December Garden, Portal and Personal Updates

As we ease into the other side of this powerful eclipse and New Moon in Sagittarius, I thought I’d share some grounding photos from the indoor garden. These ones show how the indoors blends with the outside garden, which is largely put to bed for Winter. You can still see various types of kale, collards, parsley, rosemary and green onions outside, but things are mostly sleeping until Spring.

Inside, the Christmas cacti have begun to bloom:

With such short days, lettuce, parsley, cilantro, spinach and onion spouts grow slowly. But they do grow! I turn the trays every other day so that they don’t get lopsided stretching for more light.

I also decided to try my hand at growing indoor mushrooms. This set from ETSY is on Step 2. Per the Mushroom Man LLC’s video, I let the white mycelium grow for about three weeks — until the inside looked mostly white. Last night, David and I sliced open the package and “roughed up the mycelium” with a fork before soaking the substrate for 24 hours:

Later today, I’ll drain the plate and flip things around to start growing pink oyster mushrooms on our kitchen countertop. We’ll see how it goes! Supposedly, we should get two flushes. This is totally an experiment. I love exotic and medicinal mushrooms and thought the pink might perk things up when nothing’s blooming outside.

I do have another blooming plant right now. I always forget what it’s called, but this one reliably puts forth flowers much of the year:

Today also marks the time to paint the garden portion of my next commissioned portal painting. This one has spent a long time in the planning stages, but its timing ties in with the Solar Eclipse. The degree of this extremely karmic eclipse conjuncts the patron’s South Node, so the portal integrates before and after timing. Yesterday I painted desert — and today a garden. More details once I finish!

I have two other portals in process, too, one for myself and one for another patron. Due to the uncanny astrology, this one jumped ahead of the others. I love when astrology confirms an intuitive nudge.

On a more personal note, I always incorporate some manner of garden into my life. I’m typing this post with a henna mud pie on my head. The henna doesn’t change my hair color much, but it does provide a lot of keratin and strength to my hair. I started henna’ing back in 2006, and for me, this nurturing ritual reconnects me throughout fifteen years of transformation. I’ve written about henna and my mood hair before (here and here), but today, it just feels fun to have mud on my head while I make a garden post!

When not covered in mud, I like wearing flowers. This past month concluded a multi-year search for a replacement to my beloved Faery Combat Boots. After a Leprechaun cobbler episode, two visits to a human cobbler for new zippers, and a final confirmation that no cobbler could fix the worn through back of my heels, I knew I needed to retire them. I’ve had those boots for over six years and they’ve taken me through many an adventure — whether walking in a very cold Lake Michigan, hiking in deep snow, or having an NDE after running through the Detroit Airport when Saturn crossed my North Node 2018.

I loved those boots, and they proved extremely difficult to replace. After years of searching and three returns, I finally settled on these that I broke in last Tuesday while wearing a garden inspired dress:

Why do I love Faery Combat Boots so much? No idea, but a good lug sole on a waterproof boot that I can wear with dresses makes me bizarrely happy. Almost as happy as flowers. Combine Faery Combat Boots with a floral dress, pink mushrooms, and Christmas cacti? Seelie stuff.

In these crazy intense times with all their karmic weight, it helps to find the little things that bring a smile to your face and heart. IMHO, the sillier and more delightful, the better. Vibration matters — as in, your vibration creates matter. Surround yourself with more of the energies you wish to experience. Your external world begins to reflect more and more of those back to you in physical form.

Blessed Be … and be the blessing! Happy New Moon in Sagittarius … and congratulations on making it through that karmic doozie of an eclipse!

Garden Update: A Bigger Vision

I haven’t given a garden update in a long time, because I’ve been super busy working in the garden. In the past few weeks, I’ve quietly increased the front yard garden by another third. Having the extra space means dedicated spots for tulips, lilies, crocuses, and Dr. Seuss-like alliums, plus more room for fall mums, and spring hyacinths and daffodils. I’ll also have more growing areas for things like garlic and carrots.

In fact, this upgrade and expansion began when I realized I didn’t have anywhere to plant bunches of garlic. I started adding Big Bag Bed Mini’s on the inside edge of my existing garden. You can see two of them towards the bottom left:

Those who’ve followed the evolution of this garden will notice another upgrade: a sculptural raised bed to replace the dying, dead, then toppled weeping birch tree.

I miss the birch tree, but it had been dying since we bought this place in May 2017. I nursed it for awhile, but it felt so discouraging to watch the tree’s demise no matter what I did. The woman who planted it stopped by and revealed that this was the third weeping birch she planted in that location. This eased my feelings of inadequacy. I already knew this was not a preferred spot for birch trees, but now I knew it would never thrive there. It wasn’t my fault. I stepped back and allowed nature to take its course.

Once it died, the birch became a bastion of wildlife. So many species of birds landed on those branches, and we even had a nest of wrens. On June 18, 2021, in a post called “The Next Phase and a Collective Dream,” I posted about the tree toppling over in a storm. (11:11 as I typed the title). All that day and the next, birds flew in to pay their respects to the fallen tree, but then they stopped coming. That half stump felt like a persistent reminder of loss.

I couldn’t decide what to plant instead. David and I considered everything from a weeping Norway Spruce, to a medlar tree, to a crabapple or even a sculpture instead of a tree. One day, I decided to add a raised bed out back and went on Gardener’s Supply Company to find one of the troughs I loved in Goshen. While looking at those, I came across this — a sculpture and a raised bed:

You can see another layer of Big Bag Bed Mini and three new Smart Pots between the new raised bed and the original outline of the garden. I needed to add rock (bottom center-right) to even the ground. A dream gave me the solution to filling this thing. I used a combo of cut up Smart Pots and Big Bag Bed Mini’s to line the structure. That will keep the soil from rushing out and also provide better insulation than just a metal structure.

I planted the mum’s so it wouldn’t look like an empty bed, but the real fun will bloom in spring. This bed is layered with early and mid-season tulips, daffodils, alliums, and grape hyacinths. I have very early blooming crocuses en route to me as I type. I haven’t decided what summer plants will go there — probably some kind of drought hardy perennials, plus a little space for annuals like nasturtium and zinnias. I can’t tell you how encouraging and uplifting it feels to have fall-planted bulbs filling themselves with life below the surface. Literally a difference between death and life.

Yesterday, I realized that my ideas for the expanded front garden coincided with a decision to turn a pair of sunglasses I rarely wore into indoor/outdoor glasses with transition lenses. These are big cats eye glasses, but I kept feeling a nudge to make the switch. All my other glasses turn from regular lenses to sunglasses when I go outside. I’ve found I prefer these to straight sunglasses that remain dark if I walk into a store. Wearing these makes me giggle, and faeries love to giggle:

As strange as it sounds, I feel like these huge lenses led me to “see bigger.” Actually, it doesn’t sound strange to me at all. I wrote a very long post called “Vision and Shapeshifting: A Matter of Perspective.” That post shared more selfies than I had in an entire year prior. Despite knowing I didn’t really need another pair of glasses, it kept nagging me to get them. I became a little obsessed with the idea and looked into David’s vision insurance. Indeed, it’s good insurance.

Long story short, I got these switched to transition lenses, and I agreed to try a pair of polarized sunglasses in a “ruby” tint. The polarized lenses were another leap for me. After my TBI, polarized anything made me so sick that I never tried them again until 23 years later. So glad I did! My point here, though, is that the bigger lenses — and perhaps the curiosity of cats’ eyes — resulted in new garden solutions and expansion. Small, symbolic shifts can lead to big 3D world changes:

My mind sees succession planting of blue hyacinths, fancy daffodils, and 60 days of blooming lilies in that empty Big Bag Mini. There’s a matching one off frame to the right. This upgrade and expansion makes the yard feel like “mine.” It doesn’t look like that much more because of how I worked with existing flow — but that expansion makes a huge difference to me.

Gardens are such wise teachers. Never underestimate the power of flowers. Have a beautiful day!

23rd Anniversary, Today’s Garden, Birthday Syncs, and Saturn Retrograde

Today marks the 23-year anniversary of my life changing traumatic brain injury on May 19, 1998. Each year I feel gratitude for the life force energy this experience opened. I would not be doing this kind of work or living such a magical life without that very forceful course correction.

For months before that car accident, I kept hearing, “Quit your job, renounce your graduate school scholarship and fellowship, do spiritual work and become a landscaper and a poet.” This seemed way too weird, yet insistent. On the morning of the “accident,” I said, “Fine, if it’s so important, just make it happen!”

Careful what you pray for … but it did, in fact, happen, just hours later. I could no longer read, ended up needing to defer then withdraw from graduate school, and I never worked my sales job again. It took four years to recover enough to work even part time again, and when I did, that work was new work — intuitive work, not sales or becoming an English professor. At various times I spend more or less time on landscaping, doing spiritual work and/or writing poetry. This morning, I spent time in the garden and this afternoon I’m doing intuitive sessions (spiritual work). I haven’t written poetry in a long while but here are photos from today’s garden:

We’re about to enter the upper 80’s here, so I’ve harvested a LOT of lettuce and spinach over the past few days in anticipation of them bolting from the heat. Here’s today’s harvest:

My TBI anniversary always falls three days before my May 22 birthday, so it brings introspection from year to year, decade to decade. In late April, the Secretary of State notified me that I need to get a new I.D. photo, because my old I.D. expires on my birthday. David and I got his license and my I.D. at the same time, and he does not need a new photo. His gets auto-renewed, but for some reason, life ordered me to redo mine.

The Michigan Secretary of State’s office has very limited hours and appointments. When I first tried to schedule, I couldn’t get in until mid-July. Then, a synchronous opening occurred the afternoon of May 21. I find it extremely symbolic that I’m getting a new I.D./identity the day before my birthday, and that my birthday occurs three days after my death and rebirth TBI anniversary.

This year, my birthday also occurs the day before Saturn stations retrograde on May 23. (Depending on your time zone, Saturn could station retrograde on my actual birthday.) The Sabian Symbol for this turning is:

PHASE 314 (AQUARIUS 14°): A TRAIN ENTERING A TUNNEL.

KEYNOTE: The ability to short-cut the process of natural evolution by the exercise of will, mental skill and physical self-discipline.

In this symbol we see a condensation of what is implied in the three preceding ones. Man must be inspired by a vision of what is possible for him to achieve; he has to organize a schedule of necessary activities if the work is to be done in terms of successive moves, each requiring a specialized type of skill and strength (i.e. a hierarchy of functions); he has to find a propitious time for beginning the work. The end result is an acceleration of the evolutionary process, whether at the psychobiological level (that of yoga and other similar disciplines) or at the social level, i.e. the level at which, in its external aspect, civilization proceeds.

This fourth stage symbol presents a picture of what can be achieved by a combination of social and cultural, and even personal, techniques. It implies the possibility of shortening the length of time needed for progress by cutting through obstacles and delays. The Keyword is PENETRATION. (More Sabian Symbols here.)

The Lord of Karma proceeds through this tunnel until October 10, 2021, when Saturn stations direct at Sabian Symbol 7 Aquarius:

PHASE 307 (AQUARIUS 7°): A CHILD IS SEEN BEING BORN OUT OF AN EGG.

KEYNOTE: The emergence of new mutations according to the great rhythms of the cosmos.

The ancient symbolism of the Cosmic Egg (Hiranyagharba in Sanskrit) out of which a new universe is born can be interpreted at several levels. Here we see the appearance of a new type of human being who is not born from “Ancestors” and who therefore is free from the inertia of mankind’s past. He is a new product of evolution, a mutant. He constitutes a fresh projection of the creative Spirit that emanates from the cosmic or planetary Whole, and not from any local culture and racial tradition.

This second stage symbol is in contrast with the preceding one. It can be said to announce the EMERGENCE OF GLOBAL MAN for the New Age. The power of the whole is focused within him in perfect freedom from ancient standards of value based on local conditions. (More Sabian Symbols here.)

Even before I connected this Saturn transit on a personal level, I noticed an implied birth canal. A Train Entering a Tunnel, PENETRATION, until A Child Is Seen Being Born Out of an Egg, the EMERGENCE OF GLOBAL MAN for the New Age.

Powerful imagery! Adding this to my own personal transits and date synchronicities, I feel contractions moving and pressing towards something new and expansive. Something cosmic. Time will tell what this period initiates. Tuning into Nature’s rhythm keeps us grounded. As the collective enters a kind of cosmic birth canal, let’s remember to breathe and trust the process.

May we co-create something beautiful and each emerge as our most radiant selves.

Early Spring Garden

Bright colors and cool, rainy temps look and feel like early Spring! Some shots from Dra’Faven:

hyacinths, weeping cherry and forsythia precede chive and daffodil blooms

hellebores and holly

dianthus and vinca

seeds sprouting indoors and outside …

Garden Tower planted on one side with cool weather greens

The spinach has doubled in size since Sunday!

It felt so good to get my hands in the dirt again. I started a bunch of seeds at the New Moon and then couldn’t resist filling 1/4 of the Garden Tower with lettuce and spinach starts. I also direct seeded gourmet lettuce and carrots in the top of the Garden Tower, as well as in the front yard beds, among hyacinths, green onions and chives.

I have yet to harvest, but gardening season has officially begun! How are things growing in your corner of the world?

Garden Update ~ Garden Tower 2 Setup and Spring Planting

I haven’t posted a Garden Update in a long time, so I decided to document the assembly of our upgraded Garden Tower 2. I had this in Goshen as part of a demo garden showcasing different ways of growing crops — permaculture, raised beds, Garden Towers 1 and 2, Square Foot Gardening, tiered/circular raised beds, Big Bag Beds, Smart Pots, wood mulch gardening, food forest, etc. I had not set up the Garden Tower 2 in Kalamazoo, though, because doing so required me figuring out where to put it, building a patio, and also fencing it in from critters.

I’ve detailed three years of groundhog adventureshere — from Kalamazoo Kal to all his very hungry relations. Last year, I switched the front yard beds primarily to rabbit/deer/groundhog resistant herbs and perennials and had all but given up on annual vegetable gardening. It’s just too frustrating to fight all the critters. Our fenced backyard is even worse than the open front yard, as the groundhogs have generations of tunnels and ancestral habits.

A dream on April 4, 2020 told me that my future self would really appreciate if I assembled the Garden Tower 2 that lay unassembled in our shed. I followed the advice, ordered seeds, got everything needed for assembly, only to learn that that weekend was the last time I could have done so prior to Michigan’s Governor declaring gardening “non-essential” and making it illegal to buy what I’d need. Score one, Dream Guys! A “mix-up” led to me ordering some extra parts for the GT2, and we ended up with an extra tier. For me, this changes the entire aesthetic of the GT2, and I love it so much more now. I don’t know why that one extra layer makes its form so much more appealing, but it does.

In any case, David and I spent a long Memorial Day weekend celebrating my birthday, going on wooded walks and drives, building a patio, and setting up and planting the Garden Tower 2. For anyone interested in the process, we documented some of the highlights.

The “Before” space, slightly in process, since I forgot to take a Before photo! This required moving three Smart Pots to the other side of this existing raised bed. Moving those turned out way easier than anticipated. In the photo below, you can see the patio blocks before digging out and leveling the ground. We’ve got the base of the GT2 there for reference, to see where we wanted this rotating tower:

Garden Photos and Radio Show Link for Friday, May 18

As promised, here’s the link and time conversion for tomorrow’s (Friday, May 18, 2018) radio show. You can listen to the show from anywhere with internet access by clicking here at 1:30 p.m. Eastern this Friday.

For your convenience, that’s:

10:30 a.m. Pacific Daylight time

11:30 a.m. Mountain time

12:30 p.m. Central

16:30 UK time

17:30 in Western Europe and South Africa

7:30 a.m. Hawaii time

1:30 a.m. in Taiwan

and 3:30 a.m. in Sydney, Australia.

If you’re not in those areas, you can still listen at that time, but those are the main regions I know I have blog readers and clients.

Last week, we discussed the challenges and gifts of Chronic Lyme disease, my Metaphysics of Lyme Disease book in progress, and we also touched astrology as a healing tool and some of my encounters with the Spirit World. For now, that show is archived here.

And now for some garden pictures! First, the cutest little faery house setup we’ve ever seen — David bought it as an early birthday gift for me. You can see it next to some bachelor’s buttons getting ready to bloom, alongside purple verbena:

Compost, Critters and Fritillaria

Another update from the Wild Kingdom of Faery Gardening. This morning features hopefully my last truckload of compost and soil. I ordered a lighter blend and 1/3 less than last time, so I also hope to finish today rather than in tomorrow’s 87 degrees! We shall see. I had planned to get the delivery yesterday with its balmy high of 75 degrees; however, I had a backlog of email sessions

7 Photos and 7 Days Left at Faery Hof!

A countdown is in effect. We have exactly one week left before the movers take us away from the house and yards we’ve nurtured the past almost five years. Yesterday afternoon, David and I hosted some yard lessons on how to operate his parents’ old lawn mower we’re leaving here, plus I gave a tour of the various herbs, perennials and fruit trees for easier ID. I’m also leaving each house with the map I made for my Permaculture Design Certificate — but with individual fruit and nut trees and shrubs labeled.

Last week, we already moved about half of what we’re taking to the new place, but now it’s crunch time for packing, sorting and figuring how the heck I’m going to get my container garden to the new yard without needing to rent a separate truck just for plants. You can see just some of them below:

Most of the indoor plants moved last week, since they can survive without daily care. On these hot days, containers need frequent attention, though, and many of my containers not pictured are too large for cars. Here’s hoping the movers work some magic, since I convinced them to move my garden if we have room. “Normally, we don’t move living things.” I’m not sure they know what they just agreed to! We’ve got another truck reserved for later in the week just in case … but, goodness, it would be so nice to be done!

Meanwhile, here are six more photos of the yards at Faery Hof and Haus Am See. I’m so relieved all the new renters get along and have already developed some sense of community even beyond the gardens. It turns out

Garden Update ~ June Blooms and CPL

Well, the roses got the memo: “It’s June!”

Robinhood:

Garden Firsts: Columbine, Iris, Sea Kale, Rhododendron, Roses, and the Portable 2017 Garden

Stunning columbines this year! It is crazy windy today, so some of these photos aren’t as clear as I’d like. Too pretty to keep to myself, though. 🙂

Flowering sea kale, is an edible perennial that looks good all season. Even better, you can eat every single part from roots to shoots to leaves to buds to flowers:

The first of many varieties