Sorry About That!

So sorry about the site going down!

So sorry also about those creepy ads!

We didn’t receive notice from the server that we had to renew the domain name. This could be because of our spam filter threw out the reminder or simply because, as webmaster Ben believes, this is probably the way the server makes its money- selling ads that are posted when someone doesn’t renew their domain in time, thus allowing other companies’ ads to benefit from our web traffic.

When the server took down the site, not only did they posted those charming photos and ads for massage oils and such- apparently thinking that Flower Essences are something best used in Las Vegas…. but they also said it would take them 24-48 hours to put our site back online after we had paid the fee….. Hence the thirty six hours or so of underdressed ladies.

Since its not a process that takes any time to put the site back up, Ben theorizes that this delay tactic is another way the server benefits from customer lapses. The longer the site is down the better for these other advertisers.

Again, heartfelt apologies for this. We paid up for the maximum amount of five years so as to avoid this problem for as long as possible.

And about those smarmy cheesecake shots that the web server posted as ads……This is the only kind of cake we want on our site

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What can I say, Strawberry Raspberry Blueberry Berry season is an excuse for desserts and whipped cream. This fabulous six layer wonder was created by Ben’s friend Megan.

And if we have to stoop to cheesecake shots, let them be like this one of Riley, naked, with a Flower Essence at his side, living the life of Riley.
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Berry Good

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Konigin von Danemark Rose was the last new Rose Essences I made this summer. Here she is in her early morning glory. Isn’t she gorgeous? Now I will sit with the Deva of Konigin von Danemark Rose to find out what she has to say about her Flower Essence. Then she will be added to the research list and made available to anyone who wants to work with her Essence.

Over time, as we work with her, we will learn more from this Rose from further conversations with her, from our experiences with her Flower Essence, and from what you tell us about your experiences with her Essence. When I go to rewrite the Guide sometime in the next year, I will see if the Angels overlighting our Flower Essence collection want to move Konigin von Danemark Rose out of the relative quiet of the research list to the main line up.

Sometimes a new Rose Essence will get added right away to our existing mixes as was the case last summer with Madame Hardy Rose. She was added to our Grief & Loss mix because of her vibrational gifts of consolation for those who lose a lover, a cherished friend, or beloved place. Only time will tell how these lovely new Rose Flower Essences and other Flower Essences of the summer of 2007 will be used.

I find that the Flowers that call out to become new Flower Essences each growing season are often very appropriate Essences for the vibration of the present times. They often become a part of our mixes or become immediate “frequent flyers”, flying out of here as fast as I can bottle them. Nature wants to support us fully in our spiritual journies. Bringing particularly helpful Flower Essences forward for our use is one way Nature does this.
I know I have dwelled on the Roses lately, but when the Roses bloom each summer, it is a consuming experience. I can never imagine being able to let them go without a lot of angst. They are so compelling in their beauty, vibration, and fragrance.

However, as they begin to go by, many other wonders fill the garden and there is not as much need for regretting their departure as I expect.

One specific reason for this is berries. July is all about berries and small fruits. I love this, because I love berries and berry picking. In fact. my hands are stained with raspberry juice as I sit here typing. It’s another overcast Sunday, but you can’t keep the raspberries from glowing.

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A few minutes amongst these canes and…

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There is a big bowl of berries. The dogs wander along at my feet snarffling the lower berries and I pick the ones on top. It works for everyone.

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The gooseberries are coming along and will need to be picked soon.

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The red currants are ready too. When I was a child, we made red currant and red raspberry jelly, a natural pairing since they ripen at the same time. Nowadays, our raspberries get consumed before the jam or jelly stage, leaving only the red currants for jellymaking. Red Currant jelly makes a lovely colored jelly of the intense red you see here.

It looked like we were going to have a bumper crop of sour cherries, so good for pies. However the birds noticed the bumper crop the same moment we did. I asked the birds to leave us the cherries and also hung little foil pie plates to rattle and shine in the tree, hoping that would keep the birds away.

I should have known it was hopeless when the birds didn’t even leave their snacking on the cherries while I was tying the pie pans in the branches next to them.

Today, I estimate there are maybe twelve cherries left in the tree and a lot of fat and sassy birds nearby.

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Twelve cherries do not a pie make. Additionally, I am delighted to know that I have to get the ladder out to take down all the foil pie pans I carefully tied all over the tree.

Having no faith in the birds willingness to leave any of the other fruits for the rest of us, I have wrapped the ripening blueberries in netting. The fabric store only had pink, blue, and purple netting so its quite a colorful as well as color coordinated sight down in the blueberries. One I hope the birds are enjoying.

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Birds are not the only creatures intent on eating more than their share. I replanted the beans three time due to voracious slugs. By the third planting I was pretty much planting whatever bean seeds I could lay my hands and what I laid my hands on were pole beans not bush beans as planned.

I only noticed this yesterday when I saw that the beans that had survived the slugs were not behaving like tidy bush beans but were clamoring all over each other with vine like tendrils. I stuck all the poles I could find in with these beans. There weren’t many poles and a lot of the poles were stunted little things. I hope these pole beans turn and climb this motley collection of poles anyways, but I could certainly understand if they refuse to do this. I imagine they would prefer sturdy tripods or corn stalks for their climbing.

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I also must have reached for the wrong packet of Zinnia seeds when I planted the Zinnias too. I seem to have only planted ORANGE Zinnias. They do look good against the Red Shiso so I am not so sorry about this goof. Here is a sample row with the Red Shiso in the background.

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And here is the Red Shiso making a beautiful start in this lovely spiral formation. Healthy Red Shiso! That makes up for every slug and sassy bird at the farm!

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Project Man, his Spouse and Son

Sunday afternoon and Project Man was busy…….

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Yup…..He’s home for the summer……… This means his nail belt is seeing serious action. Here’s a shot of May May in her supervisory role while Jim works on project uno, a renovation of the woodshed.

We’ll put the firewood under this new shed roof so that Jim can make the woodshed into storage space. I am excited because I figure this woodshed roof will be a great place for a couple of big flowering vines or climbing Roses. Jim is excited because he’ll have space for the lawnmower and won’t have to move four hundred of my garden related items to get it in and out of its space as is the case now.

On the other side of the gardens……

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Ben has begun to get his test grapes from the pots where we have been growing them the last year into the ground. He’s building the needed post and wire structures for the grapes to be trained on as he goes, so it is taking awhile to do.

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Meanwhile, this project fervor rubbed off on me and I went to the barn overhang to make more of a mess on top of Jim’s lawnmower. I hoped to assemble a few new beehives in case we get any swarms and need more hives. I got a little fancy on myself ordering some new hive parts.

Some of these parts, like these slatted bottom boards that give the bees more ventilation in the hive and makes them like their bottom hive body better, went together well.

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Some not so well. Here below directions mentioning pieces I did not seem to have show off bent nails and wrecked wood from my many attempts to assemble these hive tops.

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After several hours fighting with the directions and strangely mismatched pieces for the telescoping hive tops, I left project man and son to hold down the projects on the farm and beat a retreat to a chair in the garden to read a book. May May even came off shift to join me. She too had had enough of Sunday projects.

A Good Day for Bees and Roses

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This Rose, the one we call Coral Pink Rose, is beloved of the bees. It blooms with abandon and its Flower Essence gives with equal abandon. The Essence is a gift of such comfort, softening our experiences of grief, loss, and anxiety about those we love.

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This Rose, Therese Bugnet, got covered by one of the Wild Roses that jumped into the Rose garden and became somewhat of a garden hog. I guess this is what you’d expect from a Rose that says about itself, ” I canna abide confinement.”

Anyways, I made a deal with this particular Wild Rose that I would honor several other of its monumental brothers on the farm, if I could yank him out of the Rose garden. This removal, done last fall, involved me and Jim, the truck in four wheel drive, a come along, every set of clippers on the farm, our blood, our sweat, and our tears. With its tenacious root system and sharp canes whipping around, it was quite a moment when it finally came out of the ground.

I have lived up to my end of the deal by keeping three other large Wild Rose specimens in the gardens, each one perched on the edge of the hayfield where they are home to a cast of a thousand birds who know they are safe from all predators, tucked into those abundantly thorned branches.

This spring, in the gap where the Wild Rose was, this Therese Bugnet sprang back into exuberant life. Today I am making a Flower Essence from her sweet soft pale magenta pink petals.

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Across the garden from Therese Bugnet is another Rose that the bees are enjoying, Rosa Mundi. Here a native bee dives into this ancient but timeless beauty, ever a Flower Essence consolation when our romance with divinity feels a bit much.

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Our Rosa Mundi has mingled its branches inseparably with branches of another ancient Rose, Rosa Gallica, the ancient mother of almost all modern Roses. She is also known as the Apothecary Rose, because attar or Essential oil of Rose was originally made from this Rose. As a Flower Essence she has an incredibly grounding quality and helps us know precisely who we are.
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Right near the Rosa Mundi and Rosa Gallica is Agathe Incarnata Rose. Her Flower Essence gift helps us to translate the intention to be loving into being love.

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Doesn’t she look like Love incarnate????

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Here is another beautiful Rose that I am making into an Essence today. This is Alba Maxima, a soft, soft pink Rose that has grown into an immense towering shrub of Flowers in the perennial gardens. I look forward to sitting down with Alba Maxima and Therese Bugnet to find out what their Flower Essences are all about.
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Madame Hardy Rose grows cheek by jowl with Alba Maxima. I made her into an Essence last year and the Angels asked that we put her into our Grief and Loss mix. As Madam Hardy explains, “I AM for heartache. I know you think you have heard it all before yet I offer a sweet and unique note of consolation to those who lose a lover or a most cherished friend or place. I AM consolation and comfort amidst loss.”

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Here is Tuscany Rose, another ancient Rose. I have found it very hard to capture the velvety quality of her petals in a photograph. The Angels have told me that she is an important Flower Essence for the next stretch of time and that I should bring her forward to people’s attention. Her Flower Essence is about finding from the depths of ourselves the sweet refreshing restorative wisdom that ever lives within us. Tuscany Rose compares this experience to pulling a bucket of deeply refreshing and restorative cool water up from a well.
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This was my last Flower Essence made today, Nepeta “Six Hill Giants”, the beautiful blue catmint that sets off so many of the Roses in the Rose garden. Here shown with the incomparable Mary Rose. The bees can’t get enough of this catmint and so the bed is a buzz when it is in blossom. Another one to sit with once the Essence is in the jars. I suspect this one is for playful rejuvenation and relaxation. At least that’s what the cats think!

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And so there we are on this gorgeous June day!

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June 27th. The Water Lilies are glorious. More importantly, it’s Sophie’s 20th birthday!

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She is out with Emily mulching another garden right now. Hopefully, she is unaware that we are planning a Tea Party for her in the Arbor Garden this afternoon.

Deb, her mom, is famous for her Cream Teas. When they lived in Cornwall, Deb ran a tea shop at her husband’s pottery. After seeing the tea shop’s menu and tasting her cooking, I know why people came from far and wide for tea in her shop.

Fortunately, even after ten years in America, Deb hasn’t lost her ability to throw a wildly sucessful tea party.

She is in charge of all the desserts today. I made a few savory items with more than a little of my favorite ingredient in them……

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Parsley.

No one has quite noticed this yet, but with seven rows of parsley in the Venus Garden, I am adding parsley to everything. And I mean everything.

Do you think garnishing the strawberries this way for today’s party will give me away?

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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!