Sparkling Lotus Ink

burgeoning super moon report

The sparkly effect around last night's moon is the result of tree flowers and newly unfurling maple leaves.  I stood outside for quite while.

The upcoming Scorpio full moon has been asking for advance preparation on my part.  This is a significant switch up from me asking my water-cousin's moon-in-waiting to be gentle with me.  I tend to do that as a matter of course and have ever since I was 18 or 18.   'Mixed results' would be a diplomatic way of putting it.  I generally feel like I'm trapped in a psycholgical and emotional cement mixer with thousands of boulders tumbling around intent on 'polishing' me  in the emotional, subtextual, and depth-charged way of such things.  And then other times, it's amazingly healing and feather-gentle.  That's how it was last year, for instance. 

now this year the Scorpionic medicine spirit is talking to me rather than keeping quiet while I figure it out on my own.  Telling me to Prepare to Receive. 

This switch feels appropriate in my life's arc as well as where we are in the chakra wheel: Scorpio moving right on in and murmuring hey baby.  just get yourself ready, okay?  I assume my mind will blown in some way that may or may not be translatable in language-based way.  Part of getting ready for that in the physical sense is another part of what I generally experience during the Scorpio lunar fullness.  Just as usual, I've had really debilitating head pain for the past few days. It's been intense enough to promote altered consciousness. 

People who make a habit out of talking to themselves through their bodies know what I'm talking about.  In my case, it's been vividly clear to me since my late teens that my mind and spirit turned out to be my high cards.  But I try not to flash that around like physically healthy people like to do it.

We all get gifts, we all get burdens.

and then we either sack up or demand to see the manager.

that's my boiled down sixth chakra/scorpio full moon takeway.

it really never varies at that level

but the particulars are endlessly rearrange-able

and so they have been.

The fire pit area post burning is always a kind of new year because the old growing season's been burnt clear.  J's in the background attending to some of his newest tiny white pine transplants.  I've been going outside everyday (except the time it snowed) and slowly tottering around with the cat, and my eyes peeled for new signs of life.  Sometimes I weed a little, and take a fair amount of pictures during camera days.  I dream and envision and listen to all the invisible voices and dreams of the waking plant world.

I'll take the head pain involved

with that level of high frequency reception because I consider it a reasonable price.

Also there's stuff I can do to keep everything at a dull roar so I can maintain some semblance of regular activity on its slowest speed.

add to which:

after I heard the verdict and finally exhaled?

my head pain didn't vanish

but the level is now both livable

and simple to control when it's not.

now i'm going back to not listening to what people have to say

because I'm seeing now, and what I see hasn't yet found a dovetail with word tincturing.  Not in myself or an ability to absorb that kind of conscious word use as it's offered from others.    This happens a lot.  Like the eight year period when I went analog and knew without doubt I wasn't 'missing' a thing. I think the part of my brain that felt it was vital I clock the mainstream level of what's on other people's minds is undergoing major revision.  A lot of this head pain that's louise hay-worthy in nature, is all about how much I need to disconnect from what the shadow realms of keeping track of Everybody are up to.  I've always considered it a point of honor that I don't disconnect from my species along lines of affinity, time management concerns, or discernible 'point'/purpose.  Maybe it still is.  But I'm ready to retire from the front lines there, as well as elsewhere.

This years Maple flowering season has been straight-up magical with its primarily sunny days full of warmth and freshly emergent human experience.  All the new alchemists were able to achieve their first co-creative success by way of working with the flower medicine spirit of the first flower essence they came to know - through the dive program - Red Maple.

This a profound culmination of shifting awareness.

The sense of satisfaction I feel is deeply nourishing.  As is my profound gratitude to the trees spirits who so obviously gave of themselves to these budding healers and light workers.  I felt their energy rippling with invitation:  come.  we are ready to receive your reception.

and they meant me, too. 

and so I went to the red maples here and there around the property, simply receiving.

Ladies Mantle is the alchemist's plant totem by long-established principles.  I invited the new alchemists to approach the plants on the mornings they were here and drink from the leaves if they were so invited.

they were not.  and neither was I.

but we all stood in wonderment

and gave ourselves some points for not going ahead and doing it anyway.

'that would have been so human', one of them texted me.

I considered it a moment

of professional achievement wreathed

in deeply happy sense of personal fulfillment.

I have this plant growing in two parts of the dooryards:  the tiny strip gardens by the porch and a far more sizeable colony in the sidepocket gardens.  They were the only thing the moles didn't destroy back when I was trying to create "nice" beds that looked like I knew that kind of knowing what I was doing (which I do ...)  rather than maintaining a largely feral pollinator corridor, that rings my chimes about a thousand times more.

Another thing I really enjoy is successfully growing a plant from seed to flower - particularly when it's on my holy grail list.  Today I am SO INCREDIBLY UP AND HAPPY because yesterday I spied flower buds of the one and only Cowslip I've gotten this far.  An old friend has grown dozens of them and once created a simple but effective walkway border of just cowslips and japanese ferns.  She's a double Libra.  Seeds instinctively know what she wants from them, and take it from there.   I'm good with just the buds on this single plant. 

it's what my seeds know I want from them:

to shine in their own way and make a meaningful statement in my heart.

Yesterday I didn't care about my head's atrocious hammering neuro-circuitry

because of those buds.

mission accomplished, i say ...

all the plants in this post are neighbors to each other.  The way this coral bell's emerging suggests there's a division of parts in her future.  I refer to this quietly lovely companion as The Dowager.  She reminds me of really old ladies in my earliest formative memories.

Tried for years to grow wild columbines from seed.  Finally gave up and got three little plants from Select Seed.  I planted them in a row for the hummingbirds to feed during a gap in the flowering cycle.  One was summarily dug up by a squirrel intent to replace it with a cache of sunflower seeds.  The other two are pictured above.  There are also three seedlings growing in the cracks of the bricks.  One really wet day  in May, when my head stops hurting as much until thunderstorm season,  I will transplant the babies in the same small bed with their mothers.

This lunar cycle's new moon in Aries has had me on a mission to complete a single hanging-on task that requires a degree of mindfulness a day.  To that end, yesterday's endeavor involved repairing a pomegranate seed rattle I cured and began working with in my early 20's.  have posted about it a fair amount over the years but don't remember if any of those words exist in this iteration of an SLI blog.

Above the repairwork is still wet.  It has since dried and I've lightly sanded so the matte acrylic gel isn't bumpy enough to announce itself.  Underneath the silk ribbon is a hole that developed when the skin of of the pomegranate cracked.  I figured out what to do, and then waited until I was in the right head and other cosmological alignments had occurred.

at first I thought I might like to take other portions of the ribbon scrap and apply them randomly.

silk is such a magically conducive organic material.

am going to use something cellulose based though to be more in keeping with the rest of the rattle.

didn't mind using a little of the gel for the repair rather than decoration because it makes that piece of ribbon better supported from the inside of the hole, and little seeds shaking against the silk.  Have shaken it a lot this morning.

it brings me into myself.

If you have a chance to make yourself something meaningful & sacred this month

especially between now and the week after the full moon

go for it.

Why This Particular New Moon Was So Significant

The new moon is always ruled by the same astrological sign that's ruling the sun at that time. In this case, the new moon/sun was ruled by the cardinal fire sign of Aries.  And this New fire moon is the beginning of the astrological year.  When it's possible to burn brush on that day, we do so.  It activates a kind of elevated, hyper-reality vibe out in the field and I've come to the conclusion that's a perceptual skew aided and abetted by the fact that we both have an Aries ascendant.  A lot of sympathetic magic seems to compound itself as a result.  Elemental pieces come together in a flowing effortless way if we're outside doing this particular activity in sequence with the lunar cycle.  

  Normally it's raining, or sleeting, or snowing, or hailing on that particular day of the year.  But this year we burned less than a day before the new Aries moon rose.   And the special, hushed sense of pending release that many are able to experience on New Year's Eve, or Samhain, or the timeframe signifying the last few hours before they were born, each year on their birthday -- all of that same incredible energy was there in the field's atmosphere.  I wandered around rattling, weeding, clearing away spent branches, and such.  As I was moving I was also considering the Pam Gregory video I watched about this new moon cycle, and the idea of setting intentions/seeding our consciousness with the coming year in mind.  I felt called to seek out a stone from the general landscape.  Something to represent my amped-up commitment to the land and our gardening endeavors.

As regular readers are aware - I'm currently immersed in a really wonderful class with Deb Soule.  It's been an astonishingly grounded and grounding experience which has also elevated my sense of virtually endless possibilities related to both soul and spirit nourishment, as well as caring more mindfully and in a deeper sense of shifting balance with the four primary elements as well as the year's lunar cycles.  Am positive that raised and upgraded awareness is a large part of why this particular Aries moon felt as sacred and elevated as I've ever felt on that day since my mid-to-late 30's.   

but there was a lot more BIG tree magic fueling my sense of vibrational upgrade:

The red maple tree flowers hit peak.  Their brilliant, ruby red energy field was vibrating everywhere around the property, and that omnipresence felt like a wonderful enhancement of the Aries Sun & Moon energy.  For five days the sky and landscape was flooded with sunlight and mild-temperatures while these wonderful hardy trees brought the first sustained burst of flowering life (including masses of pollen) to our locality.  Oftentimes the maples bloom in cold and inhospitable weather.  But this year the flowers where plump and fluffy.

You see the red haze here and there in the tree line above.  Now the elms are also flowering. 

and the shallots I planted last fall are up and lookin' hardy.

Many people do not enjoy working with indigo, particularly if they skew towards certain forms of depression - especially seasonal affect disorder.  If this is you, try adding a little red to the blue and work with deep purple instead.   It's actually a much better color-ray choice if you want to get some depth-within-depth perception going.

stones you might like for this month:  Tektite, sodalite, grape jelly amethyst, azurite.  Hematite is also nice as a grounding and protective agent.  Something about its mirror-like properties of protection are a really good fit for Mind.

what to expect:  at some point this month you're going to be invited to know yourself in a new way. it might be something familiar and recurring that needs to be seen from a different calibration arc, or it might be something previously unsuspected.

How to stay grounded:  eat high quality root vegetables a few times a week. Cook with Garlic and Ginger.  Add a slice or two of burdock root to your spring broths and soups.  practice alternate nostril breathing.   it makes such a difference. Try it for the rest of this month and see if you don't agree.

This is the rock that called to me from the edge of the woods. It wishes to represent the new astrological wheel-year.  Seems likely that will come to mean any number of things.  I found it ...

right after I took this picture

and this one, by the old well. 

Then I wandered all over for a couple of hours while J. burned brush and I got better acquainted with my projected roles in this year's various gardens.

May the eternal firelight of new beginnings guide and guard you well throughout this year's wheel-around.

What do you want YOUR wheel/house to be?

Decide now

and follow through

.

Spring Magic

Ms Hellebore has risen overnight ...

i was delighted to discover a self-seeded foxglove in a part of the property where foxgloves haven't grown in 10 years.  She's growing right at the base of a flowering quince.  Have noticed the volunteer foxgloves like to cozy-up close to an existing plant.  While I was out on this morning's perambulation, I paused to weed here and there - to greet many returning colonies of lemon balm, to plan removal, nurturing, and later transplanting of rose campion seedlings rising from the brick walkway. 

Yesterday J cleared up some brush in the evolving sanctuary bed and adjacent frog pond area.

I've been standing on the middle of the bridge at the stream to watch the sun go down and engage with portions of Deb's Equoinox meditation.   The excitement rising among class members as the clock moves closer to our first lessons with her at 7 p.m. is a very tangible energy.

We had a worksheet relating to the Equinox presentation.  I chose to write in sky blue ink.  and something true:  I will indeed need that extra note book for additional journaling room.  This morning I moved into the additional notebook I'll be embellishing with the half-size copies of the class journal.  Wrote about stuff that happened in the yard today - things I noticed/approached/amplified cognitively and energetically because of shifts the Equinox work afforded with effortless ease. 

As you can see, the very gorgeous volunteer 'crown' of last year's mid-summer garden still has some things to say.  We had a long conversation.  I spoke aloud.  It embarassed me for years - the way some of my more expressive friends would announce and proclaim and just generally act like humans were the swing vote in it all.

I'm speaking quietly.   Sometimes with tender gestures. 

It's a big step for me.  And I had to, in good balanced blue conscience delete some unplanned opinionated asides concerning why that is.

Also of super Blue interest to me:  I was psyched to this really insightful piece in The Guardian yesterday.  The headline alone had me clicking on swift reflex.

i deleted what i 'said' about it (by way of relating quite tangentially to recently re-upped marketing of the book on the above left).

the piece itself

speaks more than eloquently.

The book on the right is just me reading ahead with the 7th chakra in mind. 

***

I feel a lot of shifts and shedding skin.

I keep having totally out-of-the-blue and previously unimaginable fictional breakthroughs that somehow aren't wreaking havoc with my pre-ordained weekly deliverable schedule.  I don't know how it's happening but assume it's open-crown/kinda-sorta cosmically driven

I feel like this had to happen during Blue month or I wouldn't have known how to hold it steady

while the world wakes up and Persephone rises to the surface to evoke all her glorious subjects to bloom everywhere.

 sometimes I feel like I'm just this close to losing all control of my original vision but somebody who's writing I love

and greatly respect

once told me that's the only time you're writing worth a damn.

Right on that edge.  No exceptions.

Sometimes I know exactly how to hold steady

but it will mean sooooo much work

and additional thinking

during a time of year when all I want to do

is be outside.

I claim I don't know anything

but really I'm saying I obviously

know and choose to imagine I don't.

After the sense of not knowing anything

builds up enough fire&water steam

I stand in the doorway of J's office

and talk myself through various forms of dismay, uncertainty, elation and utterly victorious a-ha moments.

sometimes he's 'there' ...

sometimes he wishes I wasn't.

blue flowers

Italian Alkanet shows up a lot on my blogs.   I love everything about the plant as well as the flowers.  When they go to seed goldfinches come to feed.  I hadn't realized they liked these seeds until we'd lived here a few years - the season of the flowers in this image.  This is one of my favorite Clarity essences.  When it's in bloom a few flowers always seem to volunteer for a couple of mixed flower blended bowls.
In the original Sparkling Lotus garden beds, Blue Alpine Columbine was a very strong presence that self-seeded with seemingly impeccable design sensibilities.  A massive colony emerged around the compost bins.

pro-tip:  nodding flowers such as columbines, hellebores, lily of the valley, blueberry, etc. are quite often associated with special aid/affinity channels towards/within introspection, spiritual retreat, or the need to embrace one or both of those qualities-of-life.  I've also found this flower structure to be invaluable for people who teach/mentor/guide activities geared towards such endeavors. 

Radicchio grows freely along the western edges of the field garden.  It's such a close relation to Chicory that I tend to use this essence in its place.  But I do have a very deep sort of Chicory mother stock that I prepared in the center of a three-road crossroads with a specific friend in mind.  This is for people who need to learn how to play nicely in the verbal senses.   Mixing Chicory and Calendula flower essence is a fave option.

Blue Sage flower essence is a wonderful tonic for the fifth chakra.  Notice how the flowers resemble - as one of the dive captains put it - 'a yammering mouth'.  Sage flower essences are stabilizing.  They're also a very stringent cleansing and re-balancing agent. 

(if you don't have access to - or simply don't want to fuss with obtaining - any of the colorful 'decorative' sages you can choose a classic and extremely versatile essence made from blooms of garden Sage.  This is a SUPER stabiizing and grounding option.)

Blue Vervain, although purple, is a wonderful choice for those who speak and listen to others speak about matters of mystery and human empowerment.  Deb Soule often mentions Blue Vervain flower tincture's affinity for those who carry tension in their neck.  That's what gave me the idea of working with the flower's healing signature vibrationally, and at the throat chakra level. 

Last summer I prepared a blended bowl with many blue vervain flowers - each cut individually.  I then added some evening primrose flowers.

I made this bowl for ongoing personal healing efforts related to overcoming the remaining layers of energetic depletion specifically related to having an inappropriate and consciously out-of-bounds mother.  That's the kindest, bluest way I can put it.   Healing wounds incurred in this manner takes a lot of patience and dedication.  The process is one of literal self-mothering.

Vervain's gift to the bowl relates to the plant's affinity with neck tension.  My mother had a certain 'move' when we were out in public and I was in some way non-compliant or she simply imagined I might become that way.  She'd press her thumb quite hard into the spot where my right shoulder and neck join and then dig her fingers into different tender spaces on either side of my clavicle bone. 

Sometimes I still feel that grip.  Evening Primrose flower essence is, in large part, used to heal any kind of mother-wound. So I made myself this blend and as I set the bowl in place for solarization, I thought consciously of a number of friends who at times grapple ineffectively with the challenge of clearing away layer after layer of scar tissue and toxic residue.  I had not planned to harvest any of the vervain flowerheads.  It wasn't the promise I made to the medicine spirit - to let her seeds form and flow freely.  But I did honor the physical plant's offering as being part of the  medicine spirit's guidance and wisdom.

This  past year I planted Blue Vervain in this place for the first time.  I got six plants from Select Seed - and planted pairs that self-designated once I let them know of my plans - in three very different places on the property:  in the south-west corner of the field garden, in the sunniest east-to-west portion of the evolving sanctuary, and in the sunniest spot in the side pocket gardens out front.  Although there were copious flower heads I held fast to the promise to make and sow all their seeds.  It felt right and I dreamed the plant's medicine spirit was appreciative to experience follow-through on my promise, as well as hearing and answering the invitation to make a healing blend.

My son was born a month early and yet right on time.  Medically, he needed some help and spent the first four days of his life in Mass General's NICU.

let me tell you something.  you know you're a parent when:

less than 6 hours after giving birth, a special team with an equally special ambulance arrives and the doctor looks you both right in the eyes and says "this is a 50-50 situation."

yeah.  that'll wake you right up.

But T was born in the year of the ox, and he was also in quite a bit better shape than any other babies in the NICU.  So he went back to Mount Auburn, where he was born, to receive the rest of the treatments he needed.  J would drive me to the hospital every morning at 7.  I stayed with my son until visiting hours ended at 9 in the evening.  J would arrive directly from work and hold T. until it was time to leave.

it was difficult.  For me, the no-choice hardwooden chairs were a nightmare but holding my boy was what we both needed and I would not recall this time with much thought given to the harsher aspects of starting out as a family in this particular manner.  I recall the love.  And the gratitude that our son was strong and essentially healthy.

on the way to the hospital each morning, we drove by a lovely old home with an enormous yard in which blue squills had been colonizing abundantly for a very long time.  The swath of blue - the color of healing in a lot of sympathetic magic work - gave me a definite boost.  My sense of joy was real.  Jeannine Parvati prepared me to be a certain kind of mother and I was not about to change the paradigm on top of The Plan.

I was present and I was loving.

and I'll go to my grave entirely certain that the magnificent carpet of squills

had something to do with that.

spring is almost here.  Well.  not here, here.  but Here.

running every place screaming excitedly

an anniversary gift of sorts.

one that will play an important part in whatever the garden becomes within and without.

wow.

this is beyond 'beyond' even.

 

 

...here we go...

Here are all the new seeds I didn't plan to purchase this year.  But then I remembered a fence means peas are possible and things just went from there.  J apparently realized this would happen but in all our budget discussions I kept saying it wouldn't. 

tis a wise man who knows his wife better than she knows herself.  I've no control in this arena and he does indeed know that.

Lettuce for the guy who makes my world spin.  I don't eat it any more due to how enthusiastically my body makes calcium-oxalate kidney stones. 

I have other sunflower seeds in waiting as well

J's down below me in the garage right now cutting the new table-top board he purchased yesterday.  I'm psyched.  Will provide bulletins as they emerge concerning additional food plant crops to be sown from last year's seeds.  

I made the heart chakra cloth used as a backdrop for these pics for my very first chakra intensive workshop series at a local apothecary.  I included a rose colored Japanese wishing bell and a grouse feather to promote new rhymthms and intentional heart-centered wishes for the group created altar space.    Am planning to put it atop my studio coffee table work space for the final week of heart-work.

found this badly abused photo earlier today and thought to share it.  That's J taking in the vibe at North Beach at the end of the day on which we met Ferlinghetti at City Lights.  The photo's set aside in case I ever again go out in the world for a frivolous reason such as loading up on fresh laser copies of photos, artwork, etc for collage purposes. 

I really love how the damage done to the physical photo lends the strong flavor of Dharma Bumming it in '82. 

NoCali.  In the early 80's.  Staying, at times, with folks who lived deep in the canyons with all that implies.

hell yeah we inhaled. 

a lot.

The companion photo of me looking like I'm in direct contact with the Starman waiting in the sky makes that abundantly clear.

not sure where it is.  if i find it, i'll share.

I wouldn't do it now but I sure did have fun living out of a van on Market Street in San Francisco for the brief moment in time in which we did it.  You haven't lived until you've peed in a bucket while watching a nun eat deep dish pizza at the Numero Uno's just next to where you've parked.

she demolished everything but the plate.

 

 

unstruck

I really love the translation of the Sanskrit name (Anahata - which is also a very beautiful word) for the Heart Chakra. 

Unstruck.

not unbroken/unbreakable or unbeaten/unbeatable.  Not resilient, determined, brave, good or any of the more negative descriptors we all commonly hear, speak, or simply associate with the word "heart".

Unstruck.

I've always found that beautiful.  In more cynical moments, or pure despair that I never seem able to be quite strong enough to be strong, period, with no downtime (I know.  I'm dealing with this as lovingly as I can as we take this journey ...) - I have also found it purely aspirational.

but recently.

I was thinking about four or five particular people I know who've lived life, as long as I've known them for a minimum of 30 years, through and from the heart center.  It's nothing special they do or how they do special things.  It's how they do every-thing.  And see every-thing and every-One.  I feel lucky indeed.  We can be inspired, motivated, and dare I say herded, through a great deal of what we as individuals and as a collective 'need to learn' and then move on to actually achieve.  But any time someone's leading from the the heart - and we're sharp enough to realize how much we can learn from noticing even just that little bit of heart-based reality shapeshift - then we're elevated at a cellular and experiential level.

Unstruck.

All the people I know who are heart-leaders have had their actual, metaphorical, and energetic heart struck quite tangibly, any number of times. 

it's their energy that's refined and maintained and just naturally percolating in an Unstruck state.

that's how everyone's Heart wants to filter and radiate.  On an Unstruck frequency.

the personal triumph of yellow

Walden Pond in Concord, MA.  This sign is adjacent to the site of HD's cabin.  Also the very edge of a quite memorable rock pile tribute.  There's another pile in the pond water a short walk away.

Have planned to use this image for the elevated solar center's volitional equation that yields the desired result.  Am so glad I followed through because I hadn't realized how soothing I'd find it to reconnect to the post I linked to above and just now.  It speaks to an ongoing America it's hard to imagine at this moment if only due to Covid restrictions.  I can't imagine being there without any number of other people who have traveled to the spot in all kinds of ways.   Walden Pond is one of the places I think about when somebody's singing a super patriotic song about 'america' by way of historical landmarks/geographic wonders.  Fairly certain HDT would not approve.

Living deliberately is another way of saying, at least in my view, purposeful self-fulfillment.  I think of that as elevated solar energy: not simply the will to fulfill but also the psychic wisdom and emotional aptitude to develop patient mastery of the self's pragmatic and will-full-y created landscape(s).

Don't know the name of this orchid.  But it's a good visual to save, perhaps, for meditating on the not unchallenging jump from yellow to pink/magenta/green and the realm of limitless Heart energy.  At Longwood Gardens 15 or 20 years ago on a stiflingly hot summer day.  They were quite a bit more compelling in person.

***

 At this point I'm noticing nearly everyone is drift-synching-in with the idea of including at least judicious sprinkles of clear, pure, color-ray colors as some ongoing portion of their evolving personal palette.  This can difficult for anyone who is color fluent primarily by way of having learned what they resonate with personally in a hyper-specific way.  And thus seeing/gravitating to that equally specific color in their mind and heart whenever, say, "blue" is mentioned. 

In focused chakra work the colors used to personify the energy are of a pure pigment nature because that purity is where the color ray's energy vibrates at its highest organic frequency that ALSO synchs in with cosmic light waves/frequencies.  Instead of thinking 'garish/inert/clown/unrefined colors' (I get occasional emails on this subject ...) think Reiki as well as actively opening yourself to your ever-shifting highest color ray frequency pitch.  This shifting process is constant so far as I can tell.  Think of the pure color rays as an under-painting destined to give all the other layers of work their inner glow.   Consciously allow more pure color to find a place in your life in ways that are both random and organic.

This yellow Brugmansia flower was enormous.  I grew a small colony of these beauties at SL2.  This was a very tangible yellow-driven triumph.  I learned so much from the emergent flowers' energy as the plants grew and the buds fattened.  Brugmansia flowers are intensely intense as they're the reproductive organs of an entheogen.  This is what I chose to study with a lot of my tuition remission benefits at a major university:  entheogens.  and also feminist literature.  My work boss despaired.  He kept trying to foster-dad me via unsolicited advice and piercing questions concerning my Life Plan.  What was it?  I will write, I told him.  Was 23 at the time.  Explained I felt I had about two more years before I'd be proficient enough stylistically to be employable as some kind of technical writer.

Guess i will probably never get why 'life plan' automatically refers to attaining a college degree first and foremost.  I once joked to my boss (who was a lawyer) that I felt like every time he said that it was the same as Shakespeare suggesting all the lawyers be killed as a top priority.  He despaired actively while holding his head in his hands right in front of me.  The point of the anecdote is that I did meet my employable writer target right around the time I at long last successfully quit my job in order to go stay in a geodesic dome 'way up in Aroostook county ME.  That dome had no floor and wild creatures living in it.  We were by-the-way told about it when the old econoline was half packed.  And so we pivoted in what now seems somewhat scary in its seamlessness BOOM just like that:  A month to unwind from the grind more or less locally, a month of road/rough living, and however long on the left coast with relatives and our own fancy free whims.

in other words:

We intended to deliberately live like we were actually traversing our inner fantasy versions of times 12 to 15 years in the never-coming-back rearview window.  and so we did.

My talented and insightful friend, Rachel Kellum made me this banner shortly after she acquired a sewing machine.  She referred to it as her magic cauldron.  One of the many things I love about RK is her psychic and emotionally intuitive relationship to brushstrokes.  She once told me:  I read them the way you read tarot cards.  I think of that quite frequently when I'm painting these days ...

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 ...