the last of the bearded iris have their golden moment

john cabot and henry kelsey, two of the roses in our sacred masculine mix put on a show

this is a new rose for us and now a new flower essence. it is named Alchymist and we have fallen in love with it. its sweet, still beauty reflects its vibrational gifts. with its skills at alchemy, this rose moves us through the illusory notions of feminine energy gripping the planet, to take us to the still pure reality of the sacred feminine, the centered, infinitely wise energy that we need to navigate the chaotic external world.

here is another view of this incredible rose, covered with early morning dew

here’s another new rose and new flower essence, belle de crecy.

our much loved mary rose has its moment in amongst the honeybee covered catmint. what a lovely energetic combination these two make with the mary rose’s support to cleanse our hearts and catmint’s support to find new physical vitality

here john davis rose greets the staff goddesses as they arrive in the morning

and here the exquisite reine des violettes, a new flower essence from last season. i love how its two toned blossoms reflect it energetic gifts of helping us find the balance of action and restraint.

emily is chief weeder as well as chief bottler- i offer one armed morale support from a garden bench

here emily gets further moral support from may may, riley, and mishka before tackling the bind weed in the foreground

later in the day progress has been made. almost ready for an inspection from vintner ben

i am finally feeling a lot better. my first pin comes out later today and i again offer my thanks to our animal wellness collection essences, most especially run & play, our orthopedic mix. little did i imagine my years making flower essences that served bone, muscle, and tendon health would become such a gift to myself!

ben, sophie, emily, and of course may may continue to plant the various annual gardens. here they get in the last of the tomatoes.

in my wanderings through the flower gardens , i stop and smell the roses.

today i noticed this la belle sultane rose had moved itself across the beds by runner and stealth to poke its head up through a spray of quatre saisons rose. this moment and so many more in the rose garden make me doubt i will ever weed out the volunteer roses again.

more rose pictures as soon as jim brings the camera home from school. he and will finish school tommorrow. yahooo!

anyone who has known me more than about seven minutes knows that i am rather gung ho about things. when called to gardening, i dug up a few acres of dirt. when called to flower essences, i made seven hundred or so. when i get interested in something, i wade in with activities, books, feasts, questions, embraces.

this makes it easy for me to imagine the meeting with my soul and my angels to plan this accident. i can just hear myself say sure!!! let’s break my arm in thirty pieces and see what i learn. it was so like me to leap off this cliff with complete abandon.

yet, this leap has taken me in new and uncomfortable directions, to the land of the no leap where i can’t do much but be still.

i always thought of myself as a hands on sort of person. yet, with this injury, my soul has asked me to let go of this defining idea of myself. with this leap, i have to let go of long cherished ideas of self and all the activities that bolstered these ideas. every day when i think i have finished this work of letting go, i find more layers to let go of.

at this point, i don’t have a sense of what i will understand of myself on the other side of this letting go process. at this point, i am just grateful that i recognize i am still essentially myself, even as most everything i did as a matter of course each day has been surrendered.

on the practical level, i had no idea how many jobs required two hands. its deja vu all over again to sit at the table like a two year old watching a grown up cut up my food for me. or have someone help me get dressed. or to have my news of the day be that i tried to unbend my fingers.

as i take a back seat to most things at the farm, it is a lovely and delightful to see who and what flourishes in the spaces left by my absence. emily has taken up the bulk of my work in the office with such grace. all the ladies have risen up to the challenges with equal grace and good cheer. it leaves me in awe. lizzy has now left for her own journey to walk the pilgrim trail from france to santiago de compostela in spain. until her departure she cooked up a storm for us. one epic night there was a choice of three desserts. jim, ben, and will join emily in learning a lot they never knew about flowers. a lot!

and in the gardens, there are more surprises as everything that can’t be done yields its own gifts.

a bed of iris i was going to move this spring from its holding spot in the vegetable garden looks sensational just where it is

so much soars with unchecked beauty and some plants i have assiduously weeded out in years past come to the fore as lovely additions to the beds

here, bright yellow celandine, a marvelous flower essence for improving cell to cell communication and helping us be our most vital, informed and connected self, an essence in my drinking water as i type, gets its way, at long last, and moves from the hedgerows of the farm smack dab into the center of the perennial beds where it is helping everything to shine.

it’s beautiful and peaceful here. the flowers look as lovely as ever- not yet minding the weeds that flourish because i am not on weed patrol-

so many people helping- the incredible crew in the office led by the indomitable deb have kept things sailing along magnificently- now that emily is home from college she officially has become this summer’s bottler- on other days she’ll be shipping with sophie, invoicing and doing email too- on wednesday she’ll be out in the gardens.

and so it was on this wednesday that she and lizzy and their friend lily did one of the jobs that absolutely had to get done- they dug and planted the cherokee trail of tears garden in red shiso-

here was the garden awaiting their ministrations-


here emmy, lizzy and lily begin to lay out the design

here the garden is planted

and here i sit in the arbor garden- so glad to be outside for a bit- there’s the wheelbarrow i fell over, the hand in question wrapped in a splint and some silver bandaging that is falling off because i need to ask someone to wrap it on me again, and st francis, representing the mysterious beloved directing all the dramas including this one.

in the last week, during the few lucid moments i have had- and there have been few-i have wondered what to call this blog-

i have considered……tilting with windmills wheelbarrows

this might be the right title because last saturday while shoveling soil out of a wheelbarrow, i pitched over the back of the barrel in a classic molly move onto my left arm and well… smashed the arm into many bits

which suggests another title idea…….

packing hardware

after a five day wait while the necessary nuts and bolts and screws and pins and wires and plates were procured, a lovely hand surgeon spent four hours putting my arm and wrist back together

while i waited, i did flower essence research and drank flower essence water out of quart jars. as i mend, i do the same

so perhaps the title is…… molly as test subject

and someday i may actually have the stamina to write what i learned beyond gratefulness for every animal wellness collection flower essence mix as well as gratefulness for everything else in creation, especially jim

but, it is time for me to go back to bed- the place where i am for now- learning about a different kind of spring and a whole new way of gardening

with love to you all, i am, mending well