Spring is a wild season here. I race around with twigs caught in my hair and dirt on my knees. There is so much to do! Weeds to manhandle- Trees, shrubs and Roses to prune- So many garden beds to cover with bark mulch- Soil amendments to add to all the gardens- Baby plants to tuck into their allotted bit of earth- And the unexpected joy of broken tools and equipment to manage.

I love all the tasks of spring. Well, except for tool problems.

As I race around from job to job, there is always some Flower friend that I am happy to see has returned to its spot. And I’m always so delighted by the various vistas across the beds and the unexpected marriages of plants. It’s one thing to imagine combinations of plants after looking at a million books, but when they blend themselves in harmonious ways well beyond anything I imagined or planned- that is bliss.

Someone commented that the gardens look a bit on the wild side, and I suppose that’s true. I weed everything and know what is planted where, but a lot of time I do let plants jump around and pop up in unexpected places. There is a lime yellow euphorbia that is allowed to pick any spot it wants. It looks so great in contrast to all the Purple Sensation Allium that every baby euphorbia that volunteers in the main perennial beds is cherished and coddled.

There are other plants, much as I love them, that I negotiate with, sometimes aggressively as in, I PULL THEM UP. Like Celandine. Celandine would pretty much like to dominate every bed, so I have to rein it in. I try to remember to apologize as I yank it up, but really! It would like to be the only plant on the property if it had its way! This year our ceasefire sees me leaving it under one big stretch of Lilacs but pulling it up everywhere else. This works for me, but perhaps not for Celandine.

Each spring as I get the gardens organized, there are losses to confront as well as plants that have multiplied. Our winters are so variable that I never know what is going to survive the cold. This last winter seems to have been hard on shrubs I thought were quite tough like all our Spireas. We also had a lovely old Plum tree bite the dust. There are also perennials that checked out. Sometimes they show up elsewhere as was the case with the enormous White Bleeding Heart. It vanished from its longtime spot only to have two other young White Bleeding Hearts appear on the opposite side of the Arbor Garden.

An old gardener friend once said to me that if she had a garden of all the plants she had lost, it would be quite a garden. I know what she meant! Now that I have been here 30 years, I can say the same myself. The longer one gardens, the bigger one’s garden of lost plants gets!

My garden of lost plants would have a lot of Lupine and Bearded Iris in it. I need to give it up on these two plants. I had a dozen Lupine in a lovely shade of pink last year, and this year I have one plant with one Flower stalk. That drift of dozens of yellow Lupine that I cradled protectively for many years? That too is gone with the wind.

And Bearded Iris! I just can’t resist them in the catalogs, but I should! They just don’t like it here- except for one fragrant pale violet variety that somehow has adjusted itself to the place and spreads like wildfire.

As far as all the gardens that get planted from scratch each year, I try to start a reasonable number of vegetables and Flowers for these gardens, but I always end up growing extras of everything. Then, I can’t bear to compost any of these babies, so once they are big enough to be planted in the gardens, I scramble to find the space for each little plant.

This year I had lots of annual Flowers for Emily’s wedding in addition to the usual Flower and vegetable friends. I searched the gardens high and low looking for spots for all these babies. There are now baby plants in places where I have never planted anything. If I found a square foot anywhere, it got planted!

It was quite a moment when Sarah Porter and I planted the last flat of plant babies. There had been so many flats in the greenhouse, hoop house, cold frames and on every flat surface in the office and house. It seemed like we would never get them all in. But thanks to Sarah as well as Elizabeth, Molly Sanders and EJ, we did.

The last of the annuals went in the Venus Garden. The design this year is a Star of David composed of triangles of Zinnias with pom poms of white Flowers at the tips and a ring of Heliotrope and Mehera Marigolds at the center. Each triangle is a different color of Zinnias. It was refreshingly simple garden to plant compared with many Venus Gardens and looks very lovely, even now with just the baby plants in this mandala.

Now we turn our attention to keeping everything watered and weeded. It’s always an adventure to see what sort of summer we are going to have and which Flowers will particularly flourish. Lets hope they will look good in bridal bouquets!

Someone asked the following question in an email last week:

“Is a flower essence the same as an essential oil? Not once does Molly say anything about an essential oil so I am inclined to believe that a flower essence is more like a water (hydrosol) than an essential oil. If I am wrong about this perhaps Molly would care to email me back with a better explanation??”

I hope to shed some light on this confusing topic and then because it’s me, wander off to other topics too.

Flower Essences are NOT Essential oils. They can be used in conjunction with Essential oils. Room spritzers are an example of a situation in which they are often used together.

Flower Essences do not contain plant material from the Flower as Essential oils do. Flower Essences offer the wisdom of the plant in an energetic form. They are NOT hydrosol products either. Hydrosols are produced when Essential oils are made. The Essential oil floats to the top of the water and the water or hydrosol is a by-product that is used in a variety of ways. Both Essential oils and hydrosols are herbal distillates containing the chemical compounds of the plant. Flower Essences are not distillates and do not contain the chemical compounds of the plants.

When I first made Flower Essences the Angels told me that eventually Flower Essences would be a very key modality, not just because they are the most refined and pure expression of a Flower’s wisdom, but because they are a very ecological way to use Flowers.

With many Flower products, a large number of Flowering plants must be harvested for a small amount of product. With Flower Essences, Flowers are harvested without endangering the plant’s life. Additionally, a small amount of Flowers can make a Flower Essence that will be made into hundreds even thousands of bottles. As with so many things about Flower Essences, volume is not the issue. The electrical pattern or vibration of the Flower is the issue, and a Flower Essence offers this vibrational plant wisdom in a complete and easily utilized form without the harvest of large volumes of plants.

Making a good Flower Essence is a process which requires support from other parts of creation namely the Elementals of the Elemental kingdom (aka Nature Spirits) and the Angels of the Angelic kingdom. As you may recall from my many blogs about these partners, the Angels are the architects of form and therefore hold the blueprint of what a Flower is meant to energetically radiate, and the Elementals manifest all form so they know which Flowers actually do radiate this vibrational wisdom.

When I make a Flower Essence, the Angels and Elementals guide me about which Flowers to choose from which plant as well as which day to make the Essence. This insures that the highest vibration Flowers are chosen so the Flower Essence can hold the highest vibration possible. Additionally, the Angels and Elementals have spend almost thirty years working with me on the energy grid of Green Hope Farm. This work to raise the vibration of the farm opens the way for the Flowers we grow here to make manifest their divine purpose more fully which results in Flowers of particularly high vibrations. With the humans working in concert with the Nature kingdoms, the land of Green Hope Farm gets to express itself more completely as does everything growing here.

The Elementals and Angels are key to the growing of the Flowers for a Flower Essence and also key to the transfer of the vibration of the Flower into the Flower Essence. Without their involvement, there would be no Flower Essence. For this reason and so many more, I give thanks to them every time I make a Flower Essence.

One enormous shift because of our conscious partnership with the Angels and Elementals was changing our Flower Essences from conventional preservatives to a more ecological, higher vibrational and more sustainable preservative. Red Shiso, our preservative, is a Japanese plant from the mint family that we grow here at the farm. This plant receives the same tender care all the Flowers receive. Each year it is grown by us humans in a specific new mandala designed by the Angels and Elementals. These mandalas increase the plant’s vibration as well as the overall vibration of each of our bottles of Flower Essences.

The Angels describe the coming era as the Age of Flowers. As we move into this era, it will be more and more important that we are able to learn from the wisdom of Flowers without overharvesting the Flowers. Right now for example, Wild Ginseng is an endangered species. We have this Flower as a Flower Essence. No plant was killed to make this Essence. The plant with which I made this Flower Essence is still alive. We can share Wild Ginseng Flower Essence and all the plant wisdom of this Flower with thousands of you without harming a plant.

As I have mentioned before, Flower Essences are also very ecological in that one can experience the wisdom of a place and its Flowering plants without the carbon footprint of jet travel to the place. By working with a place’s Flowers via their Flower Essences, one can learn the wisdom held by this place. The Camino Flower Essences are a prime example of that and a true blessing for those of us who do not know if we will get the chance to travel this pilgrimage route ourselves.

I know people travel for many other reasons besides tapping into the wisdom of a place, however it has been a great gift in my life that I have been able to learn and grow from Flower Essences made in places where I have been unable to visit. I am grateful for all the people at Green Hope Farm who, at the behest of the Angels and Elementals, have gone out into the world to far flung places to make Flower Essences to share with us all.

Your questions to us frequently illuminate the purpose of Flower Essences in whole new ways.

For example, this week one of you was looking for a Flower Essence for a very specific situation. Because of your question and the Angels’ answer, we learned a whole lot more about one of the new Taiwan Flower Essences.

The specific request was for a Flower Essence for when someone had difficulty processing feedback from others. This person wanted an Essence to help her stay open to feedback, especially when this feedback indicated that she had hurt someone’s feelings. She felt she shut down when confronted by feedback of this kind.

More specifically she said when she heard someone else was hurt by what she had said or done, her own reaction was a complete shut down of listening and empathy towards that person. This shutting down had painful consequences for her. She wanted an Essence to support her to stay open during any sharing of feelings and thoughts of all kinds in hopes this would lead to greater intimacy and a deeper connection to self and others. She thought her reaction might tie into early life experiences of verbal abuse, but she was not sure. She just knew her reactions set her adrift from hearing or sharing in other peoples’ realities.

The Angels zeroed in on an Essence from Taiwan, the Red Hibiscus from the Temple. This new Essence was their suggestion for this concern.

This Red Hibiscus had bell shaped blossoms. These blossoms and the fact that Sarah Porter found them at a temple had called to mind 17th century poet Matsuo Basho’s poetic line, “The temple bell stops, but I still hear the sound coming from the flowers.”

Linking this line of poetry with the Essence was as far as we had gotten in examining this new Flower Essence.

When the Angels suggested this Flower Essence for this person, they explained and illuminated the Flower Essence for us in this way:

“This is a complex and nuanced Flower Essence with many deep strengths. Like its sisters in the Hibiscus family, it helps ease and release the damage done by early life experiences of verbal shaming and abuse.

Furthermore, it moves you towards the sacred territory of true communication by tenderly holding the damaged parts within you so you feel safe to open your hearts to genuine communication and feedback even when it is not easy to hear. This experience of being both safe as well as openhearted opens the way for deep healing within yourself as well as with whomever you are communicating.

The closed nature of the Flower petals indicates the tender containment of your suffering. The fact that the pistils and stamens hang below the Flower petals reflects the way the vibration of this Flower encourages you to be vulnerable and use both the inner wisdom and receptivity of the dangling female pistils and the accompanying cluster of ebullient expressive male stamens to actively listen with an open heart.

The Basho line speaks true of this Flower Essence as it helps you experience that when the sound of the exchange is over, what can continue to speak in your heart is the love shared.”

We have sent a bottle off to the woman who asked for a Flower Essence suggestion for her concern. We look forward to learning her experience with this Essence. It is this wonderful back and forth with you all that make this such a profound community of learning for all of us at the farm. We thank you!

Eleven degrees this morning with more snow on the ground than at any point all last winter. April Fool’s Day lingers for all of us in the northeast!

What else does April have in store for us?

One thing I hope will be on the docket for us is the launch of our online ordering system. Our delay boiled down to a search for one piece of paper. To implement the online payment system we had to find the ORIGINAL document in which we were assigned our employer identification number. Since we got this number three decades ago, finding this original document proved more complex than one might imagine. However we now have the document.

Speaking of ordering, we got a call from someone in our small town who gets a lot of our calls when people misdial Green Hope Farm’s phone number. Apparently folks calling us leave messages on her family’s answering machine frequently. She does NOT pass these messages on to us nor does she plan to. In addition, her family’s answering machine does NOT indicate who you have reached, and she does NOT plan to change her message to redirect people. If the machine message does not say THANK YOU FOR CALLING GREEN HOPE FARM right away, you have not reached Green Hope Farm! Please try again and dial 603-469-3662 My apologies about this state of affairs!

On a sweeter note, our greenhouse is full of plant babies. All these young friends gives us hope that this streak of cold and snow will pass and soon we will be back in the gardens preparing the beds and visiting with all our beloved Flower friends, old and new.

This full moon with a lunar eclipse tossed in gives us the perfect opportunity to welcome a new Flower Essence combination remedy: The Red Tent.

This remedy is the creation of staff goddess, Emily Dewey or EJ as she likes to be called. Not only did she create this gem of a combination Flower Essence, but she has written the following blog to share it with us all! Welcome to the Red Tent and thank you dear EJ for your beautiful creation that has already begun its work in the world.

Without further ado, here is EJ’s blog!

The conversation began at the farm, when one day in the office I found myself doubled over in pain on the first day of my period. Being stubborn to a fault, I hate using traditional painkillers. Instead I was trying slowly but surely to energetically ease the pain pulsing through my second chakra.

One of my favorite parts of working at Green Hope Farm is that no conversation is off limits. All curiosities, musings or Divinely channeled thoughts are always welcome. Including, of course, talking about our periods.

“We need a Period Mix!” one of the other staffers exclaimed. From my hunched position I mumbled back, “What we need is the Red Tent!”

The Power of Moon Time

In astrology the moon represents our emotions, our deeper instincts. Connected to our Bodies, the 28 (or so) day cycle for a woman flows along in conjunction to the Moon’s. As we energetically connect to this waxing and waning within our own physical being, we may come to embody the same powerful energies the moon represents. The power of intuition and empathic or psychic abilities are all more deeply accessible during the time of bleeding.

Historically a woman’s ability to shed and release so naturally was seen as mystical and incredibly powerful. While some cultures may have taken a slightly less enlightened approach through shaming women and calling them unclean (**cough**Book of Leviticus…), those cultures who recognized a Divine Feminine saw this process as deeply sacred and basically mind-blowing.

How could a woman bleed that much and not die?!

Yea, it’s pretty nifty.

In Native American tribal traditions, the practice of Sweat Lodges, or Temezcal, was created by the elders to provide the men their own opportunity to have an experience similar to the cleansing and purification a woman was naturally able to do in her monthly cycle. Through a ceremonial sweat, the men were able to reemerge having intentionally let go and released any negative energies that had accumulated.

In today’s world we have greatly lost touch with the power of the physical Body – on many levels. Especially for women, the task becomes recognizing the gifts our Bodies provide to us. Yes, INCLUDING periods! The reality is that we are always experiencing fluctuating energy as our Bodies move through the monthly cycle. The expectation to always “GO! GO! GO!” is completely illogical and fights against what nature is asking. Not to mention an obvious contributing factor to why women face their monthly cycle like a single person dreads the “So are you seeing anyone?” conversations at holiday family gatherings.

As women, our monthly bleed is a time of deep cleansing – both physically and energetically. Research suggests that one of the reasons women may live longer is BECAUSE of our ability to cleanse the Body through our periods. When we are given the time and space to fully recognize the importance of this process, we are able to reemerge into our daily life post period more in tune, energized and better able to serve from our highest selves.

Cue, The Red Tent.

What IS the Red Tent?

It is known by many names in many cultures and spans back in time to societies in which women were revered for their innate power and wisdom. Moon Lodges, Menstrual Huts or Red Tents; the idea remains the same. It is in these sacred spaces where a woman is given the opportunity to slow down and rest during her cycle, to connect with her Body and the wisdom of her connection to the Divine, all with the intention of releasing through the natural and sometimes mystical, monthly physical process the Body undergoes.

Awareness of the Red Tent was brought back into the mainstream by Anita Diamant’s book, The Red Tent, and a new movement has sprung up in response. Today’s Red Tents are a modern expression of such sacred spaces. These spaces are centered around reminding women to “put on your own oxygen mask first;” as self-care is the basic building block towards being able to energetically and physically show up as the caregivers we may naturally be inclined to embody in our day-to-day lives.

Introducing our newest combination Essence! The Red Tent

In truth, when I step back and look at the receptive, nurturing space of working at the farm, I realize that we have created something close to our very own Red Tent to serve us throughout the cyclical experience of each of our lives. But we know that not all women are fortunate enough to have the experience of being able to surround themselves with community that easily holds space for the slowing down of energy, for the need to commune, reflect and process that which is being let go of each month.

So that’s where our newest combination Essence comes into play!

We are so excited to be able to offer The Red Tent Essence as a means of creating the energetic experience of your own sacred Moon Time space. Below is a brief explanation of each Essence that contributes to the unified energy of The Red Tent Essence. We hope that this new powerhouse provides you immeasurable support and love, encouragement to embrace the cyclical flow of your life, and reminds you of the sacred beauty of the female body and all her mysteries.

With much Love and Moon Time Blessings,

e.j.

Artichoke – Creating boundaries and sanctuary to allow ourselves to tune in

Bee Balm – Cleansing of all that is no longer needed

Black Cohosh – Tapping into the inner wisdom and then manifesting from the knowledge gained

Calabash – Understanding where our feminine energy is best served

Calliandra – Strength in the blood as an ever flowing river

Clitoria – Move the wisdom of the womb upwards through the higher chakras

Claret Cup Cactus – Leaving behind the shame of the feminine Body

Corn – To assist grounding the wisdom gained during Moon Time

Crab Apple – Easing of self-judgement & negativity

Dandelion – Welcoming change, easing muscle aches/pains, detoxing

Day Lily – Releasing to start anew

Dicliptura Sexangularis – To know what your crave, what you truly have a need or appetite for

Dombeya Wallachii – Creating safe space in order to take time for self

Fumitory Bella – For self care & self love

Ixora – Standing in the power of being female and the sacred power of feminine sexuality

Lady’s Mantle – Giving shelter so that new ideas and truths may come forward

Lemon – Clear/focused thoughts, cleansing

Moonlight Datura – Connection to Goddess, the Divine Feminine

Painkiller Plant – Because sometimes shedding layers hurts. A lot.

Ramping Fumitory – Creating boundaries to protect the work that needs to be done in releasing

Scarlet Cordia – Releasing blockages, especially in the second chakra

Sea Mayweed – Determining our boundaries and owning our power

White Flower from Druid Rock – Rebirth of a new cycle, feeling at home in the Body

Wild Pink Morning Glory – For when the Red Tent isn’t available but we seek time to receive and