work when it involves people who have truly hurt us could be considered in the same way as Teddy’s hummus. Sometimes our best efforts are crap even when we are doing our best. I am going to try and remember Teddy’s hummus when I am hurt by a mistake someone else made. They are human and something happened to have them hit their Teddy hummus point, and I am best served by remembering everything else about them then quietly disposing of the hummus moment and just moving on.

Many staff are on vacation this week, so today I was drafted to do email. And where have I been the rest of the month???? I have spent most of August clearing our Red Shiso barn of the last of the 2023 crop so that the very robust Red Shiso crop of 2024 has a ready home whenever the weather turns and we need to harvest and hang it.

Each dried bundle from the 2023 crop must be plucked, stalk by stalk with each red leave removed and saved with the lighter leaves and stalk composted. The plucking has gone on for many days this August. We had an enormous harvest last year and during the year we only pulled dried bunches to pluck as we needed them, leaving much plucking to be done now. I try to think of this task as an easy breezy job, but as anyone who has done this job will tell you, it is actually a disorienting activity. Each stalk of dried Red Shiso needs to be examined so that only the reddest leaves are selected. At first it is a piece of cake to discriminate shades of red, but as the hours go on, it all begins to blur together. In any case, I am almost done plucking and was very happy to be called to the office to help with email, a job I always find very interesting!

Today’s email from you dear ones did not disappoint. Wow! I loved chatting with a bunch of you about your lives and your beloved companion animals.

One of you shared how you were struggling with a relationship in which the same argument seemed to happen over and over, accelerating from nowhere into a firestorm of anger. I was grateful to the Angels’ insight here as they suggested that while there were interpersonal layers to the situation, all of which the person writing us was working on, there was also the factor of where she lived. The Angels noted this land is carrying a lot of negativity from past events. The Angels described the result of this on the land and in her life as like a record that was skipping, unable to move on to new territory but stuck in the old negative energy of the land. For those of us who remember records, this is a very visceral description.

This woman had a great collection of our Flower Essences on hand and the Angels recommended she make a mix of them including Borage, Black Currant, Bloodroot, Sanctuary, The Gate Beautiful, Abandonment & Abuse, Wound Healing, Carry Less, Alignment Garden, Love Prevails, Alignment Garden, Mary Queen of Scots Rose, Recovery and the Way Forward to clear the land in a specific process ( which I will describe). This beloved had many great Essences because she has been meticulously using the Essences to work on her relationship as the source of the whole dynamic. With this new information from the Angels about the land, she was ready to deal with this overriding x factor of the land she lived on and the fact it was carrying a great deal of anger even battle energy.

ENERGY CLEARING EXERCISE KINDNESS OF THE ANGELS

Call in the Overlighting Deva of your land to help clear any negativity from your land. Call in Pan, the head of all Elementals. Additionally call in any other Angel and Elemental working your land. You can ask for any being working in the light to join in the process. This can be a general call and does not require knowing names of these beings.

If you have a Flower Essence mix or Flower Essences to bring to the process, spritz yourself and spritz some on your palm then offer this Flower Essence energy in support of the process. Offer the Essences in your hand to Pan to use as he will.

Ask this group to release all negativity from your land and release all battle energy held by the land through all time and on all dimensions. Ask that the energy being released be sent through a christed grid and sent to the central sun to be transmuted. The christed grid is not a specific religious structure, but a kind of energetic grid. This means the released energy will be washed clean and not come back to the land where it came from. The important thing to know is that you are not moving negativity from one place to another but actually sending it to a place it will be transmuted ie transformed into higher energy. This helps your land and those living on your land without hurting anyone or anything else.

While this energy is being removed and released, you may want to sit quietly. Usually everything can be released in an hour or so. Afterwards, spritz again and thank everyone involved for their work and then release them with love and gratitude.

Another email shared the story of how the writer found out about our Flower Essences. She had adopted a shy and grief stricken dog who was pretty much afraid of everyone. A friend offered her new dog a couple drops of a Green Hope Farm Flower Essence mix and the dog immediately found its calm center and moved on from that moment as a different dog. While this doesn’t always happen so fast, we love it when it does, and we so appreciated the woman sharing this with us.

Another email was from a beloved who wanted support for big picture concerns like an overall tendency to dream big then be devastated when the dreams did not come to fruition. An existential feeling of grief and aloneness followed the end of her dreams.

Again I was grateful for the Angels’ insight here. They steered this woman to the Venus Garden Collection specifically suggesting Equanimity and Love It & Leave it for this shattering disappointment when things don’t turn out as we wish. Safe Passage was another Angel suggestion. For an additional request for support in staying grounded and true to oneself when feeling off balance from relationship issues, the Angels suggested the Venus Garden Essence Balance in a Blue Moon. What I was reminded of by their suggestions was the deep way the Venus Garden Flower Essences help us with the big spiritual patterns of our life. The Angels noted, “All these Essences are to help you ground in your eternal self which rises above the mutable to know what is real and eternal.”

Now I will post this and get back to see what other treasures await me from you on email! Thank you! You spark insight, enthusiasm and deep gratitude!

Its hard to leave the gardens for any reason this time of year as there is so much in bloom that I can barely tear myself away from the action.

These Asiatic Lilies are new. They are called Black Beauty. The moths and I can’t get enough of them.

The Lilies sit cheek by jowl next to several Butterfly Bush and a big group of Echinacea. I love how this Bumblebee is drenched in pollen. The combination of the Lilies, the Echinacea and the Butterfly Bush mean nonstop butterflies and moths as well as different kinds of bees.

While the Day Lilies hit their peak a week or two ago, they are still putting on a beautiful. show I deadhead them every day which takes awhile, but I think it is worth it. They look so much better deadheaded, and it gives me a reason to wander slowly through every garden.

This Day Lily is called Charlie. I got it in honor of my lovely son-in-law Charlie. It is a stunner.

Usually the deer eat all the Phlox but the garlic treatment has meant there is Phlox blossoming in the garden for the first time in years. I had long forgotten what color all the Phlox was so there are some rather bold moments and weird color combinations. Verdict is out about whether I will move things around or just go with it as it is.

Mentioning color reminds me that this time of year it is hard not to notice that the Flowers are drifting towards a fall palate of golds and reds. Fall is coming. Gulp.

This is one of the new Zinnias in the Queen Lime series. I think it is gorgeous.

Never met a Zinnia I didn’t love.

The Zinnia bed abuts part of the Red Shiso crop making for a colorful contrast. The Calendulas are all volunteers.

These are the low growing Profusion Zinnias. They line the path into the “vegetable” garden where the groundhogs continue to reign supreme. Mercifully, Reginald and friends don’t like the taste of Zinnias or Nasturtium Flowers.

This is another great color in Zinnias. These are in this year’s Venus Garden.

Several miniature varieties of Sunflower line the Eight shape of this year’s Venus Garden which is our third iteration of the incomparable Eight Garden design. Can’t wait to share what I have been learning about the Eight this time round and make a new batch of this Essence (That should happen around the Autumn Equinox).

This is the other Sunflower in the Eight this year, a variety called Chianti. It is fills the centers of the 8 shape along with maroon Amaranth, the purple Zinnias, Lion’s Ear, Cosmos Cranberry Double Click and Rubenza Cosmos.

Rudbeckia Cherry Brandy is one of the Flowers ringing the Eight shape in the Eight Garden. Other Flowers include Black Knight Scabiosa, Moldavian Dragonhead, Corn Cockle, Garnet and Ultraviolet Cornflower, Celosias, Bells of Ireland, Ageratums, Heliotrope and other friends all building the energies in this garden.

Sending much love to you all from the gardens!

Report from Reginald Montgomery “Chuckie” Hogbottom, Order of the Woodchuck, Recipient of the medal of honor “Marmota Monax” September 2019, Knighted as Groundhog of the Realm, May 2022, Recipient of the Order of the Garter July 2023.

Yes friends, I know you are thrilled to find this July update before my annual late season showstopper of a report in late August. It’s just that I have so much news, news that will doubtless tickle you pink.

So many visitors adored the little harvest gala I threw last season that my a legion of friends and relatives decided to stay here at the farm to settle in for good. I like a crowd, especially when I am in charge. I assigned everyone spots for new burrows on the property, and everyone has dug comfy homes and found plenty of food to keep fat and sassy.

The winter was one big love fest and so, voila! This spring has made us a coterie of baby as well as mature woodchucks. As you know, I am a modest woodchuck, but I must say many of the particularly attractive young ones resemble moi, Reginal Montgomery “Chuckie” Hogbottom. Yes, I entertained a fleet of girlfriends this winter and the results are evident throughout the gardens.

Fortunately the foolish humans here put in their usual zillion gardens of veggies and flowers. It was a particular joy to chow down early crops in the hoop house. One night I wiped out a lavish collection of cucumber plants complete with baby cornichons. Who doesn’t love a cornichon?

True confessions. I did get some help in my gourmet rampage It was a warm night, at least in the hoop house, and Felicity was with me. She always wears this intoxicating scent, “Evening in the Burrow”. Our progeny was asleep, and together we dined on EVERYTHING in the hoop house including the cornichons. In a single night! It was a stunning accomplishment, particularly as Felicity’s perfume was so beguiling that we had to take a break to frollick in the lettuce stubs. Now the place is a wasteland but what memories!

The silly woman who does all the gardening is often seen with a backpack of “Eau de Garlic” which she liberal sprays on everything including herself. I wish she would get the drift that there is no plan to share any vegetables with her. As in NONE. ZILCH. ZERO. After all we have babies to care for. Lots of them. But if she wants to waste her time with her garlic water strategy, good for her. Its a hopeless effort, but it is kind of cute. We watch her from our dozen burrows with much enjoyment. We don’t get WIFI down by the burrows so we have to find our entertainment somewhere else than on the internet. She provides plenty.

Today for example she stumbled on one of the kids down by the blueberry patch. Poor little Philippe got rattled and instead of acting afraid, he charged her then ran through a hole in the blueberry netting towards his den five feet from the netting. She threw a cinderblock on the entrance to his burrow, but we are always looking for projects with the kids. Tonight, after we feast down on what remains in the vegetable garden, we’ll do a little inservice with Philippe and the gang. We’ll show them how to dig around “immovable objects”. Its never to early to learn all the tricks!

Take precious care good readers. Rest easy knowing me and my prodigious clan are well fed, well rested and well informed about the charming foibles of earnest humans. Until next time, Bon Appetit!