Lavender and Bees

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The Importance of Habitat

The Importance of Habitat: Lavender fields sound like inside of a beehive this week, full of all kinds of bees: honey bees, mason bees, bumble & carpenter.

Lavender and Bees Lavender and bees go together!  The following is an excerpt from  Farming Soul: A Tale of Initiation and tells how the bees helped us get started marketing lavender. June 10 is generally the beginning of the lavender harvest for the flowers we dry. The work begins before sunrise, as we try to get… Read more »

On Being Grounded

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Grounded on the Pond Bottom

On Being Grounded What is being “grounded”… a term so often used these days?  “She is not very grounded.” “I need to get grounded.” We often use it to talk about people who are flighty or “not in their bodies”. But what does that mean? I received an “embodied” answer yesterday. I consulted a psychic… Read more »

Honey Lavender Limeade

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Lavender and lime zest ready to infuse water with the magical properties of both!

Honey Lavender Limeade June is a great month for a new lavender limeade recipe, and this is a preview!  We will be running a special this week on loose flowers, but here’s a preview of a delicious and healthier, less sweet version of our famous lavender limeade. We use a pyrex pot to infuse the… Read more »

Making Medicines and New Consciousness

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Dennis Klocek demonstrating the importance of the form of the stirring vessel to the medicine (biodynamic preps).

I just returned from a five day seminar/workshop, Alchemical Lab II, Making Medicines, presented by Dennis Klocek and Matias Baker at the Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, CA. The days were a deepening of the work we began a year ago, a sinking into the task of our time: healing through development of consciousness… Read more »

Lavender Harvest Begins!

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Lavender bunches cut and ready to be dried.

The heat of the last days pushed the lavender quickly, and lavender harvest has begun! We cut the longest stems for the dried bouquets, harvesting them just as the bees inform us two or three of the calyxes are open. This way the dried bouquets do not “shatter” or lose too many flowers. This year… Read more »

Goats as Psychopomps!

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Another Buddha in Goat Body.

Animals act as psychopomps between the worlds in dreams and everyday life. How many of us have a beloved cat or dog whose warm, soft body reminds us that we too are animals? My husband and I have two cheerful yellow labs, siblings, who have been with us for almost 12 years. Tending to their… Read more »

Land Activism and Communication

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The wholeness of a mandala around the sun.

We never expected the need to get into Land Activism, and yet, here we are, attending Napa County Board of Supervisor Meetings, Planning Commission meetings, Agricultural Protection Advisory Committee meetings, making public comment, advocating for the health of our environment. One thing that sets Biodynamic farming and certification apart for organic and conventional farming is that… Read more »

Psychological Complexes and Soul’s Agenda

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Psychological Complexes and Soul’s Agenda The thick, old valley oak in the cemetery by the vineyard is leaning, the one that has witnessed a hundred burials in the ground beside it these last 150 years. The ancient valley oak beside the little pioneer house fell last May, and then, on the other side of the… Read more »

Uninvited Guests (Pests!)

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Mating disruptor

Uninvited Guests (Pests!) When I first started writing The Uninvited Guest: Fire and the New Consciousness, I was thinking about fire. Collectively we banned it from our environment over the last 100 years and now it threatens to return with a vengeance. In this fifth year of severe drought in the West, we are being warned… Read more »

Redefining Weeds!

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Coyote bush that has not yet seen quintessential pruners!

Redefining Weeds! We are not complaining, believe me!  April’s cherished 0.7 inch of rain was more than welcome!  However, it did produce more grass and weeds, and again, we are at it: pulling thick-leafed “weeds” from the rose geranium, the bindweed from the lavender, the grasses from between the new plantings we have set out… Read more »