Spirit Connection New York

In addition to diverting from the work around the curved wall to work on the edging along the front property line, I was hoping to get some work done alone the back property line this trip as well. One of the first things my engineers told me (at the beginning of this nightmare) was that, in order to satisfy the County’s Category-Five-Hurricane-Resistant-Requirements, I would have to add four inches to the existing footing on the south side of the newest wall construction. That wall is the most linear of the walls and, except for two planter insets, is single block construction with no stonework facing added to it.

I was told that I would need to drill a half-inch hole in the existing footing, every four feet, and pound a piece of #5 rebar into it to secure the new four inches to the original footing. That was the easy part. (The guys next door at Jack’s Auto, a licensed auto repair shop with great mechanics, have been great about cutting rebar to size for me.) The hard part was digging down almost two feet to expose the existing footing. Once that was done, I put in the rebar, added Tapcon screws along both the vertical and horizontal edges of the existing footing (THANK YOU Holmes on Homes), extended the footing by an extra eight inches, and brought it up four inches over the top of the existing footing as well. (Why not?)

The good news is that, now that it has been inspected, it can be used as a huge yard trimmings pit! I’m looking forward to filling it up and putting the soil back as soon as I return to Bradenton.

I initiated it with a few trimmings from the Rubber Tree Path, the second oldest section of wall construction.

I also managed to get two of the solar light posts installed on the north side of the newest wall. The posts will serve as trellis for the new bougainvillea.

The existing bougainvillaea at the far end is the first thing I planted after I started caretaking the property for my mother in 1985. It was transplanted twice before it settled, very dramatically, in it’s current location. I had to cut through its roots to add the extra footing. Then we had a hard frost followed by continued drought conditions. In February, I wasn’t sure it was going to survive, but as you can see, it’s once again embraced life with a flourish.

I didn’t make as much progress on these back sections as I wanted to, but there are only so many hard-labor hours in a 90° plus work day.

To be continued …

THE GUIDES SAY … Expectation can fuel our dreams — or drain our energy. Monitor the dosage carefully.

Yesterday, I showed you photos of the Jasmine Planters as they were on May 5 and May 7. This photo was taken on May 11. (The lilies at the bottom right are the last survivors of my grandmother’s collection of exotic lilies. They bloom at night, with slim white star burst petals and fill the yard with a wonderful fragrance.)

These photos were taken on May 14.

I finished adding the last few blocks to the back of both planters and added branches trimmed from my oak tree to serve as trellis for the Confederate Jasmine. By the end of summer there should be clouds of puffy green on both sides, providing a little screening to improve the view from my yard. The pavers are temporary; I eventually want to have flagstone edging all along the top of the cement block. The rock edging around the palm trunks not only makes it all look neater, but once I cement another row on top of them, they should keep the toxic runoff from across the street (see Ministerial Muses/County-Embraced Flooding from March 18, 2012) away from the base of the trees. (I also removed about five feet of the asphalt from the driveway, dug a trench and filled it in with gravel. It probably won’t do much to stop the flooding but hopefully it will filter out the shaley/flaky fill (mixed with pebbles) which is brought in over there to fill the ruts the trucks create. During heavy rain, the shaley/flaky stuff washes up my driveway all the way to the carport and gets tracked into the house.)

I added pine cones (symbols of fertility) to the branches to draw the protection and blessing of the Goddess. (I’ve had ongoing problems with petty vandalism along the front property line for the last three years. I put the crosses on the planters when the problems started, originally with the thought that they would send any negative energy back from whence it came. Recently, I have amended that intention to be a petition to the energetic consciousness of my elder brother and master teacher Jesus to transmute any negative energy sent to the property so that it will work to enhance rather than destroy.)

As I worked on the planters there would occasionally be a mockingbird who would perch on the top of one of the branches and vocalize. They never dive-bombed me like they do when there is a nest nearby. I felt that they were just reminding me not to muck-up their yard. I thanked them for their beautiful perfomances. (They do seem to love the tall branches I’m adding. The bluejays still seem to prefer hopping along the top of walls. They both avoid the pine cones which are left over from the holidays and smell like cinnamon.)

To be continued …

The heat wave that arrived in Bradenton slowed my progress in the Garden Sanctuary considerably and I went back into a cycle of fighting anxiety about not finishing the walls by my mid-September deadline (on top of the constant threat from the neighborhood drug dealers). Hence, the e-Diary went on the back burner. I did continue to take photos and I’ll begin updating you retroactively now that I am safe and sound in my New York home.

I finished mulching around the curve to the Kalamanda Niche and began finishing the surface of the niche.

I was hoping to get the first layer of surfacing on the Screen Porch Surround as well, but I didn’t accomplish that goal.

I intend to put the sculptured, mountain-textured finish on the outer walls of the surround and add a dense, pebbled texture to the inside niches for contrast. (There is also a Secret White Garden in this section, but I plan to come back to that after I finish the exoteric sections of wall.)

My progress around the curve was interrupted by work on the Jasmine Planters at the front of the property. While those planters are technically garden edging which I thought was exempt from the permit requirements, they became a somewhat serious subject of conversation at my footing inspection. I felt I was getting a message they would be counted in the final exam. I moved them up the list of priorities.

I built the planters thirteen years ago to try and buffer my grandparents’ fifty year old palm trees from the tow trucks which had begun using my driveway for a turn around, especially after dark. My wood post mail box stand was a recurring casualty and I knew it was only a matter of time until the palm trees took a direct hit. While the planters weren’t going to stop a tow truck, I hoped the driver would stop went he hit one of them and spare the palm. The finishing work on the planters was left undone on purpose (as you can see from the photos), partly because I got involved in working at the back of the property. I also left the construction on the property unfinished because of the rising crime problem in the neighborhood. To anyone passing by, the ongoing construction disguised the fact that the property was sometimes unoccupied for two months. When I was in residence, it disguised the fact that there was a single woman living in the house alone. (Now that the Junk Auto businesses have taken over the neighborhood, my comings and goings have become a matter of public knowledge.) Other properties in the neighborhood (aside from the Junk Auto businesses) have been upgrading during the past few years, and it was time for me to “dress-up” the front of my properties as well.

I did make considerable progress finishing up the planters.

To be continued …

THE GUIDES SAY: Life is getting brighter. Expand your goals. Think bigger, not smaller. Now is not the time to cut back.

I told you last week that I thought the little lantana which is front and center in the outer ring of foliage around the Goddess Sanctuary would reward us for our haircut and mulching with a show of brightly colored flowers — and she didn’t disappoint.

This lantana is an offshoot of the lantana from Francie Reynold’s yard next door. (Florida natives/Crackers refer to this plant as a weed because of its slightly aggressive nature. The cultivated varieties are much more compliant.) The original plant was growing up the west side of the house next door when I took over that property. It was alive with butterflies and little birds and it was a great source of inspiration for me when I first began envisioning the Goddess Garden project. The roof-high parent plant eventually fell prey to age, drought, and frost, but before it returned to the womb, it produced many children. This plant is one of two surviving descendants. It seemed a natural as the centerpiece of bright yellow which heralds the start of the Garden Sanctuary. Yellow is the color of the solar plexus center/chakra. The solar plexus center is the center of self-empowerment (not power born of fear) which we all carry at the heart of our being. Authentic empowerment makes us feel safe and capable in the physical world. The little lantana’s yellow flowers are edged with orange. Orange is the color of the sacral center/chakra, which is the source of generative /sexual, creative energy within us. When our generative energy (sexual chi) is merged with our authentic power, the world becomes a magical place that makes us peaceful, compassionate, and full of hope. I welcome the message of this little lantana, a gift from Francie, who was a good friend to me and my family. (I share the happy memory of Francie with my friend Mary Keith and with Manatee County Sheriff’s Deputy Cindi Evers, both of whom love Francie and Lloyd’s little 1938 bungalow as much as I do.)

The center of these outer Garden Walls are asplash with yellow — merging with orange, pink and red as they curve to the East and to the West.

To be continued …

MESSAGE FROM THE GUIDES
Expect miracles. They are on the way. If you have prepared a fertile soil, the seeds of the future will take root in your backyard. If you have been distracted by other interests, now would be the time to send an apology and an invitation to the universe. There is still time to get on this Aquarian bandwagon.

I’ve finished weeding around the southeast side of the curve and I’ve almost finished mulching.

As you can see in the photo, the first layer of mulch is still trimmings from my plants and trees. (I haven’t put anything out for yard trash this trip, except the chunky ends of palm frons.) It’s taken awhile to get to the Kalamanda niche because I’ve also been doing some finishing work on the Jasmine Planters at the end of the driveway, but more about that in a day or two.

The Kalamanda Orange Tree niche is a hexagonal enclosure of the trunk of a tree my grandparents planted more than forty years ago. (They called it a Kalamanda Orange, so that shall be it’s name here.)

It’s a small, sour orange which I used like lemon or key lime — in tea, in pie, and as marinade for barbeque. When the tree fell victim to age, I slowly trimmed the branches and peeled the moldy bark from the trunk, sanded and waterproofed what was left. I planted an red alamanda at it’s base, which is twining nicely up the trunk. The hexagonal surround is aligned east-west, north-south (in keeping with the practice of sacred geometry in sacred spaces). I could feel the energy on the property shift when I completed the first row of block around the base. It serves as a powerful transformer/radiator for the energy that flows around the curve. It also marks the shift in style of the finishing coat of the walls, from the pebbled texture of the south to the rough, mountain terrain-like finish of the east. The southern pebble finish will eventually disappear behind a wall of bougainvillaea. The eastern rough-face wall is meant to stand alone (and I intend to eventually stain it with layers of natural-toned colors). In the east the plants are sheltered within the wall, not standing guard in front of it. I’ll begin the finishing coat of the Kalamanda niche today and continue on counter-clockwise as before.

To be continued …

The GUIDES SAY take a little time to enjoy the fruits of your labor. It is good to enjoy the labor; it is also good to enjoy the after-glow.

Apologies that this Sunday’s MESSAGE FROM THE GUIDES is so late. I know alot of you look forward to it. When you do clearing rituals, like I am doing in my Garden Sanctuary, you stir up the Shadow Self, and that’s what happened to me — BIG time! I had waves of anxiety, anger, and sobbing. It’s part of the process. It happens when you do ritual, when you work the Twelve Steps, when you use affirmations or think positive or intend to make your life better. It moves us forward, but it can be chaotic, especially when coupled with an intense full moon. I am making progress as you will see below. Some of you may think that I got carried away trimming things back but we are heading into the growing season. If we get just a little rain, my bougainvilleas will bush out and start to become the solid wall of bright flowers that I envision. The leaves are already bigger since the haircut and the center lantana is already making new flowers. I hope I can show you the bright colors soon.

I added a bright green butterfly wind chime (from the Dollar Tree) to commemorate my progress to date. I chose the bright green because it is the Esoteric Taoist color of the liver. The liver stores anger, so as I release my rage I am healing my liver. I chose the butterfly to remind me of Miho’s (a member of our New York SCNY family) temple master. When she visited her parents in Japan a few months ago, he gave her an Omamori (a folded paper talisman) to protect me and my Florida home. The butterfly chime, moving freely in the wind, reminds me of the kindness of a spiritual practitioner who is half way around the world. It also reminds me that our spirits are always moving towards divine joy, no matter what path we take to get there. And it reminds me that my life is blessed, no matter what my perception tells me in the moment.

I am now moving on around the curve toward the Kalamanda Orange Tree niche.

To be continued …

MESSAGE FROM THE GUIDES Take some time to breathe in the positive changes that are occurring all around you. Don’t be misled by the dust. There has been much progress. Embrace the changes. They bring you all that you have been asking for.

The planting and trimming continued, and I finished putting the pebbled coating on the front section of the outer, curved wall. I’m working my way around the curve counter-clockwise, trimming, planting, and mulching. In the northern hemisphere, counter-clockwise is the direction of clearing and releasing. I’m focusing on releasing negative energy as I work. I’m adding plants with the intention that they will fill the space left by the negativity and maintain the new positive charge.

Negative energy does push back though; it’s part of the process. I’ve been told that the two vehicles which the business across the street recently parked on their residential property are mud racers.

After pressure washing them for hours, they proceeded to tune them up, which involves racing the super-sonic engines at full volume for long periods of time. It appears that in addition to allowing that residential property (bordered on three sides by homes) to be used as a junk parking lot, the County is now going to allow them to expand their auto works shop over there. After two very noisy days, the mud racers were hauled off by two Junky Larry tow trucks.

Despite the challenges, I managed to return my awareness (I admit sometimes with difficulty) to the beautiful plants I am nurturing. The process is working. I am starting to really enjoy the work again. And it’s bringing positive things in return. Because I try not to spend more than $5 for a plant, when I find plants I want for that price it’s like getting a present. And the goddess has been in a giving mood this week.

In addition to the guara, I found a bush daisy ($4) at Walmart which adds a cheery yellow energy to the garden. (Shown in palm tree photo below.)

I also found a pot of four palm trees at Sam’s Club for $11. I separated them and spread them across the front of the wall.

Then I made a trip to H & H Nursery to see what they had in their $1, $2, $4, and $7 tents. I got two little moss rose plants for $1 each.

I got a cream colored lantana for $2.

And I got four small orange hibiscus for the hedge I’m creating at the front of the property.

To be continued …

I continued pulling weeds and trimming plants today, in addition to working on the stucco coating for the walls. I also began adding new plants. Shopping for plants has been a long-standing ritual for me here, even before I owned the house. I look for those that are bargains. I enjoy them when I first plant them, but if they don’t survive (without watering) until I get back to town it’s not a huge financial setback.

I found a guara on sale at Walmart ($4). The first time I bought one of these it was at Thomas Orchards just south of Athens, GA. (When I was driving back and forth between FL and NY, I always stopped at Thomas Orchards. They were the nicest people and they had the best peaches and Granny Smith apples.) The guara is a fireworks burst of pink flowers that is very drought tolerant. It also seeds prolifically. Generations of that first one I bought survived for years. Eventually, the drought put an end to it. I planted this new one with many loving memories in mind.

My garden is already full of this strange little plant, which was given to me by my friend Mary Keith. It sends a tall, bright red flower which creates a ground cover of new plants all around it. It’s been a terrific starter plant for this bed, filling in until other things, like the new bougainvillas get bigger. Some of them will now need to be sacrificed, however, as I add more things.

I’m using my plant trimmings as sub-mulch. This loop of the bed has gotten most of them. The small date palm is the only survivor from the first series of date palms I planted. The business across the street let their guard dogs run loose in the neighborhood for years (pitbulls and a boxer), and many of my newer plantings in the front yard were casualties of the lifted leg. The County finally started ticketing the owners after I was almost mauled one Sunday afternoon (as far as the dogs were concerned, I was invading their territory). The survival rate for new plants has been much better since. I’m hoping the extra thick covering will help this brave little survivor finally start to thrive.

To be continued…

THE GUIDES SAY … A good day’s work is like a perfect diamond. Treasure it.

First of all, let me send out a really big THANK YOU!!!!! to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office deputies, the Tactical Unit, and Lt. Evers for their gangbusting (literally) efforts to save our neighborhood from criminals. I returned back, after six weeks north, to find no new vandalism to my property. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much progress with regard to the Junk Auto blight that I have been appealing to the County to curtail for almost four years now. The residential lot across the street added more junked vehicles while I was out of town. I have pleaded with everyone up to and including the County Commissioners for help, but nothing much has changed. (Code did stop the unlicensed business from storing junked vehicles on the right-of-way in front of their two properties.)

I am now faced with accepting the reality that this is what the County wants our neighborhood to look like.

It is the garden walls, which I started building almost fourteen years ago to try and buffer my home from the increasing drug and prostitution activity in the neighborhood, that the County wants gone. The first demand to bull doze them down came about a month after I complained to the Director of Neighborhood Services about the business people (who are now across the street) starting up an unlicensed Auto Machine Works Shop and Scooter Sales business on a residential property behind me (why pay commercial property taxes if you don’t have to) — running ear-deafening industrial compressors and generators seven days a week, ten to twelve hours a day, and spray painting without a filtration system. The state DMV shut down the Scooter Sales business, but the County let the Auto Machine Works Shop operate unhindered for seven months until the rental property across the street from me became available, and the business set up an expanded Junk Auto, Used Tire, and Scooter Sales business over there.

Because of the “coincidental” code challenge, I had to hire engineering and permitting professionals to help steer me through the County’s hair-raising permitting process, striving against myriad challenges, to get a permit in order to preserve ten years worth of construction the County had let me build without any signal that it was a problem. Tens of thousands of dollars of lost income to my business later, and after submitting a 50-page report to the County Commissioners describing harassment by County employees, I was finally granted a permit, for construction most contractors I’ve talked to say would normally have been grandfathered in.

It’s true that the Building Department was more than amicable when they came to do the first inspection (a footing inspection). But if past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, I have to be fearful that they were once again trying to lure me into a false sense of security, so that I will be caught off guard when they declare my Garden Sanctuary a “failure” in September. Why else would they mail me a Code Citation three days AFTER I paid for a permit? I have to fear that they want to be able to start charging me $250-a-day in fines right away — when they find some excuse to decline to issue me a Certificate of Completion — without giving me time to figure out how to appeal their verdict. (I have had the walls looked at by a parade of professionals, including engineers, and they all agree they are structurally sound.)

The threat of $250-a-day fines has been hanging over my head since January of 2009, and the resulting anxiety has taught me a lot about myself. So now I am assigning myself a new lesson. I am tasking myself with doing the finishing work on the walls, with no attachment to their future existence. I take as my model the sand paintings of Buddhist monks. I will try (and I have been working at this type of practice long enough to not assume success) to stay in the moment, investing energy and knowing that that energy will be the only thing guaranteed immortality, as I lovingly finish the project that I have become so attached to.

Energy is fluid. Even the most solid of structures are formed of molecules and atoms and sub-particles which are constantly changing. The energy I invest in my work will live forever. The walls themselves have no such guarantee of immortality. Despite my best efforts, the walls have, for the last four years, been invested with my fear and anger. Every shovel of dirt I moved, every weed I pulled, and every new plant I added, was infused with my rage at the County. I will spend the next four and a half months trying to make amends for that. Every bag of cement I mix, I will sincerely try to mix with love. Every weed I pull, I will try to pull with an apology for disrupting its life-affirming presence. I will remind myself to listen to the birds and take joy in the colors of my flowers and embrace the power of nature that is allowing me to achieve my goals during every hour that I work. Between now and my September deadline, I will try and make my work in the Goddess Garden a ritual that is worthy of those of you who have sent me healing light and prayer for these past four years. I invite you to join me as I do so, and I begin posting an e-diary of my progress today.

E-DIARY
I was gone for six weeks, during which time there was almost no rain in Bradenton. My yard is filled with drought tolerant plants, who lived up to their billing, but they have grown a bit scraggly with the lack of water and the weeds have moved in for the kill. I begin my ritual by pulling weeds and trimming back the unsustainable growth.

May 1, 2012
I returned home from running errands this morning and got to work in the Goddess Garden about 10 am. At 10:10 am, Allied/Rafa (across the street) began pressure washing the junked vehicles they moved onto their Residential property on Saturday, treating the neighborhood to the unbuffered sound of a heavy-duty commercial compressor.

At 10:45 am, the noise stopped. Coincidentally, I had finished up a batch of stucco mix and was taking a break on my screen porch. I was assigning cause and effect, until I saw a Law Enforcement Officer (state I think) drive pass the house on a motorcycle. (Is there another neighborhood resident who is bothered by the noise?) About fifteen minutes later, I mixed another batch of mortar/stucco and went back to work in the garden. Five minutes later, the puffy white pressure washer turned on the compressor again and began spraying water. I finished that batch of mortar mix and retreated to the screen porch for lunch. About five minutes later, the puffy white pressure washer turned off the noise and disappeared as well.

To be continued. I’ll post again in a day or two.

MESSAGE FROM THE GUIDES

This is the week to pull projects together. There’s a “get-it-done” energy in the air. Take full advantage. You can accomplish a lot, with minimum expenditure of energy. It’s a gift from the Universe. Use it well.

I go back to Florida this week. I used to look forward to getting back to my home and garden. Recent events, however, have changed that. I return with trepidation, wondering what challenges I will face next. I remind myself that Rumi said, “Live someplace dangerous.” His point was that it is when we face challenges, that we grow emotionally and spiritually. Time for another lesson. I’m sending healing light ahead of me, hoping for a pleasant surprise. Stay tuned.

MESSAGE FROM THE GUIDE

This is a landmark week. It’s turnaround time. Expect big changes. If you have taken the high road, the news will be very good indeed. If not, it’s time to change paths. You still have time to access the higher energies and receive their blessings.