Skunk cabbage grows rapidly and that's an understatement. I've got about week to get more periwinkle pulled in this specific location before the path on the stream bank becomes impassable. But I don't pull anything while it's in flower especially during times of the growing season when bees have few nectaring options. And weeding amongst these rocks is a bit tricky but not impossible.
The volunteer foxglove in the evolving sanctuary garden has formed at least five flower stalks. This is a plant I've loved since childhood. In my adult life our homes lacked a suitable location to grow it until we became mid-state residents. Then I grew it from seed and planted my favorite Sutton's Apricot with great abandon. When we moved from the old place I brought some transplants of that variety and also grew a few other varieties from seed: Silver King, Terracotta, and white & rose varieties from the Camelot series. The plant above seeded itself directly beside a modest clump of red-hued coneflowers. On my daily inspection tours I always make it a point to gently push away the foxglove leaves and speak to the coneflower crown which has just started to emerge - a little ahead of all the other coneflowers scattered here and there in various gardens:
I'll be moving you as soon as your first leaves are all the way above ground and have begun to unfurl.
I'm also going to re-locate some of the yellow foxgloves above. A single (very large) crown was originally planted nearby during our first month in residence. It was a self-sown offspring of the very first yellow foxgloves I grew from seed - in large part because they're so lovely and easy-care but also because I was in contact with two different people who were working with a flower essence from its blooms in a research capacity. The flower's healing signature was on our collective radar because it showed strong affinity for PTSD symptoms of a tenacious and life-disrupting nature.
For a lot of us (especially if we forced ourselves to watch many of those dreadful Jim Jonesesque news conferences) tenaciously life-disrupting has become synonymous with staying alive in a relatively sane manner despite considerable odds and obstacles. Also -
In my last post I referenced red clover essence and its signature relationship to filtering-out other peoples' fear factors. Am hoping I'll be able to prepare an essence bowl that combines flowers from both plants and maybe something else that hasn't yet identified itself. Prunella and/or comfrey are always a good choice for just about any kind of blend bowl that's focused on just about any kind of healing need. But there might be something more specifically geared to this endeavor that I won't recognize until the currently unknown third component is blooming right in front of me.
Day before yesterday I started upgrading* a quartet of gem elixirs - all but one a pairing of a particular mineral and a complimentary flower. Directly above these words is the sole stand-alone gemstone elixir. My earlier elixir was co-created with two thumb sized chunks of emerald matrix. One is pictured above. The other stone in the bowl came to me in a different way. The original two were a gift from a student who attended my first series of once a month chakra intensives. At the last moment I went back to the terracotta bowl full of green healing stones and substituted a different stone that I'd selected for myself via touch/vibration a few years before I taught that first series of intensives.
*all the original elixirs remain vibrant and viable. But late last fall I started having spontaneous urges and vividly detailed dreams suggesting it was time to incorporate this specific landscape's vibe. Not in order to over-write the previous essence's properties so much as to amplify the encoded spheres of influence in this particular time and space.
The second replacement elixir also contains a significant alteration overlaying the original remedy's makeup. As I was carrying the still-empty bowls and other supplies into the field I kept getting a HEY WHAT ABOUT ME pull towards dandelion flowers. I didn't ignore it so much as explain I was re-doing an elixir of gooseberry flowers and ruby matrix.
Gooseberry's healing signature is one of helping sentient beings cope with the loss of something that had always been a part of them. People often gift this remedy to pets who have been spayed or neutered. But I was interested in using it (and all the rest of these elixirs) as land-healing agents. I added the ruby matrix to promote increased vitality of the total be-ing.
My thrice repeated explanation didn't sway the dandelions' self assertion. And I soon learned why. I only found three suitable gooseberry flowers to include in the bowl. Rather than vexation I shifted tracks and included a few bright yellow blooms in the preparation bowl.
Later today I'll start investigating what the shift in components might mean to the elixir's general healing signature. Since we're all living in a landscape where our human lesson of ongoing merit seems to relate to dealing solely with what's already in place and at our direct disposal it makes sense that this experience would have a direct relationship to whatever the landscape experiences within our shared environment. No matter where we live there's strong likelihood that our Place's sense of itself has been altered by the way the natural kingdoms have responded to far less human over-writing and what I think of as Intention to Preside.
The dandelions' healing signature is important to this process somehow.
On the same day I harvested the two elixirs at the fire pit I also succeeded in preparing a refresh versionsof crab apple essence. The original essence was prepared in the spring of 2000 and it definitely speaks to a very different era of sentient focus and capability. It felt important to have this one on hand in an of the moment iteration.
Crab apple essence is a very good friend for the type of person who perceives themselves to be practically perfect in every way. This worked out quite well for the fictional Mary Poppins but it usually doesn't receive raves reviews from keepin' it real associates of such people here in the everyday world. I've often seen the remedy described as invaluable for those who spend a lot of their time unable to see the forest for the trees. In my own experience and observation it seems more accurate to say these are often people who cannot widen their scope as far as seeing entire 'trees' at a time. They're more geared towards a focus on individual pine needles. And keeping score quite rigorously within their human-based relationships.
I used to consider the crab apple healing signature as solely beneficial for people who are extremely fixed in nature and thus constitutionally unwilling & unable to look beyond what they already know/think/believe. But these days I think pretty much everyone is hyper-focused on personally irksome details within an overview that's so comprehensive and inherently frightening in its scope that we're all breaking-off manageable pieces to process as best we can. And, shortly after I engaged in some automatic writing along this general theme, I realized I don't know many people who aren't ever-ready with thoughts and opinions concerning any number of specific Wrong Things and what ought to be done about it.
This ... gets extremely noisy at the psyche/soul level. Many personality types are so inured to different concurrent forms of everyday noisiness that they perceive something amiss when they sense a lull or deceleration in the energetic cacophony. And so I've been thanking the crab apple medicine spirit profusely throughout the past few days. As someone who thrives best when I can maintain a fairly rigorous devotion to unplugged slowed-down life experience I've been struggling to either evolve or find new ways of getting what I crave.
Also prepared a blend bowl that self-titled as Spiritual Revival. The bowl contains ornamental pear, solaris narcissus and one of the landscape's originally planted large cup daffodils. It also contains violets and the first two crab apple flowers. Am really looking forward to working with this one as a daily constitutional.
Over the past four days I've pitchforked and mulched every place you see straw to the right of the four reddish brown sticks on the left. Behind them is a growing pile of root balls I've removed. Mostly various forms of invasive grass and goldenrod.
Tadpoles are in nearly constant motion within their frog pond universe. J's ordered the garden fence and post materials which should be ready for pick-up tomorrow afternoon or Thursday. Lettuce and spinach seedlings are up. So are borage, green bells of ireland (self-seeded) calendula. No sign of California Poppies yet. They always take a long time to get it together. Providence willing I'm going to make a tincture from the whole plant.
[The basement greenhouse area has expanded because many things have been moved to transplant pots that are bigger and hence required an additional grow light station. J. disagreed with where I thought it should be placed and I could not for the live of me visualize what he'd proposed instead. But now that I see the lights installed just above my mother's old dresser he was indeed on point.
Not sure what else is new. My attention span remains fragmented. At the moment there are five different books on or around my bed. Finally settled into Oryx and Crake. If my focus stays reliable I may make it through the process of re-reading the entire trilogy. So far so good...]