Sparkling Lotus Ink

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 ...

 

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...

 

sometimes it isn't raining

I wrote a post with this same title and image that I thought out in advance as an ongoing mid-day activity.  It was careful to be: careful, mindful, and neutral-gear neutral.  Maybe that was the problem.  Or maybe it was just retro merc shadow type stuff  or one of those lazy thumbed keystrokes you don't intentionally make.

Gonna take that as a hint and stay in real-life-while-on-the-internet mode which is how I've been for the past couple of days.  Just say what's true for me.  If the sheer certainty of my voice's willingness to speak at that level is either off-putting or offensive that's a very unfortunate point of unintentional impact on my part. 

I've shuttered my creativity blog for reasons I'll be blunt enough to label underbelly bullying of an eye-rollingly tenacious nature.  And that's all I'll be saying on the subject barring uniquely extenuating one on one circumstances.

As far as this primary blog space I'm going to get back to where I left off within my planned blog posts somewhere right around the time Covid came along.  Somebody I taught to be the kind of person who could facilitate such a thing sat with me yesterday after carefully but firmly suggesting I allow myself to at least make a full and complete list of people central to my life who've died since the beginning of the year.  The phrase "pragmatic grasp" was applied and I had to ask for a pen so I could write it on my hand lest I forget. 

I taught him very well.  And that's all that really needs to be said.

so I said it to him directly there in the moment and his eyes lit up above his mask.  And his mouth was already moving to ask well what did I simply want to say to him?  And I smiled under my mask.  I said I wanted to tell him a story he's tired of hearing but I wanted him to stay with me all the way as if he never heard it before - right up until the end of my trademark rim shot interrogative that's a major part of my storytelling-for-a-purpose shtick.  And he shut his eyes and threw his head back and groaned because he knew what was coming.

When this person was three I met him for the first time.  His mother was a friend of mine I'd met in the UK and that's where they lived.  Until they came here for the first time and I met him as a three year old who marched directly in front of me and pointed just as directly at my third eye with bold certainty. 

he said "I know you.  I know you from BEFORE."

So I said that but with a lot more embellishment about their home when they first arrived and his mom and also stuff his father said about it all later on in the evening.  And he was nodding with his eyes shut trying to push himself past his resistance to yet again hearing this story he's heard way too many times.  But never from me.  Because let's face it. I have my own son to annoy with comparably off-told stories that prove some or another hippie-dippy point of mine.  This other guy's father?  Is relentless with this particular tale.

And I saw him make the pivot in his 'memory' of everyone under the sun telling him this story which he doesn't remember because HIS big takeaway of that day was apparently this person arrives with chocolate bars.  His eyes shot open and he looked at me.  He was nodding his head okay.  I never heard YOU tell me this story before about what I said.  I was getting this all from his eyes and that's because of masks.  And, obvi, people who are willing to wear them.  Eye language flourishes when there's nothing else to scan that speaks to collective humanity as we instinctively best recognize through our own and each other's faces.

And I watched his eyes think (another favorite thing of mine to notice about people important to me) and then he said "what is the interrogative?"

"What if," I asked him.  " 'Before' was Now?"

Whoa.

the return of RED

Most of the maples here turn bright yellow or deep plum.  Scattered here and there we have a few scarlet leaved trees. For the past several years they haven't turned color but simply browned, shriveled, and fell in a few days' time.  I presumed it had something to do with lessened rainfall and virtually no snow cover for a few years in a row.  So now I'm drawing the highly unscientific conclusion that my intuition held a degree of merit.  Nobody can say we had insufficient rain this year.  We also managed, at least here, to maintain a thin layer of snow and snow-packed ice. 

The picture above looks like one enormous tree but that's a skew in perspective.   The elm stripling seemingly divides the tree in half visually.  But it's actually two trees on either side of the narrow shady path that leads to the field.

The picture above was taken on the same day I took the images in the previous post.  The others were taken during a break in the rain afternoon before last.  Today it's sunny but everything's kind of or outright swampy for my waterproof shoes.  Have been dealing with neurological pain for several days running somewhere between 5 and 7 on the pain scale.  Even with effective healing options that kind of thing becomes physically draining the longer it's in play.  Today needs to be a gentle recuperation day rather than a get out there and ... get! out there!! wall-to-wall productive experience. 

When it was merely drizzling J raked leaves from the side dooryard and the driveway.  I took these pics during what we thought was a return to sunlight but then right after dark a fresh deluge began.  Glad he bumped that task to the head of the list.  We would have had flooding problems for sure if the leaves had been there causing major and secondary dams in the driveway.

*

Am thinking a lot about the color red as it relates to rootedness, grounding, and the first/primary chakra.  I feel a strong connection between that mental activity and seeing the red splashes in the landscape.  Even yesterday, when the rain intensity was authentically biblical, I could see through the watery blur those same red beacons of years past.  I'm glad they're back.  Everything peaked on the holiday weekend - same as what used to be normal.

Another highly unscientific conclusion I've reached is that the Turkey Buzzards are actively altering their hunting flight circles as more leaves fall.   Their return to a former roosting spot in the big oak tree just over our property line is another sign of previous normalcy laying new claim to the landscape.   Also when I first saw their hulking forms sunning near the top of that tree through our bedroom window I immediately thought purification.  Also thought of sky burials.

Still reading Lab Girl 30-40 pages at a time first thing in the morning.  It's a very worthwhile book This habit of maintaining ongoing slow reads of pleasantly rewarding books rather than incarnating via doomscrolling (or 'necessary' fiction/non-fiction) has proven invaluable.  I actually enjoy waking up in the morning. That makes it a lot easier to evaluate/understand the way I feel moving forward with my day. 

stability takes many forms at the internalized level.

...a sense of personal rootedness...

in sunnier daze

It is once again cold and rainy.  The images are three days old when it was warm enough to lie flat on the cement pool skirt with Mama.  Took about a dozen pics from that angle.  Above there's a pair of circling Turkey Buzzards.  Was a little bit uhhhhh over the one on the left coming out as a kind of reverse aquamarine colored negative.

The flaming red maple is the tree that beckoned me to prepare an essence in the early spring.  The towering honey locust on the far right was a stripling volunteer most inconveniently located.  I discovered it in very late fall.  I saw the leafless branching pattern and hoped it was an Elderberry.  Now there is a second offspring honey locust growing in a less inconvenient spot.

Autumn Views

all images from yesterday morning.   Harvested lemon balm tips, thyme, comfrey leaves, chickweed flowers and leaf stems, broadleaf plantain, and violet leaves.  Blotted all the leaves for 5 or 6 hours and then commenced chopping the stems and leaves.  Added dried red clover, calendula, tulsi and more lemon balm leaves from the spring & summer micro-harvests.  Also last year's dried prunella heads.  Prepared a warm infusion on my stove's warming burner.  Love that burner for this purpose!  I now have a fine stock of therapeutic oil for making the coming season's healing skin balm.

Night before last I prepared a half gallon of spearmint-calendula skin oil.  I don't use it enough for somebody my age and nor does J.  So I doubled the amount I generally prepare and created two batches; one in spring when the leaf shoots were lush and another in autumn when fresh shoots have begun to push aside the spent flower stalks.

My sinuses etc. are currently paying for so much time spent outside but sometimes you just gotta.  The landscape was ready to welcome me again and I was not about to wait around any longer.  J's been walking the woods trail and I sense the glistening somewhat otherworldly activities of the past few weeks have begun to recede.  

It's easier to get down to the bridge now.  It's been a number of days - maybe a week - since I stood there with J for a few minutes but in truth I'm not sure.   Time has become what I always wished it could be - stretchy to the point of ongoing low level disorientation.  It occurred to me that this is indeed something I've sought for most of my life - freedom from 'time' as a human construct.  So it further occurred to me that when we all got shoved down the rabbit hole of ongoing reality distortion fields piling one on top of the other, that I might have intuitively leaned into the time-altering aspects as a way of learning what the reality of a personal wish might look like? 

For two weeks in a row I didn't know what day it was pretty much for the entire 14 days.  In my younger adult years that would have thrilled me.  I would have called and written to people about it as a Mission Accomplished interlude.  In the present tense it scared me.  Because I'm old enough to realize it's important to keep sharp and act sharper. 

As soon as I went into the field I could feel why I'd been asked to stay away for a time.  Not so much at a concrete level as the way the landscape's obviously settled more into itself.  I stood for a long while right here where I took the picture.  I took note of what flowered.  Said a first goodbye to hardwood green ringing our property lines.  Left the flag windblown for this official portrait of my co-creative return.

volunteer polk and mugwort stepping in to help with the vinca/periwinkle situation.  The plants are guiding me in how to break this daunting task into viable pieces.  It's hard to explain.  I go out there and they just somehow convey when and where to pull.  And so far it's working...

Mama - still stiff legged but determined - led us to her favorite basking and sentry position: the center of the gaia-breasted fire pit.

I joined her for a good long while. The experience seemed like the lunar equivalent of this highly solar experience.  It still feels odd to my thinking mind to sit on such a powerful expression of sacred land energy.  But on both occasions of spending more than an hour simply being - the last time with emptied essence bowls and this time with the cat - I returned to my normal routine with a strong sense of personal grounding.  Need all of that we can get these days!