High Sign from the Cosmos...

Hi Everyone

The thing with an epiphany is after you get the message--now you have to put it into working motion. This reminds me a great deal of what good therapy consists of....the therapist being the questioner and the client, providing answers. But the therapist has an overview the client does not and leads them to the ‘aha’ which, all things being equal, the client will ‘get.’ Then, the therapist gives the client ‘tools’ with which to implement this new awareness/aha into their daily, working life.

Except,that I don’t have a therapist per se and all my inner awareness and finding the right tools is a hunt and peck kind of thing. So, today I swung from one extreme to another--to a feeling of being completely detached from the situation to terror that I was still stuck in it. Good thing I know this is ‘normal’ after you’ve made such an epiphany. I still feel good about it and solid, and I know the tests will come shortly; they always do--to test us to see if we really mean it. If we’re really sincere about a change--no matter whether it’s an attitude change or an emotional one. That’s how the Cosmos works.

No one said living down here wasn’t tough. Because it is. I’ll just be glad when in some incarnation far into the future, we won’t have to use pain as the great awakener to do work to plumb our wounds. Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could just slip into a meditation, go deep, see the problem/wound, and then know how to fix it. Wow. Not this lifetime, that’ s for sure! At least, for me.

There was a beautiful pink cala lily blooming in a pot near our front door and it’s just scrumptious looking.


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here's that beautiful pink cala lily strutting her stuff!


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here's the pink cala lily from another angle. Looks like it would be nice to look at and meditate with.



And then I found some Desert Nightshade in two colors--one in purple and the other in white--what luck! Generally, the purple variety of Solanum is around and I’ve been looking for the white for a long time and today, I found it!

In my greenhouse, my Paph (Rothchild) orchid is blooming--she had two babies! They are green and white. They always remind me of aliens visiting from another planet. This is the first year they’ve bloomed since I bought them two years earlier. I put them out in the main greenhouse where they got more light and I think that did the trick. Aren’t they cool looking??

Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is my beloved Paph. orchid. First time in two years that she has bloomed! Doesn't she look like an alien from outer space??

Paph's orchids like cool jungle temperatures--between 55F and 65F. And if it gets too hot, they won't bloom at all. I try to keep them low in the orchidarium where it's cooler. For whatever reasons, all the things they need such as temperature and light were just right and here they are--gracing us with their lovely presence. What a gift!


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
And here's a close up of my pin-up girl. Isn't she a beauty?

On the outside of the greenhouse, on the north side that does not get any sun and is always in the shade, I planted some seeds from Switzerland and the Alpine Clematis came up several years ago. I don't think it knows it hasn't left the Alps yet...


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is my Swiss Alpine Clematis--blooming in August!! In Arizona heat!! This plant is just wild! And it's not in the Alps....Amazing!





On the hike tonight, going up Cardiac Hill, I scared off a falcon, I think. He flew up to a telephone wire above the vineyard and sat there. He let me get closer and closer. When I got enough shots, he flew off and landed on a vineyard metal post. Rounding the corner, I got a really good view of his cream colored breast and front. Finally, he had enough of me clicking away and flew in front of me and up on Deer Mountain. I’m sure he was hanging around to get some of those mice that live in the ‘apartments’--the rows of stone walls on either side of the road.


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
I don't know if this is a falcon or a young hawk--could be a Cooper's Hawk but I have to do some digging in my bird identification books to find out. It's a lousy shot, but at least gives enough detail to help me identify it!


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here the Hawk has landed on the steel post in the vineyard--a better shot but boy, do I need a long range lens!


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is the Hawk in flight--again, not great, but you get to see its markings.


The sunset tonight was ever changing. It started out with golds, but then, up north, around Sedona, a late evening thunderstorm with a rain veil started picking up pink colors. And then, later, the sunset deepened to a gold and apricot color. As I was leaving to come back, the sky got an intense orange color and also, an interesting lavender--pink cloud off to the south.


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is that interesting and unique lavender 'cloud' that seem to develop as the sunset deepened--quite an unusual thing....


Coming down Cardiac Hill, Rocky was in front of me when I saw him veer to the right rut of the dirt road, stop and sniff something. It was pretty dark, so I couldn’t see anything until I was right on top of it. You guessed it! A SNAKE!! Only this time, a very cool GOPHER SNAKE, which is a nonpoisonous variety. This guy was big! At least 4.5 feet long. They have the coloration of a rattlesnake--browns, cream, black. And often, gopher snakes are misidentified and killed because some yahoo thinks it’s a rattlesnake. If the person would just stop and look at the tail--it comes to a point and there are NO rattles on it. So, that right there would tell them that it was harmless. Plus, the Gopher’s head is oblong and does not have the viper-like head a rattler has.


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is our friend, the nonpoisonous Gopher Snake in all his 4 and a half feet of glory on our dirt road in the vineyard area.




I was overjoyed to see him. You see, my original snake medicine that I got (and I put this info in an earlier blog) was Bull snake medicine. So, after my epiphany, my struggles, here is my medicine come to see me at dusk. I was sooooo elated to see a cousin (nonpoisonous) of my good friend! It was a double check that I had made the switch and that I could do this transformation that was needed. I felt it was a good sign that things are going to be okay and they will work out for you in a positive, healthy way. The rattlesnakes were continually mirroring the poison within me--they are a poisonous snake. As soon as I made the change/transformation, my medicine, nonpoisonous, comes synchronistically back into my life to mirror that change.


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here's the Gopher Snake 'drumming' with his throat inflated, his mouth open. Did you notice, he has YELLOW eyes? And with a black pupil? Beautiful eyes. Gopher Snakes are very bold...I love them. I need one in my garden to catch that darned gopher that's eating up my beloved veggies!

I took lots of pictures of my friend--Gopher snakes are pretty cool reptiles. They inflate their throat (you’ll see the photos of him--before he inflates his throat and afterward) when threatened. And they open their mouth and what comes out are hisses and rattles that sound exactly like a rattlesnake--it comes from their throat region. And that was cool to hear that, too! But my friend the Gopher snake didn’t run off, either. And seeing my medicine (a nonpoisonous snake) show up like this after this horrendous inner, emotional battle that I’d been wrestling with for two years, nonstop, was such a blessing and miracle for me, that I’m higher than a kite.


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is the Gopher snake with his throat right behind his head, inflated....check it out against the next photo where his throat is more slender. This is where they make the rattling/hissing noise.


It just goes to show, once more, that even when we’re in the darkest night of our tortured soul process, there is always hope and there is always light at the end of that tunnel. In the Native American way of doing things, when our medicine shows up within 24-48 hours after some huge transformation, then this is truly the ‘high sign’ for ‘well done’ and that it’s going to work out. Aho!

And, on the way down, I decided to try and shoot one last dramatic picture of the sunset, which was about gone, with the Nolina or "bear grass".


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is the nolina or "bear grass". I climbed down off the road, about killed myself, to get this 'arty' shot. You can see the last of the sunset, like a red-orange ribbon, behind them.




Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
And here's tonight's sunset....with the Mormon Tea Tree as a dramatic backdrop.

There were so many great shots of the sunset tonight because it was changing so much and so dramatically I had trouble selecting THE shot. So, I decided, to heck with it and am adding the one below. Enjoy!



Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is another shot of the sunset....couldn't decide which to post and decided to do both!

In Spirit.....