Restorative justice.

I wonder if the farmers around here are intuitive enough to take this as a hint ..

The farmland here is rolling, gentle hills. A little rocky here, sandy there, and clay-ey closer to the river. The farms are small, traditionally it's been all about cattle, with fields sown in hay, alfalfa & corn for winter feed. Some rotation, of course; oats do well here. Barley is iffy thanks to summer storms.

It's only in the last decade or so that we're seeing more and more soy, and only in the last few years that we're seeing 'modern' farming techniques being used. Massive, computerized machinery. Fields 'burned down' with chemicals to get rid of the weeds, hedgerows and sugar-maple bushes taken out to make room, and vast fields of that soy, year after year, crop rotation be damned.

Remember how I told you about our excessively snowy winter and the ensuing spring rains resulting in a whole lot of moisture? That was early May, and it's still raining. Now going on July and the fields haven't recovered; an awful lot of them remain unplanted. Boggy, that's what they are, especially (of course) those fields where the hedgerows and maple-bushes that surrounded them have been removed - that modernization greed has left the water table fucked. Fields that may have been just a bit damp are likely to now be unsalvageable for years to come.

Blueberry flowers, gratitude and magic

From this site: (chosen because of its simplicity, low woo-factor and because there's the occasional quote in the chart from Matthew Wood, my current favourite writer/herbalist.)

"Blueberry (low bush)
Vaccinium Angustifolium

This essence brings resiliency on all levels- physical, emotional, psychological. It enables the person who takes it to “bounce back” from illness or adversity. Low Bush Blueberry is a good addition to any healing blend and an important part of the blend Crisis Care."

Who couldn't use a little more resiliency? I know I could, and Paul (my husband, co-conspirator and all around good guy) wouldn't mind a little more himself, so it seemed a good essence for us to try out. And also, blueberries are something we've got plenty o' in this neck of the woods. This is blueberry country.

It's also blackfly season.

Flower essences - where does the information about them come from?

Following up on the last post of a couple days ago ..

Talk about a rabbit hole!

No surprise, this - the descriptions of the attributes of the flower essences are extremely variable between sources.

There's Edward Bach's original work, (here's the official site) and those who adhere to it; that's fairly standardized (not that I believe 'standardized' is a necessarily always a good thing, but the man was a pioneer and his work is valuable ..). There's also a dizzyingly large array of essences 'discovered' since Bach, because let's face it, there are more than the 38 flowers that he had access to in the English countryside; people want to (and should) be able to use what grows near them ..

A new shtick for me - flower essences.

I never thought I'd see the day I'd be diving into the airy-fairy, woo-filled world of flower essences, but if you were to rummage amongst all the jars of infused oils and deeply coloured tinctures on the top of my china cabinet today you'd find 4 jars and several small brown dropper bottles of what looks very much like plain water.

Flower essences are sorta-kinda like homeopathic remedies. It's one of those "they're the same only different" deals. Their similarity is that both are extremely diluted - I'll tell you just how diluted in a bit - but they also differ in a very important way.

"Meat space"

meat·space
ˈmētspās/Submit
noun informal
the physical world, as opposed to cyberspace or a virtual environment.

I can't think of a more vile term, or one more expressive of the disdain those who use it must hold for reality.

Thoughts on the 'intelligence' of creaturehood.

The 'intelligence', or 'innate wisdom' of the body.

Hmmm.

We refer to 'instinct' when we speak of how animals know how to be animals.  A robin, for instance, knows how to build a robin-style nest, which differs from a grackle's or a crow's. The robin isn't taught, it just 'knows', on 'instinct' how to build its nest.. or at least this is the vague and non-committal way that science explains it.

potential pears

We humans have to be taught most of our human-ness (supposedly). We have a few instincts that we retain into adulthood, but not many, and most of those involve responses to danger. We've managed, just in the last several of generations, to quell even our most basic instincts, like the need for water or certain foods. Now we're told how much water to drink. There was a time we drank only when thirsty; the human race didn't die out from dehydration.

At the most basic of levels, the care of our newborns, once instinctive, has been so profoundly influenced by 'authorities' (social mores, baby formula makers) that many women have lost the instinct to breastfeed their babies. What was once an absolute necessity for the infant's survival is now a choice, and we've come to the point where there are many women who simply cannot produce milk.