Frozen in the Headlights - Full Moon

With an upcoming lunar eclipse, it seemed the appropriate time to recap what Mark Fulford, one of the soil consultants for zerorads, said in reference to my lament over lack of response. He said that "Frozen in the Headlights" is a recognized medical condition. It seems to equate to the oft neglected fright as in fight, flight, and fright. Our textbooks need to squeeze one more word in there!

As the world is in a tailspin, it pays to step outside the whirl and just survey the scenery. I treated myself to a relaxing day on Sunday. I got a bit more planted in my greenhouse, and after a few warm days, some flowers appeared and with them the bees. They are famished. I ended up taking a hundred photographs of the bees on my persicaria and then went into the backyard and found one bee so tired that he seemed to have found an easier way to forage. He had his back on a leaf under the flower he had claimed as his own, a tiny flower on the figwort, Scrophularia nodosa, the main ingredient in the Seneca Elixir. Last year, the bees were busy for months and months and months with that cluster of plants and I was so happy to see them again this year. It's really easy to grow and the bees are delighted with it.

I posted one of my bee pictures and then had an artichoke for dinner and listened to some arias on youtube.

Since there are a couple of opera buffs subscribing to the list, I might as well share a marvelous find:

One of the people in Japan helping us with textual matters on zerorads said that she plays this piece on the piano and wildly loosely paraphrased, for her, it epidemizes the conflict between love and the degradations suffered by the human spirit when greed supplants love.

For a few short hours, my tiny world seemed clueless about the stress in Japan, in North Africa, in the Middle East, in Central Asia, in dozens and dozens and dozens of places that are horrifically out of balance and therefore in need of change.

I wasn't born into harmony. I worked hard for the little bit that I enjoy, but this is actually the message. We create harmony by organizing ourselves and our space in such a way that the tensions are minimized. Usually this requires an attitudinal adjustment and then some flexibility

I feel for those who have worked even harder than I have but their agroindustry supported politicians have run roughshod over what individuals themselves have created. We need to send them our love, not our bullets!

After nudging a bit, quite a few people placed seed orders. It wasn't a deluge, but at least I knew that some people were reading the posts and acting on some of the ideas put out.

Full moons can be very useful. They bring us face-to-face with our light and our shadow and the eclipse in a few hours will be phenomenally strong.

For a quick moment, I'd like to turn out the lights and let the paralysis subside. Except for a few quite vulnerable individuals, our risks are long-term so it is wise to plant the antioxidant berries and fruits and vegetables and nurture them until they are mature enough to return the favor to you. I remember my reaction to the Botany of Desire when I realized that the plants have enslaved humanity so as to spread their kind. They repay us for the effort by giving us some of what need: nourishment, beauty, fragrance, and practical contributions to our comfort. Here's a kind of interesting "for instance."

The main geiger counter that I had been awaiting from Russia arrived yesterday, a hectic day in comparison to Sunday. The first experiment I wanted to conduct was for "hot particles." If you have been following the videos with Arne Gundersen, you realize that for all intents and purposes everyone in the northern hemisphere has been exposed to radioactive particulates. We breathe a lot of air, 10,000 liters a day, maybe much more if engaged in strenuous work or sports. A hot particle could be in any breath so based on measurements taken of air flow and examination of air filters in cars and buildings, experts are trying to assess the probability of inhaling something radioactive. This game is not played on a level field. Wind and weather put some people more at risk than others. Big people who breathe deeply and who are outside are playing with the dice more than those behind desks. Anyway, I tested my air filter and posted some pictures.

The readings were actually quite low, not alarming at all, but I can't remember when I changed the filters. Also, it's been quite cold so the windows haven't been open except for once when I let something set off the smoke detector. Still, the point is that the odds greatly favor ingesting a few particles and these particles are not likely to leave the body so we need to eating our plant foods and growing what we will need to recover from the insult. Cancer is the main worry and when I analyzed all the famous cancer formulas some years ago, burdock was the one herb found in most formulas. My burdock is monstrously tall this year. I planted it less than a year ago so it's going to taste really good come August. I'm already dreaming up some jazzy recipes to help me overcome the boredom of Zen-like food. I'm thinking this burdock is headed the codonopsis root and is going to end up in some Korean barbeque sauce.

In any event, I love how pieces fit together. I had to reorder some Solomon's seal seeds from Horizon and Alexis was telling me about his work with vetiver and soil remediation. It's tropical but there are people in the tropics who have room for it on their land and I'd think the Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii ought to be looking that direction. My mind being what it is, I tried to find another sorghum for temperate climates, but they were inedible, used for making brooms. I had to laugh because I had just been obsessing over carpets versus wood and tile floors, vacuum cleaner bags and filters versus air filters, and well, if you just flow, it's amazing how coherent the journey is.

Image Credit: Solomon's Seal

So, I'll give one more tiny example of just being instead of doing. The persicaria is in the front yard and its splendor is quite brief, but somehow the bees understood that I am not interested in trying to make a flower arrangement. However, the backyard bees were fiercely territorial compared to the ones in the front. They obviously know that figwort could be harvested and they aren't ready to let that happen. I was very proud of them for communicating so clearly. I just showed them my camera, i.e., no snippers and they chilled out enough to let me get some good pictures. Most of the time, we move too fast to get on a first name basis with our bee friends.

Then, ending for now let me share some astute observations Mark made that sing sense. He said that plants with waxy or glossy leaves like Solomon's seal and rhodiola and many others that he named shed water and dry fast after rains. They are therefore less likely to accumulate radiation. Well, I suspect they leave the work to the roots. He also wrote about the improvement in nutrition from the minerals he gives to the soil. It's called win-win, isn't it? We work a little harder to make the plants happier and healthier and they repay us with delicious nutrient dense food. We have to be doing this inch by inch until our Planet is back in balance. We cannot leave this to others, but if we commit, sooner or later someone else will follow suit and eventually there will be the hundredth monkey effect.

Happy eclipse! Since the effects of what you do are intensified during an eclipse, please think wisely about what you want to see intensified.