If a mature forest s cleared and put into grass, as where parts of Harmony, then many of the seeds in the ground will be of final stage trees that need the shade of intermediate stage forest to germinate. If the forest was mixed broadleaf-podocarp forest, such as Harmony, pioneer trees along the edges and where mature trees fall within the forest, will have put seeds into the ground, and they will be waiting.

It is still always interesting what comes up.

Harmony has long known its destiny and many foresters have given protection to the forest that has allowed it to grow as it knows it must.

The lands purpose in the great order of things determines that every type of plant must be present in a community that represents as many beings as is practical.

The first pioneers to replace the grass patches at Harmony include tree fern, pittosporum, broadleaf, and tree fuchsia. At a young 30-120 years of age the various forests within Harmony still retain the character of these pioneers. There are extensive colonies of tree ferns, scattered with mature broadleaf, lines of tree fuchsias at forest edge, areas with and without pittosporums.

At different altitudes there are forests of young NZ cedar, areas of mostly all totara, and others of mixed totara and miro.  For some divine reason young rimu have still not been found and those introduced have not flourished, though there are several mature trees remaining.

Expressing their love of trees the early pioneers only took timber trees (podocarps) from a section of forest that was wet and steep and would not have made good grass pasture. The early citizens of the city also decided to take their water from two of Harmony’s three creeks and thus much the catchment area was not clear felled and burned. Then as was the plan they stopped taking the water and Harmony’s creeks returned to untouched bounties of living water energy.

Harmony is unique. Every forest is.

Harmony’s community has a purpose. Every community does.

Harmony Forest plans its future. Every community does.

We sung the HU and I soon heard from the trees. They asked “What is this HU Song?” I replied that it was a love song to God.

The trees had been aware of the many HU Songs that have taken place in the room near them, and once they had the attention of one of the singers, a line of communication opened, through which they could find out more.

In finding out more, they have become more conscious of the HU, and we more aware that It connects with all creation.

The Booklet “Spiritual Wisdom on Relationships” by Harold Klemp is full of stories that speak to the heart of those seeking to live their relationships consciously. Thus it was no surprise that I was given homework of telling stories generally, and my own personal stories to All Beings at Harmony.  Wild animal groups that can’t trust humans and not going to trust a human speaking on behalf of humans anymore than I would. However all beings know that an individual story is of interest, as a person can be different from a group.

Try the exercises of thinking about the love you have for others, whether it be a car, a dog, a house, a people-person, and sing HU. It will open a doorway of understanding and when spirit links lover to loved a love connection opens in which both can begin to trust and understand each other.

If you want the help of a Spiritual Master, think any you are comfortable with. Think of Harold if you wish. If you want the help of any other being send the message of love to them too. Many of the elementals, plants, animals, devas, guardians, and Masters connected with Harmony love to help others. Acknowledge and accept the presence of whoever you choose as Soul. All Souls exist because of God’s Love, including you.

Each colour harmonises or is discordant with its neighbours. Plants grow out of the similar genetic lineages and so their colours have much in common, and their chemical processes give them a set range of colours. Plant caretakers such as lementals, bees and other creatures have their colour preferences and plants play to their senses like art upon a canvas. Local minerals give rocks a common colour theme and tint the colours of plants by their excess and deficiency.

A living forest is full of relationships built up over tens of years and millenia in which plants have grown in relationship with each other. One of the joys of visiting an old forest is the entering into a grand old family of matriachs, patriachs, and generations of children relating to each other, talking to each other, and in association with multitudes of species.

So when it comes to building in a forest wood and earth have a harmony with the land that makes them natural choices of building material; and the colours found in these elements blend to make a composite reflecting the play of colours, light and shade, surrounding them in the garden and forest.

The complexity of options in colour charts reflects the many colours found in nature. It requires much contemplation on design and integration of structure (as the different components such as walls and window frames will be different colours) and the actual choice of colours that they will be.

Such was my journey with Danaa. The clays and straw she is built of vary in colour from grey-browns to golden-browns. The gravels that could be used in the mix offered their  intensities from light grey to almost black.  The light grey was chosen for its lighter influence on the warm clay golds.

Macrocarpa timber brings light browns in amazing diversity, considering it is just one type of tree, to which fire was added in a red tinted strain. Within the journey of discovering nature this “red” was later found to have been formerly called “macrocarpa”.  I used in double strength and Danaa has a warmth that hints of cedar.

Some sills are clear varnished macrocapra, others add the darker browns of rimu stained and these are stained with the double “macrocarpa” red.  City clothes, houses, and cars show the results of limited palettes and strict colour codes. In Danaa variations from sill to sill create a play of colours that reflect the interest and intrigue of the variations found in the forest.

It came time to to choose the colour of Danaa’s window frames and doors and I maybe the vigour of yellow would match the vigour of the red. The yellow looked great, yet did not harmonise with the clay earth walls, and certainly not the timber browns and reds.

So contemplation continued in quiet times and I perused colour charts and wandered the building-supply stores hearing about spectrometers to match colours.  Inner nudges bubbling out into my living consciousness as a result of the contemplation guided me to a particular paint store, and I asked if they had a spectrometer. They didn’t and I couldn’t find the sample I had brought of my “macrocarpa” red.  On the inner I saw I was to simply trust the store’s consultant who well knew her way around colours.

She chose a light yellow clay colour. A colour I had considered too muddy to be cheerful. Following my inner trust I bought a whole litre as a full on test and yesterday I painted the first frames.  A warmth was discovered within the colours of the earth that had been missed before. Being a cob-earth building Danaa is essential dried mud wrapped around particles of gravel.

This colour is muddy, and muddy is earthy, a presence of groundedness, a solid natural substantiality that is felt in the thick earth walls that the windows are set into and let light onto.

The intrigue continues and as more painting creates more interplay between the colours, the harmony between wood and warm fire flourishes, and statements of metal, and water will be introduces as a full harmonic of elements, which is Danaa.

The nice weather also gave me the opportunity to walk around testing the new wireless phone and is 5.8gHz phone connected to it. The wireless phone connects to the provider’s network  via a SIM card (as in a cellphone) but acts like a land-line. Calls in the local toll-free area are toll-free.  It was installed in my office Herby because it felt right. The tests showed that though Herby is 3/4 of the way up the clearning the signal just reaches Sacred Space cabin because the trees inbetween absorb the signal.

Herby needs an ear like Shrek’s now that extends out into the clearing to bypass the trees more.  This also takes it away from Herby’s corrugated iron and wooden wall that reduces coverage by about 10m.

When this is done the phone can be used in the dining room half of Danaa, where there is line of sight down the edge of the trees, and is clearer in Sacred Space by again missing most of the trees.

This is what could be called divine fortuitous placement.

If the St. John’s Wort and Horehound thrive up there we will probably stop growing them in Connection, our main clearing, and this will reduce the weeding of the paths considerably.

Upon arriving I thought unkindly for a monment of the rooting a wild pig had done; then I realised this was in fact two gifts. Where it had rooted up the trail will help me even it out and put in steps; and the spots it had dug up within the gardens were ideal places to introduce my transplants.

Thankyou pig(s).

We need to talk to one.

A recent walk of our tracks revealed that the wild pig(s) are making digging up our trails a live and death issue.  I’ve talked to them repeatedly about my resorting to the ultimate level of track protection – death to pigs – if they continue to stay in the area and dig our trails. They have stayed. They have continued.

It seems to me that the only way is to kill them with compassion and to have a hunter that will give them one last chance by hunting them, and then if s/he catches them on Harmony land they enjoy eating the produce of his/her labour: wild pig fed by tree and fern roots grown under our tracks and in other open spaces.

I accept that it is hard to dig up such roots in the intangled root structure of the forest.

I also accept that I have a right to the trails … and that the pigs can continue to use them too, if they wish to dine occasionally, and sustainably in the wilder areas of Harmony away from the gardens and trails that sustain our ability to live here too.

Pigs I am looking for a compassionate hunter, if you are one, and you live near Dunedin, New Zealand please email David by way of Harmony’s Website. Thankyou.

We see the mists of the Cloud Forest frequently wrapping the upper parts of those highest visible points: Vision Quest and Rustler’s Ridge, in her long whispy tendrils and just as frequently often see them completely disappear into full clouds of total embrace.

Such is the nature of forest that even when the mists descend to the level of our  narrow clearing they mostly float above the tree tops. Even when these mists decide to tightly hug the land the distance across the Connection is short enough that the trees can still be seen.  It is as if the creator of our clearing kept it to just 3 tree lengths  (30m) wide so that  light mist is lifted from tree top to tree top without embracing the ground.  It is as if in their wisdom they knew the folly of clearing land 50, 100m about a house, to sit in it, seeing nothing but “pea soup” on misty days … and days … and days.

As forest guardians we always enjoy the view.  As pasture guardians we might well lose our happiness within the mists, as we have heard those in such houses do.  Less sun to be sure, but loving to always see the trees, when there are but the trees and the clouds for company.

Google Map Harmony Farm, find us at 45° 47′ 13.7″, 170° 30′ 22.5″ to see the trees from the birds eye view.  Often the aerial photographs have wisps of clouds in the easterly hills.

The two native wood pigeons answered by flying in to perch right outside my window.  Looking one directly in the eye I knew, yes, I was still to write about the “Woodies”.

But everyone has pet wood pigeons “They are so friendly – it won’t be news”, but Pigeons apparently carry the news.

They’ve stopped cooing now, but for two months they did lots of it, as they got to know each other.  The male performed magnificent aerial climbs and falling swoops showing his talents to his intended. She used to take off if he got to close, and they’d fly to the top of the tallest tree, which they both agreed was the coolest place to be.

We had thought they were two adolescent males, but their madness was not just youth, it was love.

First they plonked their heavy weights in the middle of our blackcurrants breaking branches outwards. Soothing talk whenever we saw them eating forest berries helped them learn what food was theirs.

Then I cleared a hanging curtain of mulenbeckia exposing a bare branch of Tree Fuchsia that has become one of their favourite perches.

They would always move on quickly if we thought to take their photographs so we don’t have any usable pics.

They like to tell us who’s in command of our clearing by swooping really close. This encourages us to stay in our place in case we get our heads knocked off!

Being young they have learned new things like standing on the ground to eat the currants (until we asked them no to do that too) and talking to us. The male has also been seen to loop the loop, flapping furiously so as he topped his climb upside down, and made the circle.

Now that David and Lorraine have been at Harmony, in the upper Waitati Valley, several years maybe it has been that their parents told them those people are safe to live with.  We have certainly never met such people oriented Woodies.

We enjoy the company of our “pet” wood pigeons.

David Baillie
Harmony Forest

Here is one such story special to the Harmony Forest blog:

Taking some lettuce down to her creek to wash in the lively running water of Gateway Creek at Harmony, Lorraine noticed a spider clutching a bright white egg ball, and carefully shifted it to the dry rocks beside her.

Immediately the spider kept position with some of its feet on the egg ball and some feeling the territory around her.  Feeling it was safe she started to move her eggs to safety.  She was barely visible yet sensed her greater environment in some way that only she was aware of. She moved directly away from the creek. She attached silk pulleys to the egg ball and these lines and pulleys to rocks in such ways as to move the egg ball over, and around rocks that were small to Lorraine but required engineering feats for her to achieve.   Seemingly knowing where she was going, knowing the tension to put on the cables, where to attach them, where to cut them, she precisely swung the egg ball, which was much larger and heavier than her.

At times Lorraine wondered at her strength to move the ball when needed, her ability to produce so much silk, and to take it back in when no longer needed.

When the tiny spider had the ball inside the cave entrance that she had found so unerringly, she suspended it in the middle to keep it dry, and continued to watch over it.  The cave was just a few centimetres high and deep, but that was several of her body lengths, as were some of the chasms she had crossed on the way.

Lorraine said “I was really amazed at how clever this spider was at lifting this nest of eggs up to safety and finding a hole (cave) in the rocks. How did she see – she couldn’t see very far – to know where this safe, little cave was. How to make all these webs and pulleys to lift the egg (sack) up. A mechanic would be amazed, She was able to judge where the ball was going to go, and attach, and detach, guide this thing (ball) up, past, over, around rocks to a safe little cave. Just as well she did as the next day it rained.”

You can read more of Lorraine’s adventures with all beings and different plants and animals here www.gemstonetherapy.info/all beings and at: http://harmonyfarm.wordpress.com.

Lorraine goes to the edge of the drive where lies a log, and where David had just stirred up the gravel a moment ago.  There she starts to gently move pieces of gravel away one at a time. She mutters her frustration as the gravel slids in on itself as fast as she removes it, until a bumblebee pushes its way out, then another, and another. Others a circling and wondering what is going on.  The little bees get out first, then she clears more gravel, and sees a bigger movement, know a larger bumble is moving the stones beneath trying to get out.  With a little more delicate movement of the stones it is liberated to.

Then Lorraine places a small piece of bark to stabilise the gravel at the entrance, and to shed the rain.  The bumbles seem to accept this coming and going in greater numbers as life returns to normal.

Some bees however seem to fly straight in, and others take time to figure out the changes.  David says “Once some know the others will soon learn. The first will teach the rest”.

She watches, and everything seems normal. She leaves, David knows where the nest is when he next stirs the gravel and halts the advance of the forest edge yet again.

You can read more of their experiences at http://harmonyfarm.wordpress.com at http://www.gemstonetherapy.info, and in other articles within this very blog.