Sparkling Lotus Ink

in her bright yellow coat

Amanda Gorman.

hear her if you have not already ...

the constancy of changing landscape

Look at the happy juniper!   Miss Mama now requires supervised outside time due to her reverting to bird killing.  It took me about three months to train her, a few years of good-girl not going after them and then an interloper cat about three days tops to show by example how she could Be instead.  I take her out doors farther from the feed rocks and she's glad - so far - to just go on inspection tours together.  It was about 20 degrees when I took the above pics - maybe quarter of 8 in the morning.

Yesterday morning - around 7:15.  It felt imperative to step INTO the garden - all the way through the gate.  To stand and feel the energy there.  Remind myself how much of my own intentional YELLOW energy has gone into this space since last March.  I saw clearly how the past season's 'human game trails' made throughout the season might solidify into a path more consciously made from what's there and how the plants move around the passageways.

grace names her young trees and I name the rocks the garden's earth offers.  Every sacred space needs a dedicated male and female guardian pairing.  These came from deep in the ground while J was digging the tomato patch.  Lynne Margulis and Howard Zinn.  LM was really deep in the ground and took J a sweaty hour to extract.   They were undetectable beneath layers of vegetation during the growing season.

Am visualizing next April and early May ...

This morning the cat and I visited the scene of toppled prayers.  I took some care and thought to rebuild:  a more perfect union

and:  finding stability enough to sustain a split foundation

A few hours later the cat wanted to go out again.  This time we visited the stream

There's ice now as an ongoing feature.  If you look at the water furthest away you can see how slow and thick it's becoming even within constant movement.  This is SO different from two weeks ago when the stream rose far above the banks.

And then we went over to the frog pond and considered the holy union between then the juniper and the snowball viburnum.  Also considered some winter pruning.  So many plans, daydreams and necessary chores.  A gardener is always inherently optimistic or at the very least willing to express hope in a few continuous seasons worth of growth.

(the Eye is still there at least to me... and i love how the sun is kind of heart shaped in the light distortion.)

Every once in awhile J and I recollect the afternoon he completed a previously slow-moving section of rock retaining wall repair.   Back in March when we felt ourselves perpetually frustrated and certain we were being lied to or at the very least "handled" and soft-pedaled concerning the pandemic.  I was surprised to see in this pic that we'd already put up two sides of the fence.  It was a lot of high octane nervous YELLOW energy - I am what I prepare to become.

These plans are more quiet.  Listening to what the garden itself might suggest. Listening especially to the sleeping beds of garlic and shallots. They remain covered. with a frosting of icy snow and their original two inches of mulch.  In some places mulch remains.  In others it doesn't.  I worry what that will mean to plants left unprotected.  But, realistically, the more I age the more important it will be to have developed colonies of hardy companions.

Mary's back where she belongs.  It felt all wrong when she wasn't visible from the southern windows.  Yesterday I fell due to neuro-overwhelm and news-related preoccupations.  J is one hundred per cent plugged in and so a lot filters in as he follows me around filling me on a variety of provocative details.  It's only fair.  I've been doing it with him since the summer of 2015.

I keep thinking about what grace wrote:  they stole Senator Warnock's day.  Georgia's day, really.  And yet it all still happened.  Just like my crystalline happiness in the hours before I clocked in just in time to see the guy shouldering the confederate flag walking all around the place.  Abrupt shift off consciousness doesn't begin to cover it, really.  But still I came to everything from an unexpectedly gentle place.  Even at the deeply internalized level it was definitely not what I would have expected of myself.  I have stayed calm as I usually don't in the absence of Mind leading the way as it generally does. 

Normally when my mind says I can't do that right now I panic really overtly.  But this time I stayed calm and practical minded until yesterday afternoon.  I had a purely physical emo-reaction - falling due to neuro-overwhelm and not fully inhabiting my body.  It was a crash landing here in the studio.  I tripped partially over my own two feet and also, due to the muscle memory of moving around a stack of magazines that's no longer there due to me worrying if I didn't get rid of it I might fall. 

Here on the day after I'm far more in my body than I was!  The good news is that it feels good to move and so far I'm not bothered too much by the fallout.  Am achey in places that can be gently stretched with yoga.  Also time to switch from ice to a hot shower.  It's been helpful to move around outside - gently testing the edges of possible movement.  And cold enough to keep inflammation in check!

next year's iris say hello.  The iris essence I sent around came from very deep purple flowers.  If you have it and find your yellow center wobbly or not as bright/grounded as you intend to be try working with this essence.  Am guided to do it myself ...

yellow flower allies .1

This month the Dive is working with the SL golden crocus essence.  I just realized (I make them up for the group and one of the captains gets them about a week ahead of distribution time) I never got around to making a bottle for myself.  This will be changed within a 24 hour window!  This is a wonderfully illuminating and protective psychic and neuro-processing incubator of inner/cosmic Source energy.  Just writing and thinking about the flower's healing signature allows me to breathe more deeply and fully. 

The remedy was selected because everyone involved had a strong arc of spiritual expectation.  Crocus essence supports new growth/first birth/re-birth/re-generation of our soul's individual connection to Spirit.  This is the context in which I'm most familiar with the essence but I'm told there seems to be a gentle emboldening agent present as well.  Think this makes sense.  Solar energy may be fine tuning its frequency to a new level of Highest Good.  Maybe the pragmatic choices we're making and our 'ordinary' creative/gardening activities are holding us at a comparably higher frequency.  This is what innumerable prophecies (especially known to me by way of the Mayan flower based prophecies...) and channeled Ascendants have long suggested. 

sidenote:  the colony above grew in the original Sparkling Lotus garden - so self-named when I committed to co-creating in my modest array of garden beds in a high traffic suburban neighborhood. 

the golden crocus essence was co-created from the colony featured above, two spring seasons into the future - '07.  It's one of my favorites of all time as well as the crown jewel of that first extra special season of co-creative learning and deepening fascination/commitment.  Sometimes I have to put the essence away for a few years because I really do lean all the way into it.  Sequestration is my ingrained comfort zone ...

Since I forgot about the golden crocus connection I've spent the past week working with a Giant Hypercium I co-created last summer.  This was an auspicious essence prepared for someone who really resonated with the idea as soon as I offered.  We are close enough intuitively that I felt the flower's ultra-protective healing energy curling filaments of relief and illumination as soon as the offer was accepted.  The plant itself grows by the base of the porch.  It tends to bloom during the hot droughty portion of the summer.  I go out early in the morning to water the plant directly at the base.  It's not what's recommended but it keeps the flowers from frying.  I ... have trouble bearing witness to that as long as water's plentiful enough to supply.

I find it interesting that a flower with a healing signature that's an across-the-board master healer-illuminator-protective agent is so delicate and swift to die so dramatically if the sun's too strong and hot.  I like working with this Giant version because I feel it at the earthstar level as well.  Think I will recommend as an Awakener for people who aren't sure if they're getting the EarthStar hook-in point.

Classic field/indigenous St. Johnswort is a staple in most established commercial and well-stocked DIY flower essence repertory.  I love that it grows wild in our field and that others have come to gather the flowers for drying/magical purposes as well as with therapeutic or energetic intentions.  Not so many this year - three.  At first I was sad.  On top of so much permanent loss - to feel distinctly deprived of casual and usually taken for granted social exchanges in the field or studio.    But then I was grateful.   Rarely did we interact directly.   I kept track of extremely care-full and light footed human traffic by monitoring the way the St Johnswort flower clusters changed from a dusk inspection to early morning to later afternoon. 

A certain truck I knew by ear and then would scamper to see what small unobtrusive carefully built rock formation I might find.   Some I didn't find until absolutely everything appeared to have died back.    Nearly everyone I know locally gathers the flowers to make therapeutic oil and most are quite upfront that they dry the flowers for ritual use as well.  I like gaining understanding of how this aspect of herbalism weaves itself rather casually person to person.  One friend confessed she didn't know why she did it.  She simply liked keeping them in a brandy snifter with other dried yellow flowers she kept there throughout the season. 

I said to her:  that's why you do it!  It's your dark months' eternal sunshine!  Now I do it too.  I also  like include yellow topaz and small unravelling scraps of yellow silk and/or coarse linen.

The most popular blend in the SL repertory is called Mellow Yellow.  This is the co-creation bowl set at the edge of my dedicated essence garden at the top of a hillside orchard.  Summer of '05.  I have written out  the first few bars of the story here.  Some seeds were sown with the explicit understanding that they'd give their flowers to an essence bowl rather than setting seed.  This was the case with the Moon and Stars melon flowers in this bowl.  For creative illumination and prolific growth.  There's also a pumpkin flower for deepening and illuminating a more intentional energetic footprint.  Lots of yellow marigolds for smoothing and adjusting electrical energy flow.  Marigolds of any kind serve as a kind of psychic and electrical recalibration tool.  Times when we don't feel like ourselves, can't get comfortable in our own skin.  understand we need to experience what we're experiencing BUT.  All of that can be eased via French Marigold's energetic signature.

There are yellow nasturtiums for revitalizing depleted/overtaxed neural passageways.  Lots of tiny yellow wood sorrel blooms for sharing quiet and prolific radiance among kindred souls and spirits.  Promotes awareness and appreciation of the small and innumerable private treasures our days can hold once we gear ourselves to noticing them.  Tomato flowers offer deep cleansing to our entire energetic system.  Like all nightshade healing signatures - the Tomato spirit confers great levels of personal agency in terms of what we consciously 'allow'.  My experiences of personal and observation natures suggest it will then take things just a couple of degrees past that point.  Enough to be noticed but not enough to automatically shut it down especially when blended and mellowed with so many other healing and illumination signatures.

Yellow snapdragons to both loosen bite-back TMJ issues and concurrently re-calibrate ingrained certainty a sharp tongue is the quickest way to getting an answer/establishing pecking order/etc.  There are also a few volunteered Evening Primrose flowers in the bottom of the bowl.  This healing signature is established as a go-to for Mother Issues in a number of repertories.  I've found it invaluable for myself and others in helping to breaking up and dissolving deeply impacted layers of unclaimed or unexamined shame. It's really good for seemingly unresolved disconnect from Mother which I tend to interpret on broader terms of the absence of direct Gaia-Mama contact in many woman's lives.

I kept meeting such women in an online context during the summer I was co-creating this essence blend

I grew these zucchinis explicitly for the flowers although, being zucchinis, I also harvested food.  Zucchini is the energetic equivalent of a self-care afternoon - whatever that might mean at an individual level.  For me it usually means time off the clock - and enough of it to authentically drift.  What the teenage version of my son used to call a non-day.  Molly Sheehan used to say the essence was the equivalent of a day home in your pajamas.  So it's really nice for people who give care or other forms of healing/leading/teaching as an ongoing part of life.  Also wonderful for parents of young children or spousal caregivers who need to get the verve for the extra miles they must travel in unusual and creative ways.

there are a lot of yellow flowers set aside for this chakra as I spent the upper part of two hours this morning going through photo archives pulling out everything I could find along the way.  So amazing  - the ongoing flower strewn path through my life ...

 

Happy Birthday, Calendar Year!

[Most images are from a yellow/orange/gold color collection journal.  The yellow stenciled flower lives in my informal botanical moly.  Flower bowl is from last spring.]

Here we are - at long last beyond 2020 if only in the most literal of senses.   For me it will always be known as the year my face echoed profound grief as well as the usual aging laws of gravity.  This year will stay on and in my face forever I'm alive.  It will also stay in my heart.  I've had so many personally wonderful and deeply loving experiences this year with humans and many other species.  I've felt connected to All That Is as never before.  I've cried enough to make up for all the years I did no such thing.  I've also laughed so hard my abs ached for days afterwards.  In fact I've spent entire days laughing and in the long run that's a very Yellow thing.

On new year's day - as well as my birthday - I love the ceremony of spending time doing things I love and want to incorporate throughout the year.  It's really nice to weave this into all the other doings (or vegetating) of the day.  I thought I'd share my plans for this particular New Years:

J and I skipped drawing night this week because I fell asleep for a long unplanned nap and didn't wake up until he was coming to bed.  Sometime today we'll draw together because it's adding a lot of value and authentic bonding to our lives.

Ditto to all of the above concerning the stir fry that didn't happen last night due to another nap.  We want to continue preparing more meals together as well as separately while sharing the prep space and conversating about all manner of things.

More personally:

Create posts on the first day of the month as the colors change. 

Sort my seeds properly.  Am inspired by Deb Gorr and her doing hers a long time ago but I only noticed the comment yesterday. It will signify ongoing gardening activities.  The actual sorting may take me a few days to complete so I also need a space of time to stitch something.  Even if I only manage a single modest row of kantha stitches a day.  I need to get this activity back into my life on the regular.

Communicate with various kindred souls in some way.  Send an email or three to friends who've been in touch over the last week or so.  Tend to the present tense, in other words, as it relates to my life in 3-d reality.  As opposed to my life sitting where I'm sitting right now typing on a laptop. 

Closely connected:  I already put in two plus hours tending to my fictionland goal posts.  Now we're officially in the On The Clock period when I said I'd be done with a solid draft to send a particular somebody.  I said that would happen at the end of the calendar year 2021.  Now here I am on day one.  Am aware I'm inclined to automatically put myself on some kind of success-failure continuum conveyor belt that's, at best, an unnecessary distraction from immersing in the goal itself. 

Time spent staring into space doing absolutely nothing.

Loving on the houseplants.

Painting if only for 15 minutes.  Done.

Also need and want to go outside.  Have been dealing with a lot of neuro disarray of late and then got into this thing where i didn't want to "hold J back" when he was planning to be outside doing stuff or vigorously completing his repetitive trails rounds for exercise purposes.  Am aware all I'd have to do is ask.  Didn't feel like asking because I didn't want to feel any more vulnerable than I already did due to a few forms of neuro-disruption.

solar issues, yeah?

So today I'll speak up and ask.  Putting it into the mainframe as more of a thing I will do.  Think my mantra for the month is going to be:

vulnerability rebuilds strength.

Orange Summation

    
This is a post of reflection woven with my final week's sacral themes: Synchronicity & Co-creation.

On a personal level that synchs-in well with the end-of-water-cycle song I've always intended to post as a listen only '20 remaster of Uncle John's Band.  What else could I possibly pick?  A song that gives me shivers of happiness and knew-so-many-people--from-before glad tidings each and every time I hear it.

***

We're currently abiding in the energy of a Cancerian full moon with its peak expression most likely happening today or early tomorrow depending where you live and how vibe-sensitive you are.  My feelings about water-sign full moons are mixed.   For one thing they bring up so much intensity of feeling, memory, and intuition that my various fire aspects more or less leave the building in order to the preserve their essence.  I never enjoy those times.  Without my fire/solar energy I'm never quite sure who I am.

example:  I once went into a local apothecary on a nothing-but-water day.  It was near the end of the third (solar) month of my first self-guided chakra intensive experience.  One of my biggest illuminations from that experience occurred when I realized I had no idea who I was on the inside.  I knew what I did.  I knew what I was good (and for that matter bad) at.  I knew where I'd been and where I wanted to go but I didn't know who I was at the most pivotal and entirely solar center of my own self-awareness.  I didn't have any sense of that energetic wheel at all.

[blue is the sacral center's cool-down color.  This can be hard for people who don't really "do" deep water energy work very comfortably or at all IF they happen to associate blue with Water rather than Sky.  I had that problem for a while with a strong glowing red sense of connection to my root chakra.  Red to me was fire and hence I could never seem to get 'grounded' vibes from it so much as rapaciousness.

Three different people have asked me about this blue/water /how-can-that-possibly-help-me-dry-out conundrum.  And much as I've chafed over hearing this answer myself it's the truest truth.  Just in case there are others:  You have to concentrate.  You have to be willing to accept that in the beginning your concentration might not seem to be produce anything you can recognize - or anything at all.  You have to be okay with that and remain open to nothing happening.  This "failure" is quite likely to re-assert itself as an out of the blue insight or inspiration that seems to present itself in an immediate and wholecloth way.   Be open to the appearance of  BLUE color ray energy appearing of its own accord to cool excess orangeness and/or to emphasize something that seems to emerge spontaneously at the speech and/or vision energy centers.  This may happen in synch with the Dive or at a future point - most likely when you least expect it.]

***

Montana Blue Centaurea, pictured above, makes a wonderful flower essence most usually associated with the head chakras.  But look at the feathery petals.  Imagine gently dropping the womb-center's energy into a bed of such magnificence.  I find it's really invaluable for stabilizing and clarifying the sacral energetics of intuition.  The more powerful it feels the more I seek to counterbalance that with some ongoing degree of head-based Vision clarity.  Montana Blue and Italian Alkanet are equally amazing for this kind of crystalline back-up. 

***

 At the time of my first (self and book guided) chakra intensive experience back in my late 30's I 'thought I'd done something wrong' or otherwise misguided.  So I went into the store seeking advice on how to gain a sense of who I was.  This upset the store owner who refused to accept the reality of me on a no-fire day.  (she was an aries and we related to each other in a distinctly aries kinda way...)  Just would not accept it and so there were tears profound enough to convince her - okay, this person I in no way perceive as having this type of problem is having it nonetheless.  

She went to her healer's strengths as well as her pendulum while I told her I needed something to help me know how I to get all the links in my energy chain lit and linked up as an ongoing thing.  We settled on a specific tarot deck and Sweetgrass flower essence.  Taking it led me to "suddenly" think or imagine four different ways I already was connected to my entire column as well as my full self but had simply/not-so-simply forgotten how to utilize the power/personal responsibility of turning the lights from bright to dim.  The problem had been my hyper-specific notions of how I was "supposed" to be doing and feeling things. 

[California Poppy holds so much healing for our species.  The entire plant containing all its phases of seed pods, flowers and buds, and roots can be tinctured for a very effective pain relieving agent.  I like adding three parts California Poppy to one part dried lavender buds previously whizzed through a blender.  Although I usually chop and grind to maximize surface area - the first time I work with a plant for tincturing purposes, I always ask the plant's primary/largest plant colony ahead of gathering - which would you prefer in order to help me and together help others? CaliPop always wants to remain intact for me.  At least so far.

I work with California Poppy flower essence a lot and for many reasons.  Primarily I take it in combination Green Bells of Ireland.  Year before (almost) last I was guided by both flower medicine spirits in a series of dreams and meditations.  They wanted - as in REALLY wanted - a small plot in the field garden where they could grow and commune together specifically to combine in an essence.  I promptly ordered the necessary seeds and buzzed with anticipation.  will tell the whole story - picking up at this point when we're deeper into the Solar region of Everything.

P.S.  the two flowers pictured above were part of the essence bowl's contents.]

***

A few days ago we had prodigious rainfall.  This caused several types of shifted consciousness.  For one thing the precipitation and 8 inches of snow melt runoff caused a true watershed's worth of water to barrel through the edge of our property more or less within the stream bed.  In some places it broached the bed and spring run-off grooves long established.  I stood at the glass doors in J's office and quite suddenly understood why this specific perspective leaves him at times preoccupied with flooding potential.  Always thought it was a dimensional skew based on what I see from the much higher back window in the studio.  And it is, but on my end. 

As I stood watching from the studio stairs I opened the window so I could also hear the water running while the rain pounded in the stream and everywhere else. It sounded without exaggeration as loud as the spontaneous waterfalls that formed following flash-flooding just above the tree-line in Yosemite on an afternoon in late August when my son and I were there.  Also, as I stood listening from the safety of Inside, I felt in my body the way I've felt on a trail ride when the horses go all horse-like one right after the other with a ripple of Horse Expression that could mean nothing or everything.  It was exhilarating and I took it in as a fitting end to this month of sacral challenge, deliverance, and ongoing illumination. 

J took a short film from the center of the bridge just past noon when everything was at its peak level of water-based mayhem and chaos.  I waited two more days and didn't go out to the same spot until yesterday morning.  By then the water had receded and slowed itself a good bit.  Took some pictures of the ice and water.  Walked in the woods just a little to see portions of what J describes based on his daily repetitive loop.  The path out to the field is deep muck.  I need to coordinate mental incentive with physical willingness to leave the sacral womb-feeling of my studio space because the field will be even deeper muck. 

as we get ready to move towards the yellow/solar center I'm thinking alot about cauldrons.  Fire forging a cauldron of some kind from earth-metals or very thick clay.   the cauldron holding whatever water/sacral energy we may need for continuing.

Namaste

...and there was light...

                         
Sunlight emerged so as to stay shortly after J and I spent the lunch hour roaming through the house rattling-out pockets of static energy, congealed emotional residue, and stray trails of darkness wherever we felt it to be.

J had his deer horn rattle and I brought these two cherished sisters to work independently and sometimes both together.  The calabash/cowrie shell rattle is incredibly loud.  Energy was dispersed.  Particles stuck together every which way likewise dispersed.  At times I sensed them changing form and kept thinking of Pam Gregory's ongoing reminder:  Less Particle, More Wave.

Being the child of Summer that I am this is one of my happiest days of the year.

more light.

every single day.

are you ready

???

birth/day stories

blossom crystals with iron inclusions lending an orange tinge to the individual points.  Given to my mother, while in labor, the day before I was born.  My grandmother kept it in her pocketbook while I was being born.  Family legend says but only in whispers:  she left her bible behind in order to have enough room.  So for the event of my birth Pearl went just a little feral and pagan.

***

It isn't hard to see how/why this particular gift was selected.  My mother turned over ownership of this beauty when I was eight years old and given my first small personal garden space.  In the summer the blossom rock lived there.  In the winter it lived on the little chest of drawers next to my bed.

In my adult life the rock continued to summer outside within garden spaces close to the house where I could keep track of it.  This tradition was curtailed when yellow jackets began to build egg chambers on the rounded inside dome of the mother blossom.  Even after scrubbing the rock the pheromones remained beacon-like.  Last summer I tried an experiment.  I put the blossom rock in an open (but screened) window sill here in the studio.   I wasn't sure if anything would happen but a few days later I noticed wasps clustered on the screen adjacent to the rock.  When I took the rock away the wasps stopped congregating.  put it back and they reappeared.

not what we call strong science by any means.  but ...

***

My son was born a month early and yet right on time.  He didn't feel like an Aries (at all ...) while he was growing inside of me - he felt like a pair of fish tumbling around every which way in amniotic fluid. 

Sometimes he communicated with me.  Once, quite memorably, he communicated with J. as well - announcing his name to be Anthony.  He communicated the same thing to me.  We discovered as much when, after the fact, I tentatively asked if J had any name preferences and he replied just as tentatively:

"I really don't but maybe ... the baby believes his name is Anthony?"

and then the story tumbled out of both of us.  We looked at each other.  Odd happenstances that couldn't be proven logically were a hallmark of our relationship even then.

***

The day before he was born we didn't yet suspect he was on his way.  We went to an Italian restaurant we loved primarily because it served good food we could actually afford if we skimped a bit on other types of 'extras'.  On this occasion we had their Sunday buffet brunch and when we got home I took a nap.  While I was asleep I dreamed we went back to the restaurant and I ate another serving of every single thing I'd eaten while we were there. 

When it was time for night-sleeping we still didn't suspect the imminent arrival.  Dreamtime changed that. 

It began with my arrival on the bank of an enormous lake.  I could hear the water sloshing against the support beams driven into the lake bank sand.  I could feel myself wearing a very heavy cumbersome set of metal and leather clothing.  With the magic of dream logic, once I stepped into the moonlight I could see myself as from an overhead distance.  I was dressed like a Samurai  because that's what I was.

And the moonlight was very holy although I couldn't see the moon.  It was so high in the sky that no matter how I bent my neck and stooped I couldn't see it.  So I got down, flat on the long floating deck that went on for quite awhile with the water all around. 

And lying flat with the whole sky above me I still couldn't see the moon.  But I could feel the undulating deck and hear the water sloshing beneath it. 

A monk joined me.  Arriving without fanfare and strictly in the terms of dream logic.  The monk knelt down and took my arms to pull me into a similar upright position.  We touched foreheads.  Then the monk laughed.  He flew up into the sky like a balloon that had suddenly lost all it's air.  And in the process he turned into a cloud, still laughing.  And the cloud passed across an enormous rust-red moon.  Despite the dullness of the color the moon glowed just as it always does when full.  And it pulsed like a heartbeat.

I wanted nothing more than to be part of that moon and so I ran to the end of the endless deck and climbed down the ladder at the end.  And within the dream my conscious mind woke up enough to feel the lake water rising to embrace and then all but consume me.

my waters were breaking.  I woke up with an electric certainty and strong recollection of one of the few dreams in my life that I recall with perfect clarity year after year.

***

For comparative purposes, it's necessary to take on faith that I'm only marginally interested in astrology at this point in my life.  But back then?  I was 'of the cloth' all the way.  Hence the second call (obvi the first was to J just settling into what he imagined would be a sensible and measured morning at the drafting table) was to a sunbrother with an ephemeris. 

Once he confirmed what I felt I most needed to know (I also thought I needed to go out and buy sandalwood incense to burn during labor.  I still laugh about that.) I started talking to my son.

I don't know if I can handle raising somebody with a Scorpio moon.  Do you think it will be okay to wait until that's no longer the situation?

and this voice but from inside so you hear it through your bones.  this voice that is my son's voice to this day said to me "sure mom.  no problem."

He was most definitely a pisces and entirely ready to be born.  textbook in that end but I was an assiduously empowered woman who intended to labor from that place so that's what I did.  There are stories about those six hours in which nobody but nobody got in my way for even five seconds.

Since he was a month early there were some things.  It was two weeks before my sunbrother was able to supply everything but the Sag moon sign (which I thought was MOST EXCELLENT without also realizing, as I had about Scorpio energy, 'but wait you will be the Mom of this person') I'd been able to work out on my own.  Before he began I told him the story of both the dream and then the communication in which I achieved cooperative contact with my kid before he was all the way breathing.

and because my friend is a brit's brit he replied with the single word quite.  I went on for awhile.  and then he said I might want to put a thought or two towards The Ascendant.

and just the way he said it I knew.

oh yeah.

The monk came back as an unbelievably intense firebrand very much living in today's mashed-apart world.  No problem at all to have a Sag moon for that kind of ride, right?  Especially when the whole other Thing With Purpose could thus be shifted to what was undoubtedly the master plan all along.

this is my Telling story in women's circles of a maternal nature.  If it isn't an astro crowd I just tell the dream part.  If there are a few people who can get the whole THUNK of the other part I tell it as well

Once I told it to Jeannine Parvati - she being the whole reason I became a mother.

she laughed with the thinnest trace of nervous mental energy weaving amongst her trademark melodics.  She then opined there were any number of inferences and references to be made just off the top of her head.  She declared it made her dizzy and she couldn't think about it any further - she had to imagine and fantasize instead.

and that's my water story about mother stories and sacral sisters.

namaste

Orange Flower Essences

The Sparkling Lotus repertory is very strongly rooted in various rose essences.  Tropicana Rose essence has the distinction of being the most popular of the bunch at a feedback level. All rose essences interact, at an electrical level, with our central and sympathetic nervous systems in some combination of ways.  There used to be a prolific and detailed Rose alchemy component to online flower essence information banks but nearly all the links I tested-out ahead of time have gone dead.  So these background notes really only reflect my own experiences, feedback such as the link posted below, and my awareness that literal rose flowers soothe so much for so many that I can't imagine their electrical essences would do any less in the more subtle registers. The more hypersensitive/emotionally hyper-active you are the more likely you are to respond to rose's many-petal'd invitation to slow and soothe and savor your own unique creative and psychic flow.

Here's a link from bygone days in which a gifted flower alchemist shared her experiences with the essence.

My favorite orange rose is a deep coral glow of a beauty.  The flowers smell like freshly cut apples sprinkled with bee pollen.  She beckoned from a sales rack outside the next town's hardware store.  At the time we had 'driven into the country' from our former home.  This is probably one of my top dozen most cherished essences.  Probably in the top five of that list. 

This flower medicine spirit soothes neuro-circuitry in a way that's equally nourishing, revitalizing, and protective.  Absolutely lovely especially when wading in deep-orange waters...

the California Poppy medicine spirit is very adept at soaking up hyper-emotional or overcharged sexual compulsion.  It's protective and illuminating to all the chakras but the chalice shape of these flowers opened to a fresh day's light always puts me in mind of the sacral center's bowl-like moon blooming from the six sacred lotus petals.

I also associate my own creative flow with this flower.  All I have to do is see a picture of a blooming field or a single chalice spangled with morning dew and its light and I feel my mind and hands itching to make something and/or a growing need to elevate whatever I'm already making.

The flower medicine spirit vibrates at a vacillating but always-very high frequency.  In the FES repertory guidebook this one's designated as a shield against luceferic light.   Also false reflections of equally false psychic or spiritual light sources.  Can work very well as a stabilizing ally for complex-PTSD. 

Calendula essence holds a long established relationship to smooth and inclusive manners of spoken communication.  the Calendula flower medicine spirit holds and generates a great capacity for holding and reflecting light.   This is also a great ally for effectively levelling-up the game of whatever forms of truth telling you employ in you work and larger life.

Siberian Wallflowers are so vividly orange they need their share of cooling down by garden design standards.  I grew them the year they were meant to be popular but weren't ('02 or '03) and consequently a number of the small upstart greenhouses I visited were selling them cheap by the time I went on a mission of mercy prowl.  

There's a lot of high vibrational range in this essence - perhaps most of all for people who want to open to spirit at a specifically creative level.   This happens to be one of the three flower essences that taught me the most about opening to my own inner channels of intuition.  It helped me make the jump from reading plants with confidence and accuracy but assuming everything else I picked up was either wishful imagination or a test of some undefined Nature to see if I'd have the humility and grace to stay in my lane - to integrating more layered forms of awareness that may or may not relate directly to flowers' healing capacities to help humans.

Roadside Orange Day Lilies that I lovingly cultivated from a scant dried corm back at the old place.  I made this essence on what then felt like an odd hunch it would be helpful in clearing the atmosphere during emotional meltdowns related to one of a kind events such as weddings, a child's christening, and so forth.

In a more distanced world of the commonsense present I wonder if this might be good for personal collaborations that are designed to be unusually brief or centered around a specific once-in-a-lifetime theme/form of inter-laced workmanship.   

Long ago a friend and I noticed how the flowers swoop out on both sides of the Honeysuckle bud cluster.  She pointed out that the fattened buds remided her of ovaries and the long flowers' throats reminded her of fallopian tubes.   When I co-created an essence in my old garden I read the flowers in the established way: so that the flower's trumpet shape served as an ability to receive far-off spiritual and psychic messages.  But I also thought of my friend's earlier life read.  I asked the flowers if their medicine spirit had the ability to plant especially sweet sacral center healing seeds of long term beauty.  And so it would seem that Spirit does have such abilities as well as a sweetening attribute that's frequency rather than scent based.

Red-Orange Passionflower from an enormous plant living in the main greenhouse at Logee's.  It used to be a very straight zip south from the old place so J and I were prone to go sometime between Valentine's Day and our Anniversary in early March.  Just the right time of year to wander agog at the many flowering wonders of this place.

the Passionflower healing signature relates to cleansing and healing from our deepest wounds in ways that facilitate turning that wounding and its healing into some type of Service work.  Two different people have asked me about orange passionflower - calling to them for alchemy and not knowing WHAT.   

This is a path of Service essence irrespective of what it facilitates to get you in alignment for such a thing.

Marigold essences always inter-relate with our CNS/electrical circuitry.  This makes them a very nice mixing-companion for roses.

In the summer of 2005 a few pagan-centric alchemists began working with my flower essence handbook and their own druthers of what they were inclined to make of their deepening earth/light/human triangulations.  Several were strongly guided through meditation or automatic writing to prepare an essence bowl for this fire-flower while the sun was in Leo.

They grew obsessed with it.  And the skies kept raining pretty much alla time but often most frustratingly after two hours of vivid sunlight.  Eventually it all worked out but it was a time of receiving multiple emotionalized emails concerning 'weather on the 8's' and how heartbreaking it all was. there will be a third installment mixing what's left of the red and orange flower considerations and suggestions.

Red Flower Essences

I wrote a post about co-creating this essence last spring.  All things considered it felt like a no-brainer for working through the Dive during November/first chakra month.  I've grown to love this particular essence a lot since its co-creation.   The maple tree waited until the full conclusion of our first decade in residence before reaching out to me in the undeniable and very warm-spirited way that it did.

Maple's flower healing signature relates to balance.  Last month's decibel and cage-rattling level was greatly soothed for me by the physical Maple tree itself as well as essence work on a daily basis.  I find working with the essence paired with meditation seems to open the door for more space in my days and evenings to simply reflect.  Not necessarily thoughts/reflection but perhaps just reflect the energy I've gathered and dispersed - reflect its overall form and purpose rather than my sole part of it.  

I really like the way that feels and how I'm able to notice my body responding with a loosening of tension.  It makes me think of the Buddha and the lesson of the bow that must be tightened neither too loose nor too tight.

the Crocosmia healing signature is crystalline and unmistakably direct to root and illuminate the energetic spine.  This often translates as a sudden uptick in energy level - a bustling spring in the step that was merely getting from one place to another prior to essence work. 

I love working with this flower in combination bowls or individual synergies prepared from separate mother stocks.  This past summer I felt a nudge to replace the SL Crocosmia mother essence. The resulting bowl was splendiforous.

Cardinal Flower essence has been chosen to root and sanctify the ongoing exploratory Dive process.  Am finding it's nice to 'finish' maple balancing endeavors with a flower so expressive of other realms of influence/reality.  The cardinal flower's healing signature relates to restoring sacred forms of dignity, illumination, and intent. 

In the mid-to-late fall I discovered small blooming cardinal flowers at the edges of the front yard's side pocket gardens.  The blossoms were exuberant in my noticing of them.  I promptly set up some bamboo stakes that I hope will survive the winter.  Otherwise I won't be sure where the plants are within the larger patch of lawn where I found them.

but maybe if i simply focus and listen ...

Flowering Quince is often associated with the crown chakra and sometimes the heart-sacral bridge.  For me the bright red blooms in my garden speak of a richly flourishing root chakra. When I work with the essence I always have the sense of individual stems rising from the petal bed at each juncture where two petals overlap.  I visualize the stems growing throughout my energetic spinal column - watching the buds form, fatten and release into blooming.  The flowers' healing and illumination range centers on timeless vibrancy and gentle resilience.

the Yarrow Flower medicine spirit is deeply protective.  In established essence work of the past 70 years or so yellow yarrow is well tested as a master shield for both gross and subtle human bodies.  This past summer I received some quiet counsel from the white yarrow plantlets that began appearing along a certain part of our enlarged field garden's new fencing.

 Have kind of mushed my initial impressions of the medicine spirit's entreaty to work, think, and cocreate with local varieties whenever possible in with Pam Gregory talking about the dissolution of the magnetic shield.  And then further mushed with common sense, survivalist thinking, and more generalized pragmatism.  It seems likely that whatever yarrow grows in a fully wild state - or very close to it - is going to be any given alchemist's best choice of a master shield. 

Welcoming a Yarrow ally as electrical and psychic back-up is a wonderful gift during times of prolonged duress.  It can also be just as lovely and well-applied for those who work in a capacity of guidance or healing - counseling, etc.  I like it for times when it seems that staying true to myself needs its own time alone in a bubble of sorts - while concurrently carrying on with life (and its attendant emotions) as close to normally as possible.  Also love spending time among flowering yarrow plants.  My sister in law has virtual groves of the deep golden yellow variety growing throughout her NoCali version of a wild garden.

the Echinacea flower healing vibration is always related to deep/bedrock level restoration of soul and spirit as well as mind and body.  This specific flower may have been included in the essence bowl.  I was really happy to see how vibrantly and fully the plant flowered in mid-summer.  Earlier in the season it developed a very obvious co-creative relationship with an enormous volunteer foxglove in the Evolving Sanctuary garden.

Have been working with a few folk who are profoundly shook by all we've been through and continue to experience throughout the globe.  I have a strong preference for offering Echinacea remedies (along with Elderberry and perhaps Lime) for the special needs of complex PTSD as well as those in occupations with a strong ongoing trauma component flagging ongoing need for self-care and ongoing restorative life choices.

i hope to write in more depth on this topic and then figure out how to get the words distributed most efficiently.  stay tuned.

Red Bee Balm is a very versatile essence.  It clears the head chakras beautifully and also shows an affinity for brain-level neuro-circutry.  This is obvious from the shape and form of the flower.  What's also obvious is the long square shaped stem that places this species in the mint family.  The sturdy stem always reminds me of the spinal column when perfectly straight.  I like to image the flower in a visualization that places the flower against the spinal column as if the blossom could move up and down - not unlike a clear class elevator on the outside of a building.  In that visual image, the flower describes the essence's capacity to travel up and down throughout the chakra system - at speed that may compromise detailed examination but not illuminated awareness.

[grace actually spoke to this but i can't remember where.  a comment and maybe it's here and I can find it to place right here.]

I find red bee balm flower essence to be a special friend to those who have chronic illness and/or pain.  The certain zap that chronic anything applies to every layer of be-ing is not to be underestimated.  Our subtle energy bodies need nourishment and the energetic equivalent of electrolyte rebalancing. 

Since this is a very solar plant I thought to work with it when I felt I was good and thoroughly caught up with crying after so many years of refusing to do as much.  A dream guided me to put a single drop of mother stock in the center of my crown.  I waited while it was absorbed and then visualized its passageway through my energy system.  Am setting aside a few scant dropper bottles with the mother stocks so there's no need to the original storage bottle more than once.  Just to be prepared in this way.  It feels important and possibly a partial refinement of rescue remedy as it's best applied in our variety of destabilizing circumstance?

a little more red and some orange up next...

let's pretend this is twitter

If only so I can say:  enjoy this emotional timeline cleanse.  The noise here in the States is getting intrusive right along with the rising Covid numbers here in the town where I live and elsewhere in MA. 

Above is a part of the front yard's side pocket area that I took to calling The Indigenous Tribute Garden.  It could also be called the result of the gate in the background being stuck shut during a time when J was putting in 70 hour weeks so it took a while to fix.  I just directed him where to stop mowing and then I had a nearby place to commune with many of the plants I wildcraft from the field much farther from human dwellings and roads. 

Think I've found the fulcrum I'll need to have a better sense of how to proceed blogging about chakras in a long haul way. My mind's been an ongoing roadblock of no consequence to anyone but me.  At the same time on that whirling mind level the consequence feels endless if entirely self-perpetuated. 

the good news is if it's something I'm doing it's something I can stop doing.  And have already begun.

this pic or something similar will show up in the next post mixing red and orange flower images with short descriptions of their essences.  The photo above was taken during the summer I kept this garden in the summer of '05.  As described in that early post, I approached a local CSA manager to see if I might have 'a bit of earth' specifically to co-create flower essences.  She didn't know what they were but she knew about Bach Rescue Remedy.  I told her were I lived (densely populated by any standards not just ex-urbs) and she immediately brought me in.

It was a magical summer that culminated with hurricane Katrina.   Thus it was a pivotal personal development summer as well.  This was borne-out in astrology, my local teaching efforts, and just time spent on the edge of a wonderful old orchard right at the summit of an equally wonderful New England hill.   As I was writing these words it seemed as if it was also a summer that - within my own mind - asked me to grow all the way up and get truly creative in terms of how I put my energy into the world as a healer. 

J takes afternoon walks around our neighborhood's roads.  Yesterday he brought in the garden bell that we both overlooked until I suddenly remembered in the middle of the night.  Knew the beautiful knotted tibetan cord probably wouldn't withstand more than another year if that so am glad to have it re-hung in its new and greatly improved winter location.

Today temps rose to the high 30's.  local road traffic has thinned considerably.  T's various electronic and building projects are kudzu-ing basement real estate.  J and I have agreed to investigate standing light garden units.  Something modest and just the equivalent of what I have now or even a bit less.  If the service bureau's work slows down for him he's likely as not to figure out how to make it - or at least the frame - himself. 

Tomorrow I'm putting on muck-boots and walking around the field for awhile...